What books do you read and read again?

I remember reading Zola's "Earth" as a kid, and having it snatched out of my hands by my father. That had never happened before and I was very shocked!!!

Mind you, it meant I learned to be sneaky when I read Lady Chatterley's Lover.

(from wikipedia)
The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction story collection by Ray Bradbury that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists. The book lies somewhere between a short story collection and an episodic novel, containing Bradbury stories originally published in the late 1940s in science fiction magazines. For publication, the stories were loosely woven together with a series of short, interstitial vignettes. Bradbury has credited Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as influences on the structure of the book. He has called it a "half-cousin to a novel" and "a book of stories pretending to be a novel". As such, it is similar in structure to Bradbury's short story collection, The Illustrated Man, which also uses a thin frame story to link various unrelated short stories.

Like Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, The Martian Chronicles follows a "future history" structure. The stories, complete in themselves, come together as episodes in a larger sequential narrative framework. The overall structure is tripartite, punctuated by two catastrophes: the near-extinction of the Martians and the parallel near-extinction of the human race. The first third (January 1999-April 2000) details the attempts of the Earthmen to reach Mars, and the various ways in which the Martians keep them from returning. In the crucial story "And the Moon be Still as Bright, it is revealed by the fourth exploratory expedition that the Martians have all but perished in a plague caused by germs brought by one of the previous expeditions. This unexpected development sets the stage for the second act (December 2001-November 2005), in which humans from Earth colonize the deserted planet, occasionally having contact with the few surviving Martians, but for the most part preoccupied with making Mars a second Earth. However, as war on Earth threatens, most of the settlers pack up and return home. A global nuclear war ensues, cutting off contact between Mars and Earth. The third act (December 2005-October 2026) deals with the aftermath of the war, and concludes with the prospect of the few surviving humans becoming the new Martians, a prospect already adumbrated in "And the Moon be Still as Bright, and which allows the book to return to its beginning.

See the Wikipedia Page for a synopsis of the stories

Thanks djjd.

Hehehehehehehehe . . .

Lady Chatterly wasn't even that good a novel. I can't think of any of Lawrence's work which beguiled me sufficiently to re-read it.

Read and ReRead

The House at Pooh Corner---with the original Matthew Shepard illustrations.

Rap

I thought parts of Chatterley were lovely.

I dunno...I really like Lawrence for so much....and really dislike him for other things.

I think the sheer artistry of his best work is stunning.

Ironic...I have just been culling my Lawrence, and half my collection bit the dust, but some major ones made it through.

I gave my Poohs away!!

'Twas a worthy cause.

Yes--there are great passages in Lawrence. Not all of them "lovely" though.

He did go a bit over the top at times though. Not as high as Proust but not bad.

Everybody should read Proust on catnip.

I had to think about this one a bit. The books I have actually reread and enjoyed as much or more the second or third time around are;

"A Hero of our Time" by Lermontov
Maupassant's short stories
"Posthumas Reminiscences of Bras Cubas" by Machado de Assis

Some others that I liked greatly the first time around were great dissappointments later. Hemmingway's novels and some short stories of Maxim Gorky are prominent in that category.

Sons and Lovers is about the only Lawrence novel I'd be at all interested in rereading, Setanta. The rest (I read just about the lot, as a romantic 17- -20 yr old) are terribly dated now. When I reread Lady C's Lover again, some years after my "romantic" period, I wanted to box Lawrence's ears! Whatta load of convoluted twaddle!

.... I think I've just about given up rereading old favourites, though ... on the basis that there are still too many good books out there & far too little time to read all of them. I'm more likely to read every single book I can get my hands onto by writers who really appeal to me ... like Janette Turner Hospital, Margaret Atwood, Vikram Seth, Paul Scott, etc, etc, etc.
Though I do confess to reading The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing) about five times, in the past. I don't think I need to read it again, though ...

I had exactly that experience with Catch 22 and the novels of Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.

Oooo . . . i'll want to remember that . . . and not just for Lawrence, either.

Huh. I've never read Lawrence, but have recently unearthed from my 'unreads' D. H. Lawrence and Italy (3 books). We'll see. Fairly small print. Should be a good sleep inducer. Unlikely to read it twice, too many others to read (I'm kicking in on latin american authors).

Trouble with rereading Catch 22, you already know all the punch lines.

Jane Eyre - I've read that book since I was 13 - a very long time ago. I read just about anything that Austen wrote. I like Dickens, Thackerey and Twain.

B

I'd go along with your taste in 19th century literature, minus the Brontes.

I like Charlotte and the only novel I really admire of the Bronte's is Jane Eyre. Sad that in those days women had to hide the fact that they could write, or write under a false name. I would guess the Brontes are more female oriented in their writing, which makes sense. No way would my husband read the stories, but he does watch Jane Eyre, or Pride and Prejudice on CD's and seems to like them (or the pretty gals).

I'm reading a 'guy' book right now called Shantaram, by Gregory Roberts. It's...well, you'd have to read it. The dark side of Mumbai, etc. told by an ex-con who is also the author.

B

Really great books I think you can get lots and lots more from as you-re-read them. After all, nobody thinks twice about re-reading poetry many many times.

I also find something inexpressibly comforting about sitting down and reading an old friend......

However, the onrush of having much less time left to read good things is, indeed, an argument.

Not that what you have read matters much as your brain rots away in the grave.

Just give me a minute while I get my head around that thought!