and again…
may be over a period of one year … ( Bible excluded )
I read sherlock holmes series at may parents’ place ( they have a huge collection of books), and I do read someof those stories every visit …Plus some novels in my native language… ( It is sheer magnetism of the prose in those books, which makes me go for them 
)
How about you ?? what makes you read them again??
Gone With The Wind
Jane Eyre
The Haunting of Hill House
Watership Down
Various Stephen King books
Anything I enjoyed once I’ll enjoy again, but these are the main ones that bring me back.
Oh, goodness…most of them! It seems like I rarely get captivated by a new book these days, so my old friends are trotted out a lot. There are two I make an *effort *to read yearly: The Mists of Avalon and *The Seventh Telling *. I guess those are sort of my Bible - they remind me of my spiritual truths, although I don’t practice the precise religion mentioned in either of them. But I like the annual inspiration and reminder of what I think about the world. I’m on my fifth year of The Seventh Telling; I eagerly look forward to my seventh…I sense it will be significant.
Other books that are just comfort food for my brain are Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series and Lloyd Alexander’s Prydian Chronicals. Mercedes Lackey, Isaac Asimov, Jennifer Roberson and Charles DeLint’s assorted stuff get reread probably once a year or two, as well. Not always the same volumes, but often when I start reading one, I’ll then go through the whole series again.
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, for the ruminations on vocation and relationships, and the witty dialogue. And the characters.
The Deptford Trilogy (Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders), by Robertson Davies, for the prose, the snark, and the characters.
Traveling Mercies and/or Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, for the sympathetic evocation and depiction of emotional states.
Nothing yearly. But of everything I own, I’d say on average I’ve read 80% of everything at least twice, and 50% at least 3 times. That takes a bit of doing given that my walls are all bookshelves. 
Music on the other hand, there’s songs I’ve heard upwards of 500 times if not a 1000 times or more, I’d be certain.
Gone With the Wind - Because it’s like being there through the Civil War and Reconstruction and, well – Rhett Butler!
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - The best Heinlein ever
Time Enough for Love - waiting for Lazarus to die 
Glory Road - reminds me of my youth
Malevil - I love end of the world books
Most of the Dragonriders of Pern series - The only books that can almost make me cry
The Martian Chronicles - no explanation needed
Stainless Steel Rat books - because they make me laugh out loud
Weaveworld - because it’s impossible for something to be that beautiful and that scary at the same time
I hope you don’t read Sherlock Holmes for the magnetism of the prose. (But I do re-read them from time to time.)
One book (novella) I’ve re-read a lot is Tonio Kroeger (Thomas Mann), both in German and in English. Otherwise, I feel there are too many good unread books to re-read the ones you’ve read so much.
[QUOTE=guizot]
I hope you don’t read Sherlock Holmes for the magnetism of the prose. (But I do re-read them from time to time.)
reading holmes is a sure way of time travel into 19th century london… and the language is hmm…
The Heinlein juveniles. I read them first when I was about 8-9 and I reread them every now and then for nostalgia…my son has started reading them, too, which is cool.
Also, I find myself picking up SM Stirling’s Island in the Sea of Time trilogy again when I can’t find anything new to read.
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
All the Sherlock Holmes books and stories (I have BOTH annotated editions, besides the clasic Doubleday omnibus)
All my Dave Barry Books
Bored of the Rings
All the James Lileks books
Expanded Universe by Heinlein
Science Made Stupid and CVLTVRE Made Stupid by Tom weller
C.S. Forester’s Horation Hornblower novels
Paradox Press’ “Big Book of Whatever” Series
Larry Gonick’s books, especially his “History of the Universe” and related books
Stuff (fiction) I’ve read more than twice:
[ul]
[li]Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man[/li][li]Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow (finally re-reading *V. *for the third time now)[/li][li]Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita[/li][li]Nabokov’s Pale Fire[/li][li]Tristram Shandy[/li][li]Chandler’s The High Window[/li][li]Mark Harris’s Henry Wiggen baseball novels, The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly[/li][li]Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me[/li][li]Most of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories/novels, Young Men in Spats, most of the Blandings stuff[/li][li]Tom Sharpe’s Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure[/li][li]Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall[/li][li]Donald Harington’s The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks and Let Us Build Us a City: Eleven Lost Towns (the latter being nominally non-fiction, but really belongs here more than in the non-fiction group)[/li][/ul]
Non-fiction:
[ul]
[li]Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea[/li][li]Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue[/li][li]Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces[/li][li]John Thorn and Pete Palmer’s The Hidden Game of Baseball[/li][li]Bill James’ The Politics of Glory (aka Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame)[/li][/ul]
I still reread my Nancy Drew books.
And Stephen King stuff now and then.
Oh, and Danielle Steel.
And James Patterson.
For some reason I have the feeling most of you are pointing at me and laughing…
Hey, I admitted to not only reading, but re-reading, Mercedes Lackey AND Jennifer Roberson on a website only slightly less geeky than HanSoloIsGod.loser! I’m astonished there are no pitchforks in sight. Yet.
Haven’t re-read anything in a while, but for a few years, I would go back to DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, ATLAS SHRUGGED, THE STAND, C.S. Lewis’ THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, Taylor Caldwell’s DEAR AND GLORIOUS PHYSICIAN and BRIGHT FLOWS THE RIVER and Walker Percy’s LOVE IN THE RUINS.
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. So very rich, yet in the “plain style”. My wife and I still debate who REALLY killed Boy Stanton. The other two in the trilogy I read from time to time.
*Star Kings * books and *Cugel’s Saga * by Jack Vance. These are books I can grab for a plane flight or a trip to the doctors office. I know they will be good and I even have a good feel for how long they will last.
Candide - Voltaire - Short, funny, slightly bitter with a sweet after taste.
Based on the others here, I need to break out by Heinlein again. Once upon a time I grazed on those.
No mention of my faves?
Too easy, but I reread **Moby Dick ** at least once every two years, and **War and Peace ** has more hidden in it on every reading.
My light entertainment reading tends towards crap, and I cannot imagine ever wanting to reread a Douglas Preston novel…
Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion.
Waking the Moon, by Elizabeth Hand.
Discworld.
The Cat Who Walked Through Walls.
Stranger in a Strange Land.
And a dozen others which will come to me after I post this.
I re-read almost everything I like now and again, but the books that I re-read most consistently are L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series (only up to 5) and the Blue Castle. I get something emotionally fulfilling out of reading them.
I’ve got the complete Sherlock Holmes. I’ll often grab it if I get out of bed in the middle of the night and I’m unable to sleep.