I re-read everything. I mean, I re-read Agatha Christie novels, and I have a very good memory and can almost always remember who the murderer was.
Trinity by Leon Uris – again and again. The last time my husband read it aloud to me. Ah, such luxury!
I reread a lot. Usually during weeks at work when I’m so exhausted, I can’t really concentrate on something new and challenging.
But, Lightnin’, like Skald said, there’s these places called libraries where you can read 'most anything you like for free.
You gotta give the book back after though.
Seriously, to echo Steve Wright, the words might not change but the reader does. New readings bring new insignts except for the most shallow stuff.
Boromir’s elegy is beautiful. Wanna join my harem? I have nine husbands so far. 
I probably re-read
Robin McKinley
Jacqueline Carey
Audrey Niffenegger
Nigel Slater
Elizabeth David
Chaim Potok
Annie Dillard
L. M. Montgomery
Ursula K. Le Guin
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Diana Gabaldon
and
Tad Williams the most often. I have Tolkien and most of C. S. Lewis printed invisibly on the backs of my eyelids now, and don’t need to re-read them often.
Well, sure I’ll join your harem, if you’re okay with me murdering your other husbands. (I am after all a member of the evil commuinty.)
Every few years I reread To Kill A Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby because one or the other is the greatest work of fiction ever written.
It’s Gatsby. Though Mockingbird is within a few hundredths of a point.
I’ll get back after the next reading. I recently read part of the first page of To Kill A Mockingbird to some people at work. They all went out and got a copy.
I have reread too many novels to remember. Books can be like friends that live far away. Every once in awhile you reconnect and enjoy for different reasons.
Hello, my name is Mgcklmoon and I am addicted to books. Reading a book once only is very rare for me. Books have been a large part of my world since I was a child.
Books are kind of like potential lovers. Sometimes it can be a quick and dirty affair, happening once and then never wishing to see them again and other times it can be like a long term love affair. You come back to them over and over because they are entrancing and exciting, or comfortable and inviting.
My husband and I both reread books. We listen to songs of books we read, we sing songs of books have read.
We enjoy our escapes from reality and walk through those doors often
Hello–I’m Mgcklmoon’s husband, and we do indeed reread books.
I have read the Lord of the Rings maybe twenty times since my first exposure to it in the 8th grade many many moons ago, and I’ve read the Silmarillion maybe ten times. There is an incredible depth to these books and to the moral and ethical questions that underlie the story which you simply don’t get from just a few readings.
Another set of books frequently visited by me are Susan Cooper’s wonderful The Dark Is Rising sequence, which I usually return to around Christmas about every other year.
Some books get reread because they are great fun reads: Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels, Steven Brust’s Jhereg novels, and James P. Hogan’s Giants books come to mind.
Some books you find yourself returning to with active dread (the Thomas Covenant trilogies come to mind here), but you can’t help yourself–you pick them up again anyway, even as you curse yourself for doing so.
Books are magical and in a real way they open doors to other worlds.
When people tell me they don’t like to read, I always look at them in amazement and pity, and hope for them that one day they too will discover the only real magic left to a world grown deadly cold, where people are disposable commodities and your only value is the money someone else can make from you.
But then I look at my lovely wife, and I remember there is yet beauty in the world. And she smiles–and we both turn back to our books, and keep reading.
–James
I have read “Alice In Wonderland” and “Alice Through The Looking Glass” at least once a year for more than fifty years and they have never failed to transport me to another, a more magical, world. (And unlike most movie critics who, I suspect, have never read the books or seen the movie, I think Walt Disney’s version of the two Alice books is a very faithful adaptation and well worth the viewing.)
I’m a serial re-reader. I have a bookshelf full of books that I read over and over again. These include:
- Almost all of Stephen King’s books (except for the really, really bad ones)
- River God and Warlock by Wilbur Smith
- Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
- The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
- Leading With My Chin by Jay Leno (Excellent inspirational book for those of us trying to make it in the entertainment industry)
- Shogun by James Clavell
- All of Dave Barry’s books, both humour and novel
- All of Roald Dahl’s books.
And I’d be rereading the Harry Potter series if ALL of my Harry Potter books hadn’t mysteriously disappeared.
I re-read books constantly.
It’s like visiting with an old friend.
Additionally, I find that sometimes I missed something on the first reading, or, I interpret it differently, or I can relate better because of more life experience.
If I didn’t reread books, I be the only guy on skid row living in a box with book shelves.
I warn you, Skald, at least four of them are hard to kill. I seem to attract martial artists.
Surely you didn’t think I’d be assassinating them MYSELF. That’s why I employ ASSASSINS. Or occasionally polar bears.
Another re-reader here. I re-read “To Kill a Mockingbird” probably once a year. I can also pick up anything by Raymond Chandler whenever I’m not reading anything else. Robert B Parker, too. I’m currently re-reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle Triology, now that it’s in paperback, and I don’t have to borrow the hardbacks from the Library. Yes, I bought books specifically to re-read them. Bruce Sterling gets re-read a lot, too. Any Cyberpunk, really.
Of course you buy books to reread them…what OTHER reason would there be? 
Hardbacks, in particularl, should only be bought if you’ve already read & loved them.
Um…unless I publish my novel. That you should all buy IMMEDIATELY. In multiple copies. And persuade your book clubs to undertake.
But I’m special.