Why did you keep reading?

[shalanna]

Let's try a different tack to elicit some interesting responses to dump into my percolator.

What is the book that you come back to all the time . . . the one you re-read . . . the one you say is among your favorites? Is there one? Are there two? If they're children's books, when did you first read the book? If it's a newish release, how did you come across it?

Okay . . . those were the easy questions. Why do you re-read the book? You already know the plot. Is it the style? The characters? I re-read because I love the writing and the quotable lines and the situations, I think. But not always. Just wondering.

Because if I'm going to spend all this time writing a book or books, I'd like it to have a chance at being one of the books that people come back to and re-read at least once. What's the use of the "disposable" book that gets thrown away or tossed at the Used Book Store sack as soon as you finish it?

Of course, you can't keep them all. I will have to do some weeding of my library soon, because we just don't have the room to keep it all. I was keeping a number of high fantasy titles because hubby wanted me to write one like them, but that's not going to happen (at least not soon), so I'm going to pass them along. However, there are a few that I'll keep in that genre. Similarly, I'm going to pass along a number of mysteries to my aunt and her neighbor because I've already studied them and think I've gotten the idea (they were partly for fun, partly for research). But, again, I'll keep the Anne George and the Carole Berry titles.

Which books do you hang on to and re-read?

Comments

And The Answer Is. . . .

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Only fair if I answer this one.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD I keep and re-read when I need to return to my heart.
THE BOYFRIEND SCHOOL I keep and re-read when I need a good laugh. The characters are paramount here.
WINNIE-THE-POOH I keep and re-read when I need to get back in touch with what's really important.
THE SECRET HISTORY I keep to re-read when I want to luxuriate in the idea of intellectuals who float above the mundane and who live the life of the mind . . . of course, this particular group fell prey to temptations and just plain fell, but that's a cautionary tale, too.
TRUST ME ON THIS I keep to re-read and just plain laugh and enjoy Westlake's indulgent voice. They let him be indulgent and do those puns and asides because he's the Grandmaster. I like it. You might or might not. But, anyway, that's how this works.
CASTING FORTUNE I keep to re-read when I need a sense of the mystical beneath the everyday, and a warning against using magic for the wrong reasons.
DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP and other Philip K. Dick books (including the excerpts from his Exegisis) I keep to re-read whenever I am feeling that the world is particuarly Phildickian. (See, nihilistic_kid, I really DO use that as a word.)
LETTERS OF C. S. LEWIS/THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS I keep to re-read when I want to be meditative.
There are others.

How about something newer . . . okay, I kept on the shelf the Harry Potter books because I'm sure that someday I'll be able to figure out their wide appeal. *grin* And there were a couple of mysteries I kept, at least one by Susan Wittig Albert and several by Donna Andrews. I'm hoping to build readerships like theirs.

[dewabbit.livejournal.com]

I first ordered a copy of "Awaken the Warrior", a POD book by Philip Paul Sacco toward the end of 2004. I lost count of how many times I was reading through it somewhere between five and eight. I keep re-reading it because every time I pick it up, it reads like a brand new, first time through read. I continue to learn from it; each read takes me to another level of understanding.

Now, anyone who knows me, would probably say, "Yes, but that doesn't count; Philip is your friend!"

To that, I say, "Reading the book preceded our friendship, not the other way around."

Beyond that, the only other book I repeatedly read is The Bible.

[abbie-normal.livejournal.com]

okay--i'm emerging from lurk status, because i am a bookaholic.

mary poppins--the originals, not the disneyfied crap. p.l. travers had a wicked, dry characterization that made me seek out these books as an adult, and re-read them. and own them.

lazy liza lizard--i'm still searching for copies of either of them that i can afford. i read them in second grade, and while they are dated, they are simple, teach a lesson in reform and redemption, and a child can understand it.

the lord of the rings, and the hobbit. yup. i fell in love with them back in 1970, and still re-read them. again--nobility of purpose, the meaning of true friendship, the completion of a noble task at the price of sacrifice.

the dragon riders of pern--any and all of the series, by ann mccaffrey. a lovely mix of science, fiction, and fantasy. i go there to leave here. and i have visited, often thru the years.

alexander wollcott, groucho marx, dorothy parker, oscar levant--any of the algonquin round table. i have their writings, their biographies...and if you have never read "harpo speaks", you owe it to yourself to do so. for a silent partner in the marx brothers, he was remarkably articulate.

have space suit, will travel--robert heinlein. it's the first science fiction book i ever read, back in fourth grade. it had me hooked from the start. blame a teacher who went out of her way to go to the public library, and get good reading matter for me. thanks, mrs. torguson! yes--phillip k dick, asimov, frank herbert (early dune--not the nasty franchise stuff) arthur c clarke...sci fi junkie. i love a story well told, with characters who do and say things that are worth the memory.

c.s. lewis--narnia, till we have faces, screwtape, all of the many he's done. surprised by joy, etc... i love the mastery of the words that he commands.

j.m. barrie--little white bird, peter pan...etheral, fleeting, lovely

l frank baum--the oz series, and another series he did--the two books i have are "sky island", and "the sea fairies". (available in reprint from dover publications, i think)

the water babies--tragic, and sweet.

anything george mac donald. or oscar wilde.

the list goes on and on. that's the price of learning to read at age three. one feels obligated to read everything. but the books that draw us back are the old friends--the ones who give comfort, assurance, don't mind if you set them aside for a few days--they wait patiently, with their plot carefully folded up in the pages, ready to share it with you when you return. any good friend will do that...

