OT: Books you have read twice..no phonebooks

[Bama fan]

I have read many books through the years, and a few of them twice. When younger I went through a spell of reading many great works. So I read James Joyce and Thomas Hardy , among others. But those two authors were so confounding that I had to read most of their stuff at least twice. Tess of the d'Ubervilles operated on several different layers, and I reread it several times to grasp its intricacies. Jude ,the Obscure and The Mayor of Castorbridge and Far From the Madding Crowd were all tough reads, but rewarding. And Joyce's Ulysses was so unfathomable that I am certain that I am uncertain of its meaning. No amount of rereading will enlighten me there I fear. I read Candide several times because I was quite amused by Pangloss. And I was as enamored of Cunegonde as Candide once was! Pride and Prejudice was also a gem, and I read it again after the spate of screen plays made it "de rigueur" once more. Moby Dick and In Cold Blood are others I revisited. But my favorite novel remains To Kill A Mockingbird. Moving to Alabama 35 years ago made it that much more poignant. I am sure I have personally met some of the richly developed characters that Ms Lee brought to life. Although I have yet to encounter Miss Maudie, I have not given up hope. As the old public service announcement used to say "Reading is Fundamental".

 

[Littlemin]

Many, many rereads, too numerous to even have a clue of them all,

But, a few already mentioned

Ring Trilogy, To Kill A Mockingbird, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, The Art of War, The Fountainhead

And not mentioned,

The entire Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly

And my personal favorite re-read of all time, Watership Down by Richard Adams

 

[Plebe]

Fantastic thread idea! I'm with @Txhoopsalot in my desperation to return to bookstore-browsing.

The ones I remember offhand:

East of Eden, John Steinbeck
El llano en llamas, Juan Rulfo
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula LeGuin
Las venas abiertas de América Latina, Eduardo Galeano
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

 

[HCCForever]

The Fountainhead - I read this when I want to develop the who cares attitude like Howard Roark
Travels With Charley - a bit dated but gets me in the mood for a road trip
Think And Grow Rich - I read once a year
Sun Also Rises and Old Man and the Sea
Compound Effect - Darren Hardy
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Vonnegut

 

[Millenial23]

All the Harry Potters... oh wait, that's more than twice

 

[Kaizen]

All 9 books of The Little House series by Laura Ingalls .
Most of Agatha Christie's books.
Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
The Arabian Night.
Tom Sawyer.

 

[bluedevil]

I have read many books through the years, and a few of them twice. When younger I went through a spell of reading many great works. So I read James Joyce and Thomas Hardy , among others. But those two authors were so confounding that I had to read most of their stuff at least twice. Tess of the d'Ubervilles operated on several different layers, and I reread it several times to grasp its intricacies. Jude ,the Obscure and The Mayor of Castorbridge and Far From the Madding Crowd were all tough reads, but rewarding. And Joyce's Ulysses was so unfathomable that I am certain that I am uncertain of its meaning. No amount of rereading will enlighten me there I fear. I read Candide several times because I was quite amused by Pangloss. And I was as enamored of Cunegonde as Candide once was! Pride and Prejudice was also a gem, and I read it again after the spate of screen plays made it "de rigueur" once more. Moby Dick and In Cold Blood are others I revisited. But my favorite novel remains To Kill A Mockingbird. Moving to Alabama 35 years ago made it that much more poignant. I am sure I have personally met some of the richly developed characters that Ms Lee brought to life. Although I have yet to encounter Miss Maudie, I have not given up hope. As the old public service announcement used to say "Reading is Fundamental".

You forgot Return of The Native...!

 

[Conndog]

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann- my favorite book

 

[JRRRJ]

The entire Tolkien (J.R.R.'s works only) ouevre -- still pick one of them up & read a scene (and many following pages) every so often.
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline -- even tho I didn't come of age in the '80s, it's a trip I'm glad I didn't miss.
The Annotated Sherlock Holmes , William S. Baring-Gould -- every novel & story by Sir Arthur in 2 huge volumes. (BTW, I think the TV series Elementary does a pretty good job of capturing Holmes as I pictured him in my mind.)
The Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan -- But only the first one and last 2 volumes. Forgive a very ill man the excesses of the middle 10 books, but you don't have to read them. Find a summary somewhere instead.
Systemantics, John Gall -- Similar to The Peter Principle but funnier and sadder because it's all true. There are PDFs available online.
Pride of Chanur/The Kif Strike Back/Chanur's Homecoming, C.J.Cherryh -- She made me believe I could understand how the culture of a race of intelligent felineites would work, had me appreciate the basis of their emotions and enjoy a rollicking story involving 5 spacefaring cultures all at the same time.
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson -- His debut, not like his later books below. A fast-moving story with well-delineated characters and a number of outstanding turns of phrase.
The Diamond Age, Reamde, Neal Stephenson -- His attention to detail is amazing; I've learned a lot from his books about a plethora of subjects. It'd probably be stultifying to some others, but I love it.
Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein -- Mostly not a science fiction story, though it takes place on many planets over hundreds of years of one man's life.

