Are There Any Books You've Read 3 Or More Times? (10/15/23)

[Marc]

Which books, if any, have you read 3 or more times? Are there books you expect/hope to reread multiple times if you haven't already?

[Stacia]

Other than kids' books:
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dracula
The Great Gatsby
The Story of My Teeth

(I don't often reread books but I would probably be willing to read the books on my favorites shelf multiple times.)

[Bill]

Joy Williams, Honored Guest

The first time I finished the collection, I decided to immediately start from the beginning again and reread it all the way through. I've read it more than once since. I've never done this with any other book.

[Robert]

Brave New World
Trainspotting
The Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4
The God of Small Things
Lord of the Flies
The Wasp Factory

[Greg]

Bill wrote: "Joy Williams, Honored Guest

The first time I finished the collection, I decided to immediately start from the beginning again and reread it all the way through. I've read it more tha..."

I was lucky enough to be a student at the University of Arizona when she was teaching there.

I haven't read Honored Guest yet, but I liked Escapes and Taking Care back when I read them. She's an interesting writer and just interesting in general. Her writing can be pretty dark at times (I remember "The Case Against Babies" in Granta), but it's often great stuff - I still remember details from some of the stories from her collections years after I read them, which is pretty rare for me with collections of stories.

[Greg]

I've read quite a few books three times. Books I enjoy a lot, I pretty much always read at least twice.

A few I've read 3+ times:

A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
Geography III (Elizabeth Bishop)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney)
The Book of Strange New Things (Michel Faber)
Death and the King's Horseman (Wole Soyinka)
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)

[Hugh]

Apart from what I read as a small child, the only one was Cry, the Beloved Country, and that was a set book at school.

[Kathleen]

Thank you for this question, Marc. I hadn't realized how few books I've read more than twice, and they are only books I originally read as a child. So not including strictly children's books, these are the only ones I came up with:

A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury
The Sword in the Stone T.H. White
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories William Saroyan

Clearly I have some re-reading to do!

[Bill]

Greg wrote: "I was lucky enough to be a student at the University of Arizona when she was teaching there."

Obviously I'm envious. Was this a writing class? How was Joy Williams as a teacher? I saw her read once (to promote The Visiting Privilege), she was very charming and interesting.

[Whitney]

These four are not coincidentally all stream of consciousness,

Absalom, Absalom!
The Sound and the Fury
As I Lay Dying
Beloved

Also my earliest loves (aside from Children's books, which others have mentioned don't really count).
Nine Princes in Amber (and the rest of the original Amber series)
Pretty much every short story collection by Harlan Ellison, as well as several Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson collections, which were worn to onion skin from repeated reading,

Edited to add Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle after rereading Stacia's post.

[Bretnie]

I'm not a big re-reader. I think the only one I've read more than twice is Catch-22 (which is as good the third time as it is the first).

[Whitney]

How could I forget the annual reread of A Night in the Lonesome October, one chapter each day in October corresponding to chapters of the book. Although, no doing it this year, I can't find my copy with the Gahan WIlson illustrations, and I have a fear that it may have accidentally ended up in the recycling bin.

[Lark]

I have a goodreads shelf labeled "books I've read at least three times" and it's stupidly long, like 95 books or something, and some of these I've read easily dozens of times, classics like Austen and Hardy but also some classic-schlocky science fiction, because I adore these books, like Conjure Wife by Fritz Lieber and More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon and Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. And then there are a lot of 21st century books too. I guess I'm a re-reader.

[Lark]

Bretnie wrote: "I'm not a big re-reader. I think the only one I've read more than twice is Catch-22 (which is as good the third time as it is the first)."

That's funny, Bretnie, because I couldn't read Catch-22 again, my delight in its particular flavor was all used up by the first read. The same thing happens sometimes when I go back to something I remember loving and now it just isn't communicating to me at all. The World According to Garp was like that. I'd forgotten how mean it was, or not noticed it the first time around.

[Greg]

Bill wrote: "Obviously I'm envious. Was this a writing class? How was Joy Williams as a teacher? I saw..."

No, I was not lucky enough to have her as an instructor, but I remember her around, and she was both charming and highly intelligent as you say . . . and a bit quirky as you might expect.

I was very young (entered university at 17), and as it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was pre-Internet and the flow of information was not the same as it is now. I was clueless and didn't fully understand at the time how lucky I was!

