Books I Have Known, Read and Re-Read.

Hawaii by James Mitchener. Loved it so many stories contained within one book. Film made some years ago starring Julie Andrews and Max Van Sidow. It was just one part of a wonderful book.

As an adult I re-read The Borrowers by Mary Norton and enjoyed it all over again.

I just re-read Island in the East by Jenny Ashcroft as I downloaded it on to my Kindle and did enjoy it again although I rarely re-read books. It's set in Singapore in two eras, one covering the fall of Singapore in 1942.

As a child it was Arthur Ransome, Monica Edwards pony books, The Jungle Book, T.H.White and The Secret Garden. As an adult there are so many! Mapp and Lucia, C.J.Sansom's Shardlake Novels, Andrea Camilleri, Donna Leon, Harry Potter and the Cormoran Strike novels. At Christmas I'm another one who always reads The Box Of Delights and also The Children Of Greene Knowe.

Witzend

Oh, and The Cazalet Chronicles, and Rosamund Pilcher’s Winter Solstice, but I save that for the run up to Christmas.

I believe the TV adaptation of the Cazalets in on Britbox .

M0nica

I endlessly reread books, Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, Palliser and Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope, Dorothy Sayers, Mrs Oliphant, a female contemporary of Anthony Trollope.

I have them on my Kindle and use them to lull me to sleep. A familiar book, tucked under the blankets, with just the light if the Kindle. Also ideal for wakeful patches at night, dentist's surgeries now they have taken all the magazines away.

The joy of all these books is that on every reread, I constantly not things in the books I have never noticed before. I am rereading a Mrs Oliphant book at the moment, 'Miss Marjoribanks' with a heroine as selfish and self orientated as 'Emma' in the eponymous Jane Austen book and it is wonderful.

I get my Alexa device to read a kindle book to me in bed it lulls me off to sleep . I never chose anything that relies on every word being remembered and I set a sleep timer so it goes off after 30 minutes.

I have reread all of the Narnia books, starting with the Magicians Nephew, The shoe books by Noel Streatfield, Black Beauty and National Velvet.

I lost my reading mojo in the first lockdown (my mind would not settle) so I re visited Jilly Coopers 10 Rupert Campbell Black Rutshire books from Riders through to Mount, looking forward to the new one Tackle. I appreciate that they are not highbrow but it’s like curling up with old friends.

I find this list quite curious and have decided it's really rare for me to re-read.

Lots of great books I think about and remember, and talk about with my family and friends but few re-reads.

These I have re-read though:
Madame Bovary, House of the Spirits, His Dark Materials, obviously lots of children's books, Wind in the Willows, The Little Prince, all the Alan Garners, Gaffer Samson's Luck, The Dark Is Rising Series and others.

On the whole though I'm not drawn to re-reading to be honest.

As a teenager I read lots of Harold Robbins books, he's an author who never gets mentioned these days, I would probably find the books very outdated now.

I have read and re read The Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield many times. Also all my childhood favourites, Ballet Shoes Enid Blyton, what Katy did, the Chalet School and Anne of Green Gables.

I adore Bukowski and everything related to him. Favorite Book of Women. I found myself in the heroine Lydia. Very catchy for some reason dirty realism) Stronger than Remarque

Middlemarch is my favourite novel and I reread it every few years along with Great Expectations, my second favourite.

Margaret Atwood is my favourite contemporary writer. I can read her novels, poetry and essays over and over. The last novel reread was The Robber Bride.

Most recently, I reread Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and A God in Ruins because of the TV adaptation of the first book.

Ballet Shoes, Anne of Green Gables, the Drina books by Jean Estoril. The books I have re-read most often, though, are What Katy Did and What Katy Did at School. I was given them when I was ten, and have re-read them regularly since. I have never taken to Little Women, however. It is so stilted compared with Katy. I don’t think I’ve ever even finished it.

As a child.
Ballet Shoes,
White Boots,
I capture the Castle,
Eagle of the Ninth,
Little Women.

Later on
A Town like Alice
The Handmaid's Tale,
Claudius the God and his wife Messalina,
What shall we do about Kevin,
The Goldfinch,
War and peace.

Those are some of the books that have stayed with me.

Gosh, Easybee, the mentioning of books I loved but have long forgotten, Rumer Godden, Angela Thirkell and Elizabeth Goodge - I loved ‘the Little White cHorse’ as a child. I must see if any are still in the bookcase.
My favourites to reread are any of my childhood ones.At Christmas time a must is ‘the Box of Delights’ a magical fantasy, first heard on Children's Hour; Mapp and Lucia, very dated but always make me laugh; Tales of the City series (Maupin I think). I reread ‘the L-shaped Room’ the other day and loved it.

As a child my favourite book was The Secret Garden. I don't re-read very often but my favourites are Gone with the Wind, the Poldark series of books and Rebecca.
I also like Trollope as mentioned here - you don't hear of him very often now.
Some books I have re-read years later I enjoy more or sometimes no longer like. I loved Maurice Druon's Accursed Kings series of historical fiction years ago but find it too violent now.

The one book I go back and re-read every so often is The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. No other piece of literature ever struck a chord with me like that did.

When young Davy Crocket, Ann of Green Gables and The Little House on the Praire set I was a tomboy.
Then the Nuns Story by Kathryn Hulme
A Town like Alice it also helped me out of a sticky question in A-level general studies.
Now Gone with the Wind as another OP said always hoping for another ending.
The Jewel in the Crown and Staying on, by Paul Scott.
The Poldark novels.

Wind in the Willows - just magical.

Arthur Ransom, ‘Swallows and Amazons’ and ‘Old Peter’s Tales’
E Nesbit, The Psammead trilogy
‘Ballet Shoes’

Jane Austen, particularly ‘Pride and Prejudice’ over and over again
‘Gone With The Wind’
‘I Capture the Castle’

If you’re talking just thoroughly awful people, AGAA4, I’d have to include

Lady Catherine and Lady Susan (both JA)
Wackford Squeers (Dickens)
Felix Carbury (The Way We Live Now)
Augustus Melmotte (ditto)
The ghastly arty son of the professor in Lucky Jim (Bertrand?)
The thoroughly nasty aunt of the child Jane Eyre, not to mention the appalling head of Lowood school.

Can’t think of any more off top of head at the mo. Would love to read about anyone else’s!

Favourite re reads I can’t believe I forgot before are all E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia series, and his Paying Guests - another lovely light and funny escapist read.

Witzend lovely to find someone else who reads Mrs Oliphant, and in particular, Miss Marjoribanks, the wonderful irony with which she sends up the eponymous heroine.

The Handmaid's Tale. It's been my favourite my whole life, and that is despite my being an English teacher, and consequently reading many, many books. I've read it so many times.

Also, My Family and Other Animals. Read it first at school and have both read and taught it repeatedly. Lovely book. Never ages.

Witzend that could be a thread. Who do you think are the most ghastly fictional characters?

Ditto to Cider with Rosie, and the Barchester novels. Mr Slope long ago joined P&P’s Mr Collins as the two most ghastly fictional men I’ve ever ‘met’ but I think Trollope definitely takes the prize for the most wonderful physical description of someone who would make you shudder.

Oh, and The Cazalet Chronicles, and Rosamund Pilcher’s Winter Solstice, but I save that for the run up to Christmas.