Favourite books

[watervole]

 There are books you read and enjoy once, and there are books (not always the best ones) that you go back and read time and again.

These old friends are often ones that really got you when you were young, and they're a warm friend to return to. Some books make it onto the list later in life, but they have to have something special to add them to that list.  There has to be a comfort factor in there somewhere - the characters have to feel like people you know and want to spend time with.

Here's some of the ones on my list that have been re-read the most.

Heinlein gets three books on the list:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - there for the culture that Heinlein creates on the Moon, the complex marriage arrangements caused by the far greater number of men than women, MIKE who was the first self-aware computer I encountered and still one of my two favourites (Anne Leckie wrote the other).  Plus the whole against the odds rebellion against Earth and the way they go about it.

Double Star - An out of work actor agrees to act as a double for a politician who has been kidnapped just before a crucial visit to Mars.  Pure character - the actor is completely a-political, hates Martians, but very, very slowly, comes to understand the man he is impersonating.  My favourite scene in the entire book is when the King spots that he's a ringer. Why?  Becuase the guy he's replacing had detailed records on everyone he had to meet, but didn't need any aid to remember the King.  Our protagonist is polite about the monarch's model railway - which the original Bonforte thought was a silly hobby - and said so.

Citizen of the Galaxy - This wasn't a favourite when I was young. I always found the last section of the book to be a bit dull - the adventures cease and the bureaucracy begins.  As an adult, I understand what is being said. Slavery is an evil that cannot be eliminated by heroics.  To make any gains at all requires studying records, cash flow, ship movements, profits, etc.

Ursula le Guin - The first three Earthsea novels.  Pure magic.  But also with such understanding of human frailty.  Ged's journey from brash young man seeking the power he can gain from magic, is a long, long way from the man he will eventually come to be.  I lent this to a teenage friend recently, and was delighted when she said it was one of the best books she'd ever read.  (she reads a LOT of books)

Francis Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden. Something to do with Yorkshire, gardening, robins and really lonely/selfish children (who annoy each other so much that they eventually start to mature) makes this a book I keep coming back to.

 

Lois McMaster Bujold - the Vorkosigan series.  All of them. I have my favourites, but they'll all get re-read (yet again) eventually.  Strong women, love that depends on so much more than good looks, politics, characters growing up over time and learning/developing as they get older.  Space combat, laughter, friendship, the influence of one society on another. (One of the minor glories of this series, is that Barrayaran politicians (who tend to seriously underestimate women) fail to realise that letting the Regent's wife have a major input into the education of the young Emperor is bound to have him grow up with her political slant - which is far more broad-minded than that of anyone else on Barrayar.) Also, this series firmly plants its feet as LGBT positive.   The novel where a character changes gender in order to cope with the Barrarayan political system is both hilarious (for the reactions of all the old guard) and endearing.

Lois McMaster Bujold - the 'Penric and the Demon' series.  Hey, who wouldn't want to share their body with a two-hundred year old chaos demon  and end up worshipping a god 'The Bastard' with a very warped sense of humour? 
This is in many ways a very gentle series.  Events are often small in the eyes of the wider world, but vitally important for a few individuals. The Gods are real in this universe, but they cannot intervene directly.  to answer prayers, they need the aid of those who can hear/understand them. And those are very few in number.  Souls are greatly valued.  It is almost as important to save the soul of  a recently deceased person, as it is to save a life. Sometimes fear/unresolved business/even a desire to accuse a murderer can prevent a soul travelling directly to meet its god. But if the delay is too long, the soul fades and becomes sundered.

Tolkien - Lord of the Rings.  The only difference from enjoying it as a teenager, is that I get a lot more from the poetry now.

So, that's the ones that instantly come to mind - what are yours?  And why?

I can see that character growth and a well developed background feature highly in why I like these books so much.

 

 

 

Comments

[kerk_hiraeth]

Citizen of the Galaxy is still one of my all-time favourite books; bought for 15p at a secondhand market stall at Newton Abbot market.

kerk

[matgb]

I've never owned a copy, the one I read was borrowed from Newton Abbot library when I was a kid...

Really need to get hold of it again

[watervole]

I'm on my second copy. wore out the first...

[elisi]

Pure comfort food, can re-read endlessly, but also interesting, well-written, well-plotted and with brilliant characters that I want to spend more time with:

Kim by Kipling.

All the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels by Dorothy Sayers.

Slightly more chewy & complex:

Dune by Frank Herbert.

ETA: Knew I was forgetting something!

The Plague and I by Betty MacDonald. About the writer's time spent in a tuberculosis sanatorium. One of the most delightful books in existence, I practically know it by heart.

[watervole]

Kim is one I've read several times, but not quite on the 'comfort' list. I love many things about it, though, mostly just the sense of the sheer vibrancy of India as they travel along the Great Road.

Lord Peter, I read many times, but find I no longer go back there (though I suspect I may read 'Murder Must Advertise' again one day)

'The Plague and I' appears to be out of print, but it does sound interesting.