My main degree program was Electrical Engineering of all things, but I took many literature and creative writing classes out of personal interest, enough to declare a minor. And some of the writers I came across at the university, I had no idea of their stature when I met them. Another example: I had no idea who Linda Hogan was when I met her, such a wonderfully kind and thoughtful woman! The Poetry Center there was a special place.

[Michael]

Ulysses
Dune
Light in August
Brothers Karamazov
Love in the Time of Cholera
As I Lay Dying
100 Years of Solitude
Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Gravity’s Rainbow
Beloved
De Côté de Chez Swann
Invisible Cities
La Vie Devant Soi
The Sun Also Rises

Maybe more, but those for me are all essential for my mental health.

[Lesley]

Just two
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

[Bryn]

3 because I love them:
A Wrinkle in Time
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Jane Eyre

1 because I couldn’t figure out what was so great about it:
The Great Gatsby

[Greg]

Lesley wrote: "Just two
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer"

I liked Klara and the Sun Lesley and will certainly read it again at some point. Pretty sure I'll have read everything by Ishiguro 3+ times eventually.

[Marc]

I am also not much of a re-reader. I think this is it for me in terms of 3 times or more (I think only two of these have been read more than 3 times):
- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
- Candide by Voltaire (ridiculously short and easy to re-read)
- If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

I think my son made me read Rattlebang: The Parable of the Good Samaritan to him 872 times. To get through it, I used to do all these snide, exaggerated renditions for the characters' speech.

Lark, I love that you have a shelf already that answers this question!
:-)

[Ellen]

Good Lists and great re-reading reminders. For me, Walden Pond - I have read that one probably a dozen times. I have also read Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, and The Odyssey more than three times. For Whom the Bell Tolls and Love in the Time of Cholera 3 times.

[Ellen]

Jane Eyre (5 or 6 times)
The Brothers Karamazov
Middlemarch
David Copperfield


On the very light end of things, I've read most of Agatha Christie several times as well as A Wrinkle in Time

[LindaJ^]

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I've read it at least once in print and probably three times in audio, and seen the movie. It is the only book I've read at least 3 times.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke

There's a a few more I have read twice. But I guess I don't re-read that much.

[Jenna]

Lots of things I’ve read twice (especially with a new translation), but three or more, probably only the Hobbit.

[Jennifer]

Mine are :

The Book of Morgaine
Exile's Gate
Moon of Three Rings

I can't tell you how many times I have read them.

[Bretnie]

Lark wrote: "That's funny, Bretnie, because I couldn't read Catch-22 again, my delight in its particular flavor was all used up by the first read. The same thing happens sometimes when I go back to something I remember loving and now it just isn't communicating to me at all."

That is funny! That's usually my fear in re-reading things that I love - that whatever made me love them so much the first time will fade or change and I want to cling to the "first time feeling."

But I also do love re-reading a complex book to catch things that I missed the first time.

[Maggie]

The first one that comes to mind is A Canticle for Leibowitz. I have it on the table now to reread with my daughter's book club. Each time I see something new.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Jenna wrote: "Lots of things I’ve read twice (especially with a new translation), but three or more, probably only the Hobbit."

Oh, good call. I think I've read The Hobbit three times also.

[Tracy]

There are many, since I used to be a big rereader, but not so much anymore. Kids books, especially, were read a lot- some until the pages were falling out. These are some I’ve read as an adult that I can think of right now:

The Great Gatsby
The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings
Wuthering Heights
The Color Purple
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
and yearly:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
A Christmas Carol

[Greg]

Tracy wrote: "There are many, since I used to be a big rereader, but not so much anymore. Kids books, especially, were read a lot- some until the pages were falling out. These are some I’ve read as an adult that..."

I read A Christmas Carol almost yearly as well Tracy

[Lesley]

Greg wrote: "I liked Klara and the Sun Lesley and will certainly read it again at some point. Pretty sure I'll have read everything by Ishiguro 3+ times eventually.”

I don’t reread many books although I, increasingly, see the merit of doing so.
I am a fan of Ishiguro’s books. The only one that hasn’t resonated with me is The Buried Giant. That’s because of the clothes it comes dressed in & my aversion to chivalric romance, Middle English prose & fantasy in general. I should give it another try.
Around the time I read Klara, I read another two AI based novels - Frankissstein: A Love Story & Machines like Me. Klara was by far & away the most human to me. Although ‘human’ isn’t the right word. Often when we say human we mean an idealised human reflecting the best in humanity. This doesn’t show the true duality of human nature. It would be truly human of machines to want to take over, which is perhaps why we fear they may try.