And on, and on, but those are the biggies that come up today.

 

[Golden Husky]

I assume the qualification is at least twice, not exactly twice:
To Kill A Mocking Bird
Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas
Catch-22
Slaughterhouse Five
The Catcher in the Rye
Fahrenheit 451
The Great Gatsby
Steinbeck quartet (Grapes, Eden, Mice, Cannery)
Hemingway quartet (A Farewell, The Sun, For Whom, The Old Man)
In Cold Blood

So many more

It's almost as if my father taught a course in 20th Century American Literature...which he did.

 

[Dokey]

Off the top of my head:

Huckleberry Finn
The Lord of the Rings
All the Sherlock Holmes stories
A bunch of Dr. Seuss

More recently, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and The Ocean at the End of the Lane

It might come as a surprise but my wife and partner in our business, one of the largest mystery specialty bookstores and presses in the world, didn’t read a Sherlock Holmes story until she was 30. I wasn’t sure how this transfer from sf would handle Holmes but I sent her off with The Red-Headed League. She returned to say why have you been holding out on me? And so a Sherlockisn was born. It should be noted that the first appearance of the Holmes stories in the new magazine, The Strand, coincided with many of the first Brits to benefit from universal education, thus the first truly literate British population, and the lines went round the corner from the newsstands each month for the latest installment in The Adventures and Memoirs in the Strand.

Off the top of my head:

Huckleberry Finn
The Lord of the Rings
All the Sherlock Holmes stories
A bunch of Dr. Seuss

More recently, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and The Ocean at the End of the Lane

 

[PacoSwede]

boy, i must be missing something. or you all are the biggest bunch of BS'ers in the universe!!

why in heck would you be re-reading all these books, multiple books, long books, whole lengthy series of books rather than using your limited time to experience all the thousands and thousands of potentially fantastic books that you have not experienced at all.

please, clue me in.

excuse me if you are just listing some of your favorites. cool. ... but if you are actually re-reading all of them, well, ... i'm sorry you don't have better things to do.

btw, i do see why someone would re-read a book or two, but not a library. myself, i am blown away by the prose of 'the great gatsby' -- plus it's short and an easy read.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

The Catcher In The Rye
Moby Dick
The Lord of the Rings
The Grapes of Wrath
Old Man And The Sea

Come to mind.

 

[CL82]

Like many of you I read quite a bit. These are some that I've come back to.
The Lord of the Ring series (several times)
The Hobbit (several times)
The Master and Commander Series (probably my favorite series, I've read all 20 at least twice, some more.)
The Foundation Series (Asimov)
Killer Angel Series (At least twice, great description of the Battle of Gettysburgh and then the Civil War, generally)
I Robot.

Probably more, if I think about it. Books are like old friends. It is nice to revisit them with a different life perspective.

 

[f1f1ferrari]

Geno: In Pursuit of Perfection
Heart of a Husky
The Same River Twice

Oh, and The Hunt For Red October

 

[Bama fan]

You forgot Return of The Native...!

Just never read it twice

 

[Palatine]

Moby Dick
Huckleberry Finn
The Right Stuff
Sirens of Titan
The Trial
Childhood's End
A Brief History of Time
Walt Disney A Biography
Hello, I Must Be Going (Marx Brothers Biography)
The Wit and Wisdom Of Mark Twain
All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek

 

[Sifaka]

José Gorostiza Poesía
Mark Twain Letters From the Earth
Francisco de Quevedo (Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas)
Obra Completa-Poesía
Dava Sobel Longitude
Nicolàs Guillén Tengo
Richard Feynman Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street*

*The first book I ever read aloud by myself, and read again dozens of times to my kids, often doing a running translation into Spanish or Portuguese Dr. Seuss and I were both thrown off the same college satire magazine for... ermm... going above and beyond. He changed his name, became a great writer. I did neither.

 

[tomcat]

I know This Much is True, by UConn's own Wally Lamb. UConn women's basketball gets a mention in there, if I recall correctly.

 

[tomcat]

The Old Man's War series of books by John Scalzi. Science fiction done with humor. After that, the Lock In series by Scalzi. Completely different but sucks you into the story just the same.

 

[Puppy Love]

Love Story - more times than I can count
When Breath Becomes Air - cried even though I knew how it would end
True Story of the Three Little Pigs
Where the Wild Things Are

 

[Puppy Love]

I know This Much is True, by UConn's own Wally Lamb. UConn women's basketball gets a mention in there, if I recall correctly.

She’s Come Undone was a good read...tried to read ’I know This Much is True’...hated it and gave up.

 

[boontonbomber]

Golf in the Kingdom, Michael Murphy
The Four Magic Moves to Winning Golf, Joe Dante
Cobble Valley Golf Yarns, and other Sketches, A.W. Tillinghast

 

[Rema64]

Shogun

I loved the whole series

 

[Rema64]

The complete works of Shakespeare. Dickens.
My Uncle left copies of his college books in my Mom's basement so I read everything he left over and over. Great memories