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Feb. 18th, 2016 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressA few days ago, I reread Elizabeth Enright's Spiderweb for Two (a charming children's novel set just during/after WWII). A few days before that, I reread Jean Merrill's The Pushcart War.
(My aside for The Pushcart War is going to be a little longer, because I truly think it's one of the most unique and marvelous books in the world, and highly recommend it to everyone over the age of about eight. It's a charming story regardless of anything else, but like Animal Farm, reads like a brilliant and biting satire that I'm just not *quite* savvy enough to get. I certainly think it succeeds at its stated mission of explaining why wars start, little or big.)
Somewhere in the last few weeks --on the way down to Maryland, I think-- I reread the back two thirds of Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword1. And all this has me thinking about the books that we reread over and over again. All three of those books are ones I've read in the last five years, in some cases several times.
The Pushcart War is singularly brilliant (as mentioned above), but the other two come more from a place of comfort than anywhere else. Also comfortable is Lackey's Silver Gryphon and Oathbreakers2. David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy is comfortable but a genuinely charming love story3. Louis Sacher's Holes is maybe the best book to ever win the Newbery. The Pirate's Mixed Up Voyage, by Margaret Mahy, remains the novel most likely to be named if I am pressed to give my favourite book. And let's not forget SpaceAnJL's The Paladin Protocol, which is a 90,000 word Big Bang Theory fanfic and I've reread it probably twenty times by now, no lie.
I read fast, and I read for escapism more than anything else. Oh sure, I'll slog through the greats of science fiction and fantasy when pestered enough (I did finally read Dune, after all, and every once in awhile I pick up another Heinlein) but often, if I have enough leisure time to be reading, I want something that I know will make me happy. These old favourites have that power over me, and I feel very kindly towards them for it.
(That being said, I'm almost always willing to engage in acts of Seanan, because even though not all her books are happy (*laughs hysterically*), none of her characters are ever going to be raped, and that promise is worth its fucking weight in *gold*. Do you know how much simpler choosing new books would be if I always knew that? If I never had to worry that the next turn of the page is gonna involve someone I've grown to love being violently assaulted by a trauma that throws me out of the book and into my own head? It would make reading adult fiction a lot fucking simpler. There's a reason I often stick to YA.)
So when given the choice to read something new --even something good, that I think I'll like-- and reread something I solidly know, I will often choose the old, just for that revival of comfort.
What about you? What books do you reread over and over? It needen't be as often as once a year (gods, I haven't counted, but I've probably read Holes on average once every eight months since 2012), but what books spring back into your hands on the regular?
~Sor
MOOP!
1: By the Sword is my favourite Valdemar/Velgarth book, especially the latter two thirds --I probably only read the first "book" only every 3rd or 4th reading.
2: I don't think I've reread the Black or White Gryphon books since high school, and possibly I've never reread them since my initial read way back in 8th or 9th grade. But the Silver Gryphon is excellent and I adore it and reread it probably at least once a year.
Oathbreakers is my second favourite Lackey book, and I think I own three separate copies (in various states of trade paperback disrepair). It's a SUPER DEPRESSING book to choose as my favourite --the driving plot involves horrific violence against a woman. But moirail pairs are my absolute jam, and if Tarma and Kethry don't count, I don't know who would.
3: Although with time, I have grown to be kinda sad and weirded out by a couple bits about Infinite Darlene, who is otherwise one of my favourite characters from anything, ever.
(My aside for The Pushcart War is going to be a little longer, because I truly think it's one of the most unique and marvelous books in the world, and highly recommend it to everyone over the age of about eight. It's a charming story regardless of anything else, but like Animal Farm, reads like a brilliant and biting satire that I'm just not *quite* savvy enough to get. I certainly think it succeeds at its stated mission of explaining why wars start, little or big.)
Somewhere in the last few weeks --on the way down to Maryland, I think-- I reread the back two thirds of Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword1. And all this has me thinking about the books that we reread over and over again. All three of those books are ones I've read in the last five years, in some cases several times.
