Number of times you have read your favourite?

I was wondering how many times, anyone has read their most favourite classic? Each year, I enjoy reading Christmas Carol. I haven't missed many winters doing this, so mine adds up to (since I was 12) 34.

...Once? I can count on one hand the number of books I've ever reread. There's far too many others out there that I want to read to spend all my time just rereading others I've already experienced.

Well, I meant perhaps there might be at least just one favourite, that someone might love to reread again. I have many I want to read too, but Christmas Carol is certainly one I like to enjoy again, when this time of year comes round.

When I was younger I reread several favourites - Lord of the Rings, Watership Down, several Dutch young adult fiction books; as I grew older I realized that there is so much good classic literature out there that I don't have time for rereads. Then I read War and Peace, still my favourite book of all time. After finishing those 1200 pages, I realized that I couldn't start over. But as the years passed, I found myself longing for it; I read Anna Karenina, and other long classics, especially Russian literature, and I liked them; but I kept thinking about it. Then, one day, I decided to promise myself to reread War and Peace every ten years. It was a great sensation, looking forward to the moment when the first ten years had passed. I bought a new edition in the summer of the ninth year, just to have it around. I cheated by a few months (but what's a few months on 10 years?). I wasn't disappointed: I absolutely loved it, it was like seeing old friends again. At times I knew what was going to happen in the next chapter, and I was looking forward to it. Other parts of the novel I had completely forgotten. I didn't really remember a lot of details about Pierre's spiritual journey, for example, maybe because I was too young the first time I read the book. I also felt that my view on certain characters had changed. When I finished the final chapters (where Tolstoi starts lecturing us about history, society and man) it was like coming home from a great journey. I'm certain I will reread it again when another decade has passed.

Yes, I agree. There are so many wonderful classics, and they do feel just like old friends as they bring so many memories with them. I believe this is what books are all about, the enjoyment we can have in reading favourites and quite often, depending on it's genre, we can find many new things we might have missed, or not contemplated before. I enjoyed War and Peace, but have yet to read Anna Karenina.
But I thought it interesting to, that scientists believe that even though people are already familar with the stories or places of novels, it gives immense benefits for growth and self reflexivity, and offers many mental benefits.
I know I get a renewed appreciated when I do this, and, science aside, it's wonderful to inhabit another life and times through novels. In a world that often seems random, it's great to have a recourse to the world of books. Thank you for your reply.

I have an ever-growing collection of favorite books I re-read all the time, although not on a schedule so I can't count how many times I've revisited a book. Jane Eyre, Persuasion, Story of an African Farm, and Song of the Lark, are all books I come back to often. The Great Gatsby I've read at least a dozen times. Another Country, And Quiet Flows the Don, The Alexandrian Quartet I've re-read regularly since college.

The funny thing is, they are never quite the same books I picked up previously. Naturally. I am not quite the same person reading them. I think this is generally true of all really great literature. We never hear everything it has to say the first time we meet it.

When I was a kid I read every book in The Chronicles of Narnia at least twice: many 4 or 5 times. But like many of the posters above said, now that I'm grown up, I feel there are so many classics to read, I don't have time to reread any.

Sherlock Holmes is an exception. I've read every Holmes story at least twice, and some of them so many times I can almost recite the whole story from memory. It's my comfort reading. I'm guessing from your screen name, HolmesGirl221B, you are also a fan?

Very much so. I first read Hounds of the Baskervilles at fourteen years old, and loved reading all of the short stories and novels as I grew older. They have never lost their appeal to me as are wonderful, with ingenious plots and detail.

But I was wary of reading any pastiches, as I felt that a literary work based on another writer's creation, might lose the style and spirit of the original. But I recently bought some to read, and will no doubt be pleasantly surprised .

>8 HolmesGirl221b: Yeah, I haven't read any of the so-called Sherlock Holmes stories written by other authors. Oh, except for one called 'The Doctor's Case', written by Stephen King. It was awful.

