What's your most re-read book?

Either this one:

or this one:

The. Diesel Generator handbook ………………I
i can highly recommend it , its throbbing !

@CaptainFlashypants – Great Game again for the 4th time, such a pity none of today’s politicians take the time to read it, they may have saved a lot of lives.
Read LOTR 7 or 8 times and the Silmarillion more (much better book IMO)
Plus the Calvin & Hobbs anthologies, over & over.
Thhgttg a few times and plenty of Pratchett”s books.

Apart from hundreds of childrens books – can recite the Gruffalo and Duck in the Truck (a skill that has lost it’s use now the kids have grown up a bit)

Rarely read anything more than once but two that spring instantly to mind (and possibly the only two) are Complicity by Iain Banks and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson.

I always plan to read cycling books again but never get round to it, Ann Mustoe’s A bike Ride would be in that list.

There’s loads I’ve gone back to and read numerous times, and a great many I’ve only read once or twice.
Those I keep going back to include everything by William Gibson, a great many of Roger Zelazney’s books, especially Today We Choose Faces, Roadmarks and Damnation Alley, which I’m reading again at the mo’ as an ebook.
Most of Larry Niven’s Known Universe books, Neil Stephenson’s Zodiac, Snow Crash, Diamond Age,
Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, and loads of others over many years, some, like Today We Choose Faces, and Niven’s Time Out Of Mind probably several dozen times, because, and this is key, they’re all pretty short!
Not like today, where an author feels it’s not worth turning in a manuscript unless it goes to 600 pages, and it’s part of at least a trilogy. Nobody writes short stories or novellas any more, sadly; there’s a lot to be said for brevity.
The short version of Damnation Alley is just as good as the expanded novel, and Arthur C. Clarke wrote Against The Fall Of Night, then later revised and expanded it as The City And The Stars. I’ve read both, any number of times, and I enjoy them both, equally.
And neither are very long!

All quiet on the orient express – Magnus Mills

Most of Graham Greene.

I’ve read lord of the rings well over ten times since I was twelve. Other than that there are only really three books I revisit more than a couple if times, Grapes of Wrath, One Thousand Years of Solitude and Beowulf. Generally I read lots of shit so that’s no measure of my literary worth.

For Whom The Bell Tolls, x 3

I, Claudius and Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward both x 2

Several here are on my reread list.

Most of Graham Greene.

End of the Affair’s on my reread list! & Power & the Glory.

Chickenhawk – Robert Mason (Vienam war)and Into thin air – John Krakauer (Mountaineering)

Grapes of Wrath
Catch 22
Lord of the Rings
Dark Tower (7 book series, with 8th book released in 2012 that I just heard about: Dark Tower-The Wind Through the Keyhole

I’m glad I’m not the only one to say Fear and Loathing. Must be at least ten times by now – I’ve owned 5 copies over the years, but sooner or later it gets loaned and not returned.
(I’m sticking to literature here – non fiction, reference and kids books obviously get more attention!)
For me that is the mark of a great book – wanting others to read it, and replacing it when gone.

Second place is Jude the Obscure (on copy no. three now)

Then Tess, Under the Greenwood Tree, the Woodlanders etc – bit of a Hardy fan! The stories can be a tad trite and predictable, but the prose is just beautiful.

I read every book I like more than once, but as a counterpoint will happily abandon and bin anything I think is rubbish after a few pages (Dan Brown being one example – like wading through a semi-literate child’s rushed homework )

Joemc – I agree on Hardy’s prose – also a fan. Far from the madding crowd several times – I did rather fancy Bathsheba everdene!

stox Henry Bowers is both a relative of mine and Harry the Spider.

Dan Brown being one example – like wading through a semi-literate child’s rushed homework )

I’m currently reading the second in the Hunger Games trilogy. The first was OK, a bit of a guilty secret, fluff. This second one is just irritating.

stox Henry Bowers is both a relative of mine and Harry the Spider.

Really??!!! Then that makes you my 2 favourite forum members 🙂
Related how if you don’t mind my asking? …

The Hobbit, LOTR
The first and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
Struggling to get through the Last Chronicles though..

The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James. Cover to cover, at least once a year. Love it.

