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

[watervole]

thanks, I'll add the Lantern Bearers to my ever growing list of books to try!

[igenlode]

Bear in mind, though, that -- quite apart from the fact that one is written in the third person and the other, possibly uniquely among the author's works, in the first person -- "The Lantern Bearers" *is* a children's book in a way that "Sword at Sunset" isn't, tonally (like the gulf between Elizabeth Goudge's "The White Witch" and her "Linnets and Valerians"), so they don't really 'go together' as a series. I don't know what Sutcliff was intending when she set out to write "Sword at Sunset", but I don't think it was to write a sequel for "The Lantern Bearers".
(Probably to explore the Arthur legend as a whole, whereas "The Lantern Bearers" is a novel about the fall of Roman Britain, with the ongoing 'British resistance' more of a background thing to the protagonist's own personal story...)