[vivdunstan]

Here's a blog post discussing my top 10 favourite books:

https://vivsacademicblog.wordpress.com/2022/11/04/my-top-10-favourite-books/

[ranunculus]

I seldom re-read books, so I have essentially no list. However I have very, very fond memories of Secret Garden and also the Earthsea trilogy. I have read all of the books on your list and most of them were in some way formative for me.
As pure comfort adventure I enjoyed Anne McCaffery's Pern novels. I did try and go back and read one of them once. It was a mistake to do, they may have been a comfort back then, but they really don't hold up. Also tried reading Elisabeth Moon's first Paksenarion book. Loved it the first time around, not so much the second (on the other hand -magic horses!)
I think I want to re-read 10 Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow. The writing is so beautiful.

[msilverstar]

Pern did not age well at all, especially the adult ones (the YA ones are still nice). I remember how exciting it was to have a female protagonist when the first few came out.

[msilverstar]

Those are my favorite Heinleins too as the worldbuilding combines with clever plots and snarky dialog. Still so sad that everything after the first half of Stranger was didactic in a nasty way.

[watervole]

Yeah. Bit like McCaffery really. Heinlein too wrote best when there wasn't too much adult stuff. (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is about culture, love and families - and I still love it)

I remember reading the 'restored' version of 'Stranger' - ie. with all the bits the editor took out (more sex and clunky exposition). I'm on the side of the editor. The originally published version was better.

[kotturinn]

Another vote for Earthsea and Secret Garden.

Susan Cooper 'Dark is Rising' sequence. Rosemary Sutcliffe.

'The Voyages of the Limping Flamingo'. Charpoggy became a fixture in family terminology.

Hmmm, not sure what this says about off the top of my head lists!

[watervole]

The Voyages of the Limping Flamingo appears to be out of print.

'Dark is Rising' was a read once for me, possibly because I encountered it much later in life. But Rosemary Sutcliffe is on my 'really must get around to reading' list. A lot of my friends like her. Which of her books do you like the most?

[igenlode]

"Books that you have reread multiple times" is an interestingly objective way of gauging what one's 'favourite' books actually are (something I have always had enormous trouble in answering). Although in my case at least it is skewed by the distinction between books that I actually *own* and books that I have simply read and enjoyed greatly; availability has a great impact on rereading, and of course the more decades I have owned a book the more opportunities for reading it there have been, but there are very, very few books that I read and then enjoy so much that I actually go out and *buy* them, and I never, on principle, buy a book from new that I have not already read, so the contents of my shelves consist largely of books that I have inherited (and that were most of them acquired second-hand by their original owners) and/or books that I happened to pick up for a song at random somewhere and liked well enough to keep. There are vanishingly few that I actually sought out personally!

It's still very random, though. I know I have reread Charles Kingsley's "The Water Babies" two or three times (having been given a beautifully illustrated copy as a child), but I don't think I should ever have classified it as one of my all-time favourite books. Likewise "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo": I read them as a child (in incredibly battered 19th-century hardback from the family shelves), and have subsequently reread them several times and even seen multiple film adaptations, but I don't know that I think of them as emotional favourites -- it is certainly years since I read either.

Books that I have definitely read multiple times in the past: a lot of the Dorothy L. Sayers detective stories, Mary Stewart's thrillers and Arthurian novels, Guy Gavriel Kay's "Fionavar Tapestry" (which I include because it was one of the few books that I actually *did* read from the library and then purchase and then reread enough times to crease the spines despite all my care), multiple Agatha Christies despite the fact that I have difficulty remembering exactly which ones I have already read (not aided by the publishers' reissuing them under different titles!), a lot of the D.K. Brosters (though some are definitely more in the nature of completionist collector's items), the couple of Cherryhs that I actually own (not because I necessarily enjoyed "The Faded Sun" more than the Morgaine novels, but simply because I once picked up an omnibus volume of the former on holiday for 25p, whereas I haven't seen a copy of Morgaine since I had it out of the library forty years or so ago), likewise Stephen King, where I have reread the handful of volumes that I actually possess ("Duma Key", "IT", "Christine") more often then the multiple ones I have had from the library once each. Julian May's "The Many-Coloured Land" (though I'm not sure I necessarily *liked* it all that much), most of Georgette Heyer, C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels (I have read some of his other work, but it tends to be equally compelling but even more toe-curlingly sadistic towards the characters), and most of Terry Pratchett, though I started going off his newer books some time before he died.

Elizabeth Goudge I first encountered in the form of "The Little White Horse" and later went on to her adult novels. I haven't read Arthur Ransome in a long time but definitely reread him regularly growing up, along with Monica Edwards and Rosemary Sutcliff (and the Rev. Awdry!) Come to think of it I also read "The Colditz Story", "Reach for the Sky" and "The Dam Busters" quite a lot :-D It really is very skewed towards the books that I read more often in the days when I had a far smaller pool available...