I think that there’s only a couple of books I recall re-reading:
Bernard Schlink: ‘The Reader’
Cormac McCarthy: ‘Blood Meridian’

River God, book that got me into Wilbur Smith.
Normally read it when on holiday relaxing.
Pretty much read every Wilbur Smith since

More times than I care to remember, unfortunately I can be a bit too “Rob Gordon” sometimes

I reread lots of books & would struggle to name one I’ve read more than t’others-

When I was younger LOTR, the Hobbit & Redwall.

More recently all of the Iain M Banks (pretty much on rotation), the Scar & Perdido St Station, The Nights Dawn Trilogy, Neuromancer, Green River Rising, the Religion, Good Omens & Wilt.

When I was a kid, I borrowed Flight Underground (James Hamilton-Paterson) so often from the library that they eventually gave it to me.

I reread lots of books – all Neal Stephenson, especially Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, but all of his at least 3 times. All Iain Banks of course, especially Feersum Endjinn, The Business and Against a Dark Backgound. Terry Pratchett too.

Basically, if I don’t want to read it again, I didn’t really enjoy it the first time.

I’ve re-read pretty much every book I have, mainly because I’m too lazy to go buy more.

Ones that I have re-read most would either be 1984, LOTR, or possibly some Iain Banks. I think I’ve read The Bridge once a year for the past six years.

There are many, many books that I’ve read twice through, most of them mentioned here already.

Honorable mentions

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes – I’ve started it twice but never finished it. I’d been reading it on and off for a month when the book was recalled to the Library so I couldn’t renew it and finish it. Then I tracked down which translation I had been reading and bought it. The emigrated without it.

I think of the few that creep in to my 3 times or more bracket must include

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Both classics IMO.

The only books I have every re-read…

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Just brilliant madness.
The Rum Diary – My fave holiday book to have a rum with.
Shantaram – My all time favourite.

A few, including 1984 for me.

My business (Fitted bedrooms etc.) is called Smartrooms101.

It might take its inspiration from 1984

None of my customers have twigged yet

Peace at last 🙂 to my kids nightly. lord of the rings 367 times 😉

LOTR twice. Better the second time as you know what bits to skip… Tom Bombadil you f***ing waste of space!

Also the whole Game Of Thrones series. Bad as it is, I quite enjoyed a re-read with foreknowledge of what would happen. Dany pooping in the desert is still a terrible ending though 👿

Currently, it’s Where is the Green Sheep?, but prior to The Boy arriving… as a kid I read the Famous Five, Secret Seven and Hardy Boys series probably a dozen times over. Terry Pratchett’s Diggers, Truckers and Wings also got read a few times. As a teenager/adult, I’ve read a couple of the Discworld novels a few times and Stephen King’s IT, The Stand and Pet Sematary four or five times each. Oh, and Robinson Crusoe.

These days I’ve generally got a backlog of books that I haven’t read yet, so find it hard to justify re-visiting something I’ve read before.

twice

I have re-read the entire Flashman series by George McDonald Fraser several times and always enjoy them immensely.

I am also enjoying re-visiting some Jack Vance – The Demon Princes is a favourite.

Planning to read some Steinbeck when I am on holiday – I am always amazed by the quality of his work.

P.s. may revisit Cider with Rosie. Did it for O level in 1985 and was inspired to read Laurie’s other works. Saw him at Cheltenham Literature Festival a few years before he died. He was an entertaining old buffer.

Oh, if we’re counting books I read to the offspring, then it’s a lot easier – this is somewhere near the top of the list:

Crow Road – Iain Banks
French Revolutions – Tim Moore as it always makes me laugh

‘Bravo Two Zero’ by Andy McNabb, it actually improves with every read.

French Revolutions, A piano in the Pyrenees from Tony Hawks, and I’m mid way through Dividing the great, again, after the rewind article this week.

The monkey wrench gang by Edward Abbey.

Related how if you don’t mind my asking?

He was my Granddads uncle although I don’t think they ever met, Bowers was probably already in the antarctic when he was born.

It’s an astonishing read isn’t it, three men all desperate to turn round and none of them willing to give up no matter how bad things got. I can’t help thinking that if the three of them had accompanied Scott to the pole as a 4 man team they might have made it back. Unfortunately Cherry Garrads eyesight meant that was never going to happen.

Huxley’s Brave New World: IMO better than 1984