I like Thurber, too. I have a collection of some of his New Yorker pieces (My Life and Welcome To It) that I reread from time to time. His description of living in France etc makes me laugh every time.
I reread Georgette Heyer quite a bit–not all, but 5-6 or her stories. Wonderful escapes–I call them romance novels for people who don’t like romance novels (me).
Ruth Rendell gets reread a lot. I reread all of Josephine Tey every year and at least one Jane Austen (P & P is my fav).
I’ll start on Elizabeth George and burn right through until her last book, which I cannot read (it’s unreadable).
I just reread LOTR, and last spring I reread HP in time for the last book to come out.
My favorite re-reads are To Kill a Mockingbird, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Stand, Lonesome Dove, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Gone with the Wind, Anne of Green Gables (though not for the last 10 years or so–after introducting it to my daughter and she’s taken up the habit), and Addie Pray, the book from which the movie Paper Moon was taken. Each has its very different charms, but it’s the combination of the familiar and new insights which brings me back to each of them year after year.
Mainly, though, I get stuck without a book from the library and I have copies of all of these handy!
Frank Herbert created a syndrome to which I sometimes succumb. While racing my way through the series the first time I jumbled up my books and lost the place marker. Now, whenever I cannot tell which book in a series I am reading, I invoke the Dune Syndrome Cut-off Valve and move to another book. This is why I only read the first few Potters.