The Pushcart War is singularly brilliant (as mentioned above), but the other two come more from a place of comfort than anywhere else. Also comfortable is Lackey's Silver Gryphon and Oathbreakers2. David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy is comfortable but a genuinely charming love story3. Louis Sacher's Holes is maybe the best book to ever win the Newbery. The Pirate's Mixed Up Voyage, by Margaret Mahy, remains the novel most likely to be named if I am pressed to give my favourite book. And let's not forget SpaceAnJL's The Paladin Protocol, which is a 90,000 word Big Bang Theory fanfic and I've reread it probably twenty times by now, no lie.
I read fast, and I read for escapism more than anything else. Oh sure, I'll slog through the greats of science fiction and fantasy when pestered enough (I did finally read Dune, after all, and every once in awhile I pick up another Heinlein) but often, if I have enough leisure time to be reading, I want something that I know will make me happy. These old favourites have that power over me, and I feel very kindly towards them for it.
(That being said, I'm almost always willing to engage in acts of Seanan, because even though not all her books are happy (*laughs hysterically*), none of her characters are ever going to be raped, and that promise is worth its fucking weight in *gold*. Do you know how much simpler choosing new books would be if I always knew that? If I never had to worry that the next turn of the page is gonna involve someone I've grown to love being violently assaulted by a trauma that throws me out of the book and into my own head? It would make reading adult fiction a lot fucking simpler. There's a reason I often stick to YA.)
So when given the choice to read something new --even something good, that I think I'll like-- and reread something I solidly know, I will often choose the old, just for that revival of comfort.
What about you? What books do you reread over and over? It needen't be as often as once a year (gods, I haven't counted, but I've probably read Holes on average once every eight months since 2012), but what books spring back into your hands on the regular?
~Sor
MOOP!
1: By the Sword is my favourite Valdemar/Velgarth book, especially the latter two thirds --I probably only read the first "book" only every 3rd or 4th reading.
2: I don't think I've reread the Black or White Gryphon books since high school, and possibly I've never reread them since my initial read way back in 8th or 9th grade. But the Silver Gryphon is excellent and I adore it and reread it probably at least once a year.
Oathbreakers is my second favourite Lackey book, and I think I own three separate copies (in various states of trade paperback disrepair). It's a SUPER DEPRESSING book to choose as my favourite --the driving plot involves horrific violence against a woman. But moirail pairs are my absolute jam, and if Tarma and Kethry don't count, I don't know who would.
3: Although with time, I have grown to be kinda sad and weirded out by a couple bits about Infinite Darlene, who is otherwise one of my favourite characters from anything, ever.
no subject
on 2016-02-18 10:58 pm (UTC)THIS THIS THIS.
On the bright side, two factors have made my new-books much more likely to fit this criterion:
1) A finely-tuned filter for The Kind Of Thing I Like, so that I'm far less likely to stumble into something that doesn't work.
2) A willingness to stop when a book is Not Doing It For Me.
What books do you reread over and over?
Growing Up Weightless and The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford, because Mike *got* heartbreaking loneliness in a way that nobody else has. (You, I think, would really like Last Hot Time. That or you wouldn't see the point. Equally possible!) The Dragon Waiting, too, though that's more of a commitment.
I've reread Walter Jon Williams's Metropolitan (and the sequel City on Fire) once every year or two since I first picked it up. It's secondary-world contemporary-like fantasy with cities and poverty and power and revolution and very real yet still larger-than-life characters. It amazes me.
Jo Walton's Among Others is the best possible novel about growing up reading SF/F. It's early days yet but I have a strong sense that it's going to be one I go back to a lot.
And I dig up the link to This kid I once knew (short perfect Calvin & Hobbes fanfic) every so often, because, well, perfect.
(Holes is next on my list of Books What I Ought To Read Seeing As How I Own Them And Have For Years.)
no subject
on 2016-02-20 05:15 am (UTC)I have re-read Contact, and probably will do so several more times. It's a fantastic book. And I can re-read Ray Bradbury's short stories over and over again.