Do you ever feel like just rereading old favorites?

[Extollager]

Although I have a library request out for Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual, which I have never read, I'm feeling like reading books that I read years ago. At the moment I'm giving Watership Down a third reading, the last having been in 1992.

I'm thinking about rereading at least some of these works of fiction before the year is out (year of most recent previous reading in parentheses):

G. B. Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page (1991)
The Lord of the Rings (2019)
A Shakespeare play, perhaps As You Like It (1974!)
T. H. White, Mistress Masham's Repose (2004)
Thomas Hardy, Two on a Tower (2011 -- this was a silly book, but I have an article assignment to write something on it)
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (2014)
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors (1995) and Gaudy Night (1998-1999)
A. S. Byatt, Possession (1991)
C. P. Snow's The Masters (2017)
Something by Clifford Simak
W. G Sebald's Austerlitz (2020)
Rose Macaulay's They Were Defeated (2019)

 

[CupofJoe]

Many Sir Terry Pratchett get reread. Usually the Guards series.
I'll reread some Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler most years.
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is my "safe" book. I have a copy in my backpack, just in case I get stranded somewhere.
I've read and reread it about a dozen times of the years.
So did some D&L Eddings [not so much recently].

 

[Rodders]

I do enjoy a reread and i've been using my cycle home from work by listening to audio books. Currently going through Iain M. Bank's Culture series, ready by Peter Kenny and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy read by Stephen Fry and Martin Freeman.

I'm very much enjoying it and i hope to listen to the audio book versions of Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" trilogy once I've finished with those two series.

 

[pogopossum]

I've been reading (in most cases re-reading) several authors, notably Roger Zelazny and Robert Silverberg. It's been a little disappointing. Zelazny wrote several collaborations that for whatever reasons don't stand up. I am not making quality judgements, just that the prose doesn't exactly fit my taste. If you are writing with Phil Dick or Alfred Bester a change of style is to be expected. I enjoyed all but one of his solo creations as much as i remembered - some even moreso.
Silverberg had such a mammoth oeuvre that it's not surprising that some (early) stuff doesn't achieve his high standard as one of the greatest ever.
I do recommend back reading. If you have any interest in the joys of re-reading, look at What Makes This Book So Great. On Re-Reading The Classics. by Jo Walton. 130 essays on the joys thereof.

 

[BAYLOR]

Mostly, I reread favorite short stories. I am tmpedtd to reread The Hobbit and LOTR.

Currently I'M reading Citadel of Fear by Francis Stevens .Its totally off the wall and fun to read !

 

[Extollager]

I have a copy of The Citadel of Fear, Baylor, but have never read it. This is a reread for you? A favorite?

 

[The Big Peat]

I'm having a dry patch in finding new fiction I like and a possibly linked non-trivial amount of stress, so I'm thinking I'm going to retreat more and more to rereads for a bit. I have a shelf full of Pratchett and Gemmell and I'm not afraid to use it.

 

[BAYLOR]

I have a copy of The Citadel of Fear, Baylor, but have never read it. This is a reread for you? A favorite?

Extollagner I should explain this book is an either or type of book meaning , its book that you either love or hate, there
s no middle ground . Its offbeat, and strange and I like it .

And while ive been pondering this comment, ive figured the story plot point and the real identity of a mysterious character in the book that so far been alluded me.

 

[hitmouse]

Yeah, occasionally when I find I have been reading forgettable or slightly turgid stuff for a while, and my enthusiasm is waning, I do think of rereading some of the books that had a real spark back in the day. It doesn't happen very often.
For some reason I am tempted to dig Tiger! Tiger! or Neuromancer out of the shelves at the moment.

 

[Extollager]

There they are, three of ‘em library copies, the rest mine. The Goldfinch is a library discard. A choice of Simaks. Which one?

 

[Vince W]

I reread books quite often. Usually ones that I really enjoyed or had some impact on me. I could probably do nothing but reread and be happy about it.

 

[Randy M.]

A choice of Simaks.

Well, there's a title just waiting for a story.

 

[pogopossum]

There they are, three of ‘em library copies, the rest mine. The Goldfinch is a library discard. A choice of Simaks. Which one?
View attachment 104109

That one's easy Time and Time - again. Not that I'd kick the others off the shelf.

 

[Danny McG]

*sighs*
Cheers for this thread, now, (with my subconscious screaming "no, please no, not that book again!"), I'm once more compelled to start on The More in God's Eye

 

[Extollager]

That one's easy Time and Time - again. Not that I'd kick the others off the shelf.

OK, that's the one I'll plan to reread next, previously read in 2014.

 

[The Big Peat]

*sighs*
Cheers for this thread, now, (with my subconscious screaming "no, please no, not that book again!"), I'm once more compelled to start on The More in God's Eye

I bet you'll feel really silly when you finish that then remember you meant to read The Mote in God's Eye and have to read that too.

 

[BAYLOR]

OK, that's the one I'll plan to reread next, previously read in 2014.

What's the title of the thin blue book on top of Watership down ?

 

[Extollager]

That's T. H. White's Mistress Masham's Repose, which I think I liked more than The Once and Future King. MMR is about a community that's made up of descendants from Gulliver's Lilliputians. I don't remember it really well, though.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, I do a lot of rereading, but the books I reread tend to be sandwiched in between books I am reading for the first time. Also, a lot of rereads are of books I read fairly recently and quite liked, so I could hardly call them old favorites (though they might in time become such).

But when I am particularly stressed or depressed or ill, there are indeed old favorites that I invariably turn to as comfort reading, and I will read several of them in a row. Many of them are not SFF. Books by authors like, for instance, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, P. G. Wodehouse, Georgette Heyer, or Dorothy L. Sayers. Sometimes I'll just reread favorite scenes.

(I have a different opinion than Extollager about Mistress Masham's Repose versus The Once and Future King. The latter was long one of my old stalwart comfort reads, but although I liked Mistress Masham I never felt inspired to reread it.)

 

[Bick]

There they are, three of ‘em library copies, the rest mine. The Goldfinch is a library discard. A choice of Simaks. Which one?
View attachment 104109

Now, I would have suggested They Walked Like Men. I have the same edition as it happens.

My go to comfort re-reads are Asimov (in SF) and Hardy (non genre). I have yen to re-read A.B. Guthrie too. Oh, and I seem to re-read Lonesome Dove every 10 years or so.