[igenlode]

Nevil Shute, John Wyndham (mostly reread so often in their cheap 1960s bindings that they are falling apart now!), and some (they are very uneven) Daphne du Maurier...

[ranunculus]

I hadn't thought of Mary Stewart for a long time. Loved her books back when they came out. Liked the first couple of Cherryhs too, but failed to appreciate later volumes. Not sure how I missed Little White Horse, but I"m pretty sure I've never read it.

[watervole]

Arthur Ransome is a family tradition.

I read them fairly early on, as they were among the few fiction books that my dad had in the house. I read the entire set by filling in from the library.
My daughter fell in love with the series as a kid and she in turn infected my granddaughter. This summer, they will be on the Norfolk Broads again, visiting places mentioned in the books :)

My second child is called Henry. We wanted to involve the elder sibling in the choice of name. We floated all kinds of names, a few went onto the list, many were rejected. After a while, we spotted a consistent pattern. We compiled a list of all names mentioned in Rev Awdry books... Hence, Henry.

[watervole]

Memo to self. Find time to read more Hornblower...

[replyhazy]

I am a famous re-reader because I mainly read for escape and comfort, an often an old friend is just the ticket. I have a habit of re-reading something a LOT for a while, and then I have to set it aside, either for revisits later or (sometimes) no revisits ever again.

Katherine Kerr's Deverry series. Yes, all dozen books or so, though The Bristling Wood may be the best.

Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor. It's the world building and the huge variety of characters -- and the way Addison carefully lets the reader see more than the main character is seeing.

Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. Fairytale reset at a college, and it reminds me so sharply of my own naïve college days that I find it almost nostalgic.

Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, definitive urban fantasy set just northwest of me in Minnesota.

Anne Soffee's Snake Hips, about the fandom that is bellydancing in the USA. Her memoir but change some of the names and it's the same scene all over. Very, very funny.

Robert Van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries.

Melissa Scott's The Armor of Light and also her books set in Astreiant.

Persuasion; Bleak House; Our Mutual Friend; Count of Monte Cristo.

[msilverstar]

Tam Lin! Not my experience at all, even a little, and still fantastic. I was so sad when my daughter never resonated with it

[watervole]

I've just been reading about Tam Lin, it's been so long that I'd almost forgotten how the ballad went. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e196Jsd-oQ

[vera_j]

I liked this! From your list I know The Penric books - I have them in my Kindle. And Lord of the Rings, of course. I would have to think before listing my books for re-reading - they are so many! At the moment, I have just The Three od the Musketeers on my mind:-)

[watervole]

The Three Musketeers is very dependent on the translation. I now have a modern translation, and it reads so much better than the one I'd originally read.

[greenwoodside]

What a wonderful thread.

I've read and loved number of the books mentioned here, and also have added one to my wishlist.

Since my late teens, I've had a bit of a guilt complex about re-reading things – I feel I ought to be reading something new to me, on the 'so many books, so little time' principle, and because I don't read as much as I'd like to.

But (and this is a bit of a cheat) there were a couple of weeks during lockdown when my anxiety symptoms were getting worse to the extent that I couldn't sleep. So I played an episode of the BBC Radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings each night to help me relax. It was wonderful, though also sad since when I first listened as a young child in the early nineties, most of the cast were still with us. By 2021, only a few inc. Bill Nighy were left.

[igenlode]

Yes, the radio adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings" was brilliant (as was the incidental music!)
And of course proverbially the pictures are much better on the radio...

[matgb]

I'm also not a huge rereader. Was as a kid/teen, mostly due to lack of ability to buy more, but these days reading at all is effort.

Having said that, several Pratchetts get reread regularly, Soul Music, Hogfather and Going Postal the most recent, plus I reread Good Omens after watching the show--I never reread just before a show, too distracting, but after can be fun

After that I do love Earthsea, and I'm planning a complete Seanan Mcguire reread at some point starting with all the Incryptid books, just finished the most recent and they're always a good, fun easy read which matters a lot at the moment

[watervole]

I much preferred the TV series to the book with Good Omens - the plot was a lot clearer.

[eledonecirrhosa]

My witterings about my list got rather long, so I'll post it on my own journal. But these are the books:
The Silver Brumby by Elyne Mitchell.
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff.
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.
Strontium Dog: Portrait of A Mutant by Alan Grant, John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra. Okay this isn't a novel - it was a comic strip in 2000AD.
Pride of Chanur and sequels by C.J. Cherryh.
The first 2 trilogies in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series.
Storm Constantine's Wraeththu Mythos series.
The Kindly Ones by Melissa Scott.
And the Voskosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold.

[watervole]

This conversation has triggered me into yet another Vorkosigan re-read. Just finished 'Borders of Infinity' which is definitely one of favourites (The one with the spherical POW camp).

I'm also contemplating playing Barraryar in a Star Empire RPG we'll be doing later this year with some friends. It depends on how well it will fit into the setup, but the game is build around jump gates (which work exactly the same as wormholes in a tactical context).