I've re-read Jane Eyre and all of Jane Austen multiple times. I've read Bleak House and Little Dorrit each several times. I'm in the middle of re-reading Kate Chopin's The Awakening and about to re-read Anna Karenina. I learn so much more from a book the second (or more) time around. And if it's been many years (24 years, in the case of The Awakening) I'm reading it from a completely different perspective. My life and experiences have changed and different things become meaningful in the book. If you love re-reading, a great book to read is On Rereading by Patricia Meyer Spacks.

I know there are so many books to read, but re-reading is a joy in itself. Do you only listen to a favorite piece of music once? If you're like me, you've worn out that album/tape/CD/mp3 file after many, many playings (and you probably have that favorite in all 4 formats!). And what about best-loved movies? I could watch On The Waterfront over and over. I live in Chicago and every time I go to the Art Institute, I have to go visit my favorite Impressionists--they don't get old. Great art, music & literature bring back good and comforting feelings and memories, and new insights on each re-visit.

I re-read popular fiction favourites fairly often - things like P.G. Wodehouse, Barbara Pym, Kipling, John Buchan, Patrick O'Brian, or the Sherlock Holmes stories are usually what I reach for when I need a bit of comfort reading. Not so often children's books any more. As far as "serious literature" goes, I've probably read most of Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh and E.M. Forster five or six times, and I think I read A dance to the music of time and Alms for Oblivion four or five times, but otherwise there's not very much (discounting set texts for courses) that I've read more than twice.

A couple of books that I have read several times is Gone With the Wind and Roots. I do have a goal to re-read 13 favorites this year. A Few that stands out is The Great Gatsby, The House of Mirth, Grapes of Wrath, The Christmas Carol, Madame Bovary to name a few.

Completely true, kac522. Art in all it's forms reveal the otherwise hidden ideas and impulses of a society. There is a whole spectrum of emotions and ideas which do not get expressed by any other means than the arts.

We can identify with certain characters in a film or book because the artist or author connects to the most intimate part of our lives - our dreams, hopes and fears. I must read Anna Karenina, certainly before seeing the film. I will look for Patricia Meyer's book too. Thanks.

I've read Lord Jim about five times and Heart of Darkness seven or eight times.

The only book I've read more than once that sometimes lands in the category of classic is The Lord of the Rings. If that presents a miserable case for Tolkein-dislikers, maybe it will mollify you to know I was ages 10 and 14, lol.

I'm so painfully slow a reader, much as I'd like to revisit certain books (I think immediately of Moby Dick and War and Peace), in early middle age I'm already feeling the threat of mortality versus all of the books I've not read yet and wish to.

I'm with you Cecrow. I'm trying to get through the entire contents of the New Lifetime Reading Plan. Once.

One can understand, it seems to be taking me a lifetime.

Read multiple times:

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher by Tom Bethell
I Am The Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism by Charles Kesler
Alone by Richard Byrd
We Die Alone by David Howarth
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Why Read Moby-Dick by Nathaniel Philbrick
More Shapes Than One by Fred Chappell
The Road to Middle-Earth by Tom Shippey
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey
Conservatism: Dream and Reality by Robert Nisbet

Good list and some there I would like to read.

A few classics I've read more than once:

The Theban Plays by Oedipus Rex
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Prince by Machiavelli
Several Shakespeare plays
Paradise Lost by John Milton (once for a class)
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Tess of the Durbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and other Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (I taught it to an ESL class)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (I taught it to a high school English class)
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

My favourite has always been Oliver Twist, but I've just finished it for the second time. With all the 'further adventures of the Artful Dodger' books coming out, I thought it was a good time for it.

Classics I have read more than once:

Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Scaramouche, Captain Blood, and Bellarion by Rafael Sabatini

and a bit more modern / less 'serious':
many Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, and Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries!

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings I haven't read yet, I haven't seen the film yet, either ..! But they are on my 'to do' list.
Dorothy L. Sayer is someone who is only second to Agatha Christie with me.
Thank you for your reply.