Thread: Books you read over and over?

• The Iliad and the Odyssey -- any translations I can find. My favorite might be the prose translation of the Odyssey by T.E. Lawrence. In his intro he said he felt more qualified than most others to produce a translation because he is the only translator to have actually killed people in battle with a sword. Whether that is a factor I can not say but his translation is very good.
• Beowulf -- many translations. I'm still trying to decide if Seamus Heaney did a translation or a rewrite.
  
• Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur -- long and in spots even tedious but it sucks you into its world and you never want it to end. Sadly, it's not just "le morte" of a person, but of a world and an ideal.
  
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Another view of Arthur's world. The dialog between Sir Gawain and his temptress as Gawain tries to politely rebuke her advances is priceless.
  
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Never tire of it. It's like listening to a favorite piece of music.
• Anything by John Gardner -- not the hack who took over writing James Bond books, but the one who wrote Sunlight Dialogs. I have re-read several of his novels and short story collections.
  
• I have read all of Raymond Chandler at least three times. As Moose Malloy approaches Marlowe on the streets of LA we can see that he (Malloy) "is not as wide as a beer truck".
  
• Everything I can find by the (recently late) Donald E. Westlake, by that name and also by his alias Richard Stark.
• Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass -- read many times. "The time has come, the Walrus said, to speak of many things..."
• This sounds kind of low-brow, but I do like Lord of the Rings and reread it about every 10 years. I even have a goatskin leather-bound edition. I liked the movies, too, and disagree that Peter Jackson took unwarranted liberties. He did change things but those were, I feel, justified by circumstances.
  

Sir Gawain is a classic, as is Beowulf. I read both in a university literature class, and while I had read Beowulf, Sir Gawain was new to me. Furthermore, my professor was Welsh, good looking, and could read/speak the original writing of Beowulf...she's the only reason I went to class

The Iliad and the Odyssey are fantastic stories. I think I'll be reading those next- thanks for reminding me! I need to pick up nice hardcover versions of them.

Something just occurred to me! (See my post above.)

I don't like Odysseus as a person even though I love the story. He is too much of a slippery bastard I wouldn't trust for anything.

What has occurred to me is that Bilbo in The Hobbit is a bit like Odysseus -- a trickster that can't be trusted to do anything but look after his own butt. Like Odysseus, he goes from one adventure to the next lying and cheating his way through. At least he has an excuse -- the ring made him do it! Except that he obtained the ring through a low trick.

I guess Odysseus has an excuse too -- the gods are against him! Well, maybe not all of them but enough.

I've read 'Vertical run' by Joseph R Garber several times.
It's one of those books in which you really get into the mind of the main character. The storyline has a high 'Die hard' feeling to it.

Originally Posted by Quick Orange

C'mon man. Twilight? SWMBO picked those up and got hooked, so I thought I'd see what all the hype was about. Stephanie Myer has got to be one of the worst writers I've ever attempted to read. It was so bad I couldn't get to my usual 100 page cutoff. I think I made it 10 pages. Even Stephen King said her writing was bad!

I know mate. You kinda have to persevere with the first two, I think her writing gets better though - nothing particularly incredible - but then do you have to be a great writer to tell a good story? Was Bob Dylan a good singer? I dunno. I could pick holes in those books with the best of them.

I actually think you could compare her writing to J.K Rowling - her writing had it's ups and downs as well - more downs than ups arguably.

I lent the first two to my mate, it took him three months to read the first one. It took him a week to read the second and 4 days to read the last two.



Confessions of an economic hitman - sounds like my kinda book. I'll pick it up once i've devoured my first stephen king - The Stand (the uncut version, no less)

Pretty much every book I've read I've read only once, with one or two exceptions.

I recently reread McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses.

I have some favorites I'll read again and again, A Clockwork Orange I've read again since age 14,like a dozen times. The Master and Margarita is prob, my all time Favorite. What a brilliant book. Aldous Huxley is a guy That I have no shame in picking up over and over.

I'm not sure I've ever read a book twice.
But I do plan to re-read:

I am Legend. Great book, I heard the Will Smith movie was going to be more faithful to it than previous "attempts." It wasn't. What is wrong with these people? I have to read the book again to remind myself just how stupid movie makers are.

The Da Vinci code. Great book, ... (do I need to continue?)

The (many) Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson. I used to eagerly await these as they were published. My biggest fear in life was that I would die before reading the last book. Some people would view him as a poor man's Tolkien, but I'd disagree.

And someone has reminded me I have the annotated versions of Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass. There is so much more to those books than you realise.

Originally Posted by JohnnyCakeDC

Aldous Huxley is a guy That I have no shame in picking up over and over.

Best author's name ever. Just rolls off the tongue.

Originally Posted by Rajagra

The Da Vinci code. Great book, ... (do I need to continue?)

I've read that two or three times I think. I liked deception point and the other one that isn't angels and demons as well.

ah, digital fortress, I remember.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I have them all, and plan to re-read them sometime.
But I will never re-read Naked Empire. I don't know what got into Terry as he was writing it, but it is filled with page after page of preachy drivel. And the book has no point in the series, except moving some characters in position for the next book.
Not that there is anything wrong with that, but at least he could have made a decent story out of it instead of filling 600 ish pages with verbal pus.

I agree on the Naked Empire. However I LOVED pillars of creation. It showed a whole different aspect of his world and I really liked that. I thought it was very entertaining the way he made the good guys look like absolute evil for the first half of the book.