Those three are fun, but a bit dated now, sadly. Unless there is a new one, he said hopefully?
Yes, those are entertaining and re-readable.
Nice, and I have re-read them, but hardly on a yearly basis. When he sells out to the dark side, Butcher lost me.
I use to save those for extended details, along with Shogun, and “All Creatures”. I could always find them in used bookstores, and would buy, read, and then gift or donate. You can only carry so many books with you. And yeah, that was mostly before e-readers.
The first book was fun, but the next two were- to me- boring and too preachy. Way more preachy than Narnia, IMHO.
Same here, although I think I only was able to read the first two of the Aubrey/Maturin books. The Hornblower books, however, I find eminently re-readable.
Hornblower is more heroic- and his faults more relatable, and O’Brien gets too deep or just deep enough (depending on your viewpoint) on sailing trivia. If tiny details of what sail is what, etc bore you, Aubrey/Maturin is not the series for you. But I did enjoy them the first three times I read them- but the 4th time was just too much.
It wasn’t the details of sailing and nautical engineering that bored me – Og knows, Hornblower has plenty of that, too – it was the vague indications of what was going on. O’Brian expects you to figure out from too few indications in many cases, whereas Forester will gladly explain things (especially Hornblower’s internal ruminations) at great length.
The best advice I’ve heard about the sailing minutiae in O’Brian was that, once he gets in the weeds with scandalizing the foresheets and coming around three points off the wind and such, is to simply substitute “nautical stuff happens” and move on. If it’s truly necessary to the story - like when the Surprise
is caught off a lee shore - O’Brian will explain it to the reader, usually by way of Aubrey or Bonden explaining it to Stephen.
I’ve reread the 2001 series (2001 and sequels) a few times. I reread the Lensmen books 50 years after first reading them once (but not the Skylark books.) I’ve reread a few Discworld books, and would reread more if I had the time. But mostly I have way too many books and magazines on my shelves crying “read me” to reread as many as I’d like.
Good lord, where do you find the time, I’d consider it an accomplishment to get through it once.
My entries are series from back in the days when books weren’t 500+ pages. (also from back when I had more time and less distractions)
The Amber series by Roger Zelazny (at least the first series I didn’t like the second one as much.)
The True Game series by Sheri. S. Tepper
I’ve also read Alice and Wonderland and through the looking glass innumerable times.
Asimov’s Foundation series
LOTR
The Potterverse
and I am in the middle of rereading Patricia Briggs’s Werewolf series. They are better that way since as I originally read them a year apart I never twigged to how each one refers to something from the preceding one.
And I just (today) bought the latest of Martin Walker’s Bruno series. I think I will enjoy rereading them.
Hey, every series began as one book, then a trilogy…
I discovered the first three Pern books, then a second trilogy appeared! Some call it Young Adult, and it’s delightful. I tried a couple more, but they felt repetitive, so I quit.
So go ahead and try a “first book” and see… or A, B, and C of the Alphabet books. You CAN stop then… though you’ll find yourself missing Kinsey, and Henry’s bakery.
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Do I need to repeat my rule for this crowd? (It popped out as I listened to a friend lament having to finish a series that he had grown disdainful of, but he “HAD” to finish them all):
“Life is too short to finish a book (or series) that you’re not wild about!”