[abbie-normal.livejournal.com]

oh--and patricia cornwell--the scarpetta series. it's one of the few medically-based series that i can't pick apart, given my background. robin cook? hah! a piker. cornwell--much more well educated, on many levels. i love her accuracy.

[abbie-normal.livejournal.com]

and john sandford aka john camp--his "prey" series is gruesome, but tightly written, has gradual character development that lets you get to know these people (like cornwell/scarpetta), and he writes in our geographical area, so when there is a car chase, one can see it inside one's head. the local buildings are really there, and he has scoped them out so when one is led through, the logic is there.

i guess the devil is in the details, for me. that, and growing to know the characters, whether noble, or not.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I so agree--convincing detail makes all the difference.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

This is probably not normal.

Another Fine Myth Robert Lynn Asprin
Quicksilver's Knight Christopher Stasheff
Soul Music Terry Pratchett
Illegal Aliens Nick Polotta
Lord Demon Roger Zelazny
Sweet Silver Blues Glen Cook
St. Patricks Gargoyle Katheryn Kurtz
The Fair Maid of Kent Gordon Dickson
Earthman's Burden Gordon Dickson, Poul Anderson

These are all books that I have worn out at least one copy. I found them either by reading the author regularly, or meeting the author. (They are not first efforts, one is posthumous.) They all contain elements of humor or in jokes. They all have no discernible Evil, the characters are working to better themselves, often against themselves. I can connect emotionally with the protagonists, they are that well done. The style does not really get in the way of the story, or characters.

Something that you cannot control is that most of them touch some aspect of my personal history. This is a category of chance that is beyond skill.

I don't know how you can deliberately set out to write such a tome. There seems to be a point where your skill in storytelling is to get out of the way of the story, rather than to craft the thing to death.

As a child, I wore out The Lord of the Rings and The Forgotten Door. The latter book is in the same mold as those I read as an adult.

[pameladean]

I have probably a hundred books that I reread; they fall in and out of favor over a five-year period, but I go back to all of them.

New ones are added, because I read almost everything I like more than once. Sometimes a book will fall off the rereading list after two or three or more readings. Occasionally one will fall off the permanent list, but not very often.

Broadly speaking, I reread a book because I want to live in it. I don't mean that I would actually physically want to live in the setting of the book; mostly, I wouldn't. But the books I reread have some quality of detail; Raphael and I have sometimes called it "thinginess" in despair of finding a better term, and I sometimes also call it just "everyday life." L.M. Montgomery has that quality. So has Tolkien; so have Sayers, Rendell under any name, Shakespeare, Keats, John M. Ford, Emma Bull, Steven Brust, Ellen Kushner, Georgette Heyer, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jane Austen, Shirley Jackson, C.J. Cherryh, Heinlein, Patrick O'Brian. I'd have to go to the shelves to find more, and I know I'm forgetting some of my favorites.

Some qualities that seem often allied to thinginess but aren't necessary to it are good sparkly dialogue, landscape, good prose, and what C.S. Lewis (who is also on my list even though he annoys me terrifically with his morals) called surprisingness, as opposed to simple surprise. Simple surprise depends on its being one's first encounter with theh book, but surprisingness is a quality that endures even after you know what is going to happen, something in the shape of the narrative.

I'm not sure this is very helpful.

P.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Jane Austen because of her brilliant eye for character.

Patrick O'Brian for spread-spectrum brilliance. (Few writers can go from comedy to tragedy to action to contemplation in a single scene. He does it again and again.)

Lord of the Rings. (I don't say Tolkien--though I do reread his letters--because I only read Hobbit once, at fourteen, and never again, and I never made it all the way through Silmarillion.)

There are two or three Westlakes, for his narrative voice. What's the Worst that can Happen is probably my top fave.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books.

All early Wodehouse, including the school stories, for the sheer perfection of their escapism.

The letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz for her amazing variety of insights, comments, stories, and trenchant observations about the court of Louis XIV. Madame Sevigny's letters as well.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Poetry, which is different, but Lucie Brock-Broido's The Master Letters. I've read it dozens of times and I keep finding new things in it. The cadence, the prose pieces, particularly in how they are addressed -- my master, my tinsmith -- there is something strange about her phrasing, something magic and warning. There is also something deeply romantic about her work. I read her poems and think "I will make someone fall in love with me with these."

The Vampire Lestat, I confess. I can't slog through all of it anymore, it has an awful slow chunk in the middle, but it was the first thing I ever read (when I was quite yung) that said feleing too much wasn't unnattractive, but exactly the opposite. It's a comfort to me, even with the perspective of age.

Dune. I learn a lot from the random religious systems of novels.

Cyteen. I wish I had read it younger, although it's not book for teens even. It makes me righteously angry, always. But it speaks eloquently to managing one's own instabilities and poignently on what it takes to breed the exceptional.

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

I went back to My Friend Flicka over the holidays. I love that book because I relate to the character of Kennie, the kid with his head in the clouds who almost doesn't want his dreams to come true because then they won't be dreams anymore. I love the depictions of the horses, but I especially like rooting for the kid to stay himself while he grows up. It's just a wonderful book.