30 Days of Books: Day 12

[brigid]

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Day 12 – A book or series of books you’ve read more than five times

This isn’t really a fair question to ask someone like me, because I re-read books a lot. It’s like sliding into a pair of perfectly broken in jeans or shoes, creeping between the covers of a perfectly made comfy bed on a cold night, snuggling in with a soft blanket. It’s just… comfortable. It’s why I prefer to own books, instead of just check them out of the library. I want them on hand so I can dip into them again and again. I like new stuff, too, but I revisit the old frequently.

What I’ve re-read recently is the first two (only two) books in the Gentleman Bastard series, Sarah Monette’s The Doctrine of Labyrinths and Bone Key, The Dark is Rising series, the Damar books, Ellen Kushner’s stuff, Delia Sherman’s stuff, and Sense and Sensibility.

Lest you think I dwell too much on books already read, instead of moving forth and consuming recent books, I will remind you that I read very, very quickly. I read The Hunger Games literally in one day. Granted, it’s YA and not, say, A Feast for Crows (much longer, more going on, an appendix for people and places). But still. I read quickly.

What are some of the books YOU revisit time and again?

Comments

[sibyllevance]

Ooo Sarah Monette, another author I've been recommended, with the caveat 'you need plenty of free time and pen and paper to make a list'.
I don't reread all that much at all. I reread Harry Potter every year. Before I wrote my dissertations on Jane Austen I used to reread at least Northanger Abbey every year but ever since I wrote them I haven't found the need to go back to her.

[brigid]

"Northanger Abbey" is one of my favorite Austen novels.

Monette's Labyrinth books are rapidly going out of print, so if you're interested in BUYING them, you'll probably have to get them used. I read the first book when I was in the grip of a TERRIBLE illness, and I HATED it (part of it was the pain/grumpiness I was in) but I couldn't put it down because her writing is very compelling. The first two books were basically one big book divided up per publisher's instruction, and a lot of what bothered me about the first book starts getting resolved in the second book.

Monette plays with gender roles and gender expectations, and like GRRM she takes cliches and twists them a bit. So if bitchy gay guys, for instance, get on your tits as "OH GOD NOT THIS AGAIN," bear in mind that she's doing something specific with it, and there's a reason the gay guy is vain and shrill and, dare I say it, prone to hysterics. And madness. JUST LIKE A STEREOTYPICAL WOMAN.