Top Baker’s Half-Dozen Most Re-Read Stories

I could be thinking of “Most re-read titles ever,” in which case I would probably be thinking of the Vorkosigan series or maybe Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series or I’m not sure what.

But what I have in mind is actually: The titles I’ve re-read the most in the past three years or so, because it occurred to me that I can absolutely pick those out of the herd, since I’ve been keeping track of my reading for that long. It turns out that, though I’ve re-read a lot of books, some titles REALLY leap out of the herd. Here they are:

1. The Goblin Emperor by “Katherine Addison”. First published in spring of last year; I’ve read it, it turns out, no fewer than four times already.

2. The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells. I’ve read it four times in three years.

3. The Fall of Ile-Rien by Martha Wells again. I’ve read the whole trilogy straight through three times in three years.

4. The Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells yet again. I’ve read it three times in three years.

5. The Raksura trilogy by, yes, Martha Wells. I’ve read the whole trilogy straight through three times in three years and I’ve re-read The Siren Depths an extra time.

6. The Touchstone trilogy by Andrea K. Höst. I’ve read it three times in three years, and I recently realized that I would really like to read it again now, except I don’t have time. It is quite likely I will read it in November, which is the earliest I expect to have a significant break from my own writing. The whole enormous TBR pile can wait if I turn out to really want to read that.

7. The Medair duology by Andrea K. Höst, which I’ve read three times in three years.

Pretty repetitious list, isn’t it? I think this gets into another type of consideration:

Which stories are just as good on a second reading? Which seem even better when re-read than they were the first time?

For me, all of these books are at least as good on the second read and maybe even more enjoyable than they were the first time through. I think this is for me likely to be the case if I was tense about the resolution the first time through and can relax on the second reading; or if I read the book rather fast the first time through and can enjoy the deep worldbuilding more on the second reading; or if there was a shocking plot twist that took me by surprise the first time through and I’m enjoying watching the author set it up on the second reading.

Also, the main characters have to . . . have to . . . be pleasant to spend time with. This doesn’t mean *nice.* Tremaine in the Ile-Rien trilogy is not *nice.* But I love spending time in her head.