[Sam]

I am a constant rereader. Though I use that term, I do not look at the situation as a reread exactly. Like one can't step into the same river twice, it will not be the same person reading the same book; the person changes and the world that shapes the person changes. Two of my recent rereads help define that. I read Rabbit, Run by John Updike as a teen in the sixties and perceived the novel partially as a comment on the rise of the baby boomers with clear distinctions from the previous generation. Reading it now, I can see what inspired that interpretation but it is far from what all the book is about. The second read is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne which I had read as an early example of postmodernism, and in that case what I remembered was certain similarities to postmodern techniques but little of the novel beyond that. It is also a far different read now when I have far more supportive reading behind me. But in both cases more than fifty years have passed since the first read. I am also reading A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story by Nathan Thrall. Can one imagine the different reading experience that is now as opposed to prior to October seventh?

Though there are many three or more timers, Shakespeare would probably have the most three or more reads with almost twenty plays read at least 3 time. Homer would have the 2 books most read overall.

[Greg]

Sam wrote: "I am a constant rereader. Though I use that term, I do not look at the situation as a reread exactly. Like one can't step into the same river twice, it will not be the same person reading the same ..."

I feel the same Sam. When I read the same book 10 years later, it can be a whole different experience. Almost always, if I liked a book before, I will still like it . . . but if the work has any depth, I will find something different there that makes it partly new.

I feel like there are certain books that require reading through at least a few times to get the full experience. The first time through is just an acquaintance.

[Greg]

Lesley wrote: "The only one that hasn’t resonated with me is The Buried Giant. That’s because of the clothes it comes dressed in & my aversion to chivalric romance, Middle English prose & fantasy in general. I should give it another try.
Around the time I read Klara, I read another two AI based novels - Frankissstein: A Love Story & Machines like Me. Klara was by far & away the most human to me. Although ‘human’ isn’t the right word. Often when we say human we mean an idealised human reflecting the best in humanity. This doesn’t show the true duality of human nature. It would be truly human of machines to want to take over, which is perhaps why we fear they may try."

Love this comment Lesley! I was very moved by Klara's predicament, and she does feel in some ways like the best of what it means to be human, the best of what we are capable. I cried at the end, such a lovely book!

But I do think maybe The Buried Giant is worth another try sometime? I have several friends that are fans of Ishiguro that don't care for it at all, but I loved it myself. Compared to the rest of his work, it's so different in approach, functioning largely as an allegory or fable. That is not everyone's cup of tea.

<<< Warning - mild spoilers for The Buried Giant below >>>

But for me, the central symbol . . . that horrible, secret buried thing! It struck me as such a beautiful and powerfully compact expresssion of something so vitally important to what it means to be human . . . about forgiveness and forgetting, and the vast difference between those things . . . on a personal level, how forgetting can make any true reconciliation impossible because there is no way to forgive what you are trying not to know. But even more so, on a larger social level, the pscyhological and social cost of forgetting those things we collectively don't want to remember.

Burying something so you don't see it doesn't make it disappear; it is still there, under the surface, doing its terrible work. The bones of what we bury vibrate with power! And yet . . . in cases of historical conflict where the memories themselves stoke resentments, the temptation is strong. I get why we just want it all to stop; sometimes it seems like true reconciliation is impossible; so we just want to force it all to stop by suppressing the reality we hold in our hands. It's a profoundly human impulse, and it kind of works, but with a terrible cost. On a personal level, people do the same thing, with similar results on a smaller scale that can feel just as devastating.

I thought it was a gorgeous fable, and so moving as well.

[Luke]

At this point, LotR, maybe 'Pride & Prejudice' and a couple other ones that have been read for both school and pleasure. I'll have to give myself another couple of decades before the rereading picture fleshes itself out properly.

[Bretnie]

Greg, I would love to re-read The Buried Giant, knowing the ending. I loved it also, and I think the second reading would be a different experience than the first.

[Hugh]

I think I might like The Buried Giant more on a reread. First time round I was probably too distracted by not being able to make any sense of the historical setting.