Thursday, April 3, 2014

Rereading: So Nice I Read It Twice

There are two types of book lovers:  those that reread, and those that don't.  Count me in as an enthusiastic rereader.   Rereading to me is comfort food, like buttered biscuits or Motown music or an afternoon nap.  

My Kindle has only enhanced my love of rereads.  Now I can carry a little portable library with my favorite books.  This is a booklover's dream.

Here is a list of books that I have reread a number of times.  Vintage children's books are my first reading love, and that is reflected in this list.

Children's Books

Nancy Drew (I grew up with the matte cover books with yellow spines)
the Ginnie and Geneva series - Catherine Woolley
The Luckiest Girl - Beverly Cleary
the Betsy-Tacy series - Maud Hart Lovelace (my all-time favorite series)
the Little House books - Laura Ingalls Wilder
the All of a Kind Family series - Sydney Taylor
the Keeping Day series - Norma Johnston
Caddie Woodlawn - Carol Ryrie Brink

The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare
A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett
the Five Little Peppers books - Margaret Sidney
Gone Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away - Elizabeth Enright
the Betsy and Billy series - Carolyn Haywood
children's mysteries by Georgia author Wylly Folk St. John
Beverly Cleary's books - especially Ramona the Pest and Beezus and Ramona
the Narnia books - C.S. Lewis
the Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Cheaper by the Dozen - Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Indian Captive - Lois Lenski
The Witch Family - Eleanor Estes
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth - E.L.
Konigsburg
The Borrowers - Mary Norton
Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren
The Crystal Tree - Jennie Lindquist
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Velvet Room - Zilpha Keatley Snyder


Teen Books

the Franzons series by Thyra Ferre Bjorn
Red Sky at Morning - Richard Bradford
The Cheerleader - Ruth Doan MacDougall
Seventeenth Summer - Maureen Daly
Meet Me in St. Louis - Sally Benson

Seventeen - Booth Tarkington
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith 

Books for Grown-Ups
 

A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier
Diana - R. F Delderfield
Jubilee Trail and Calico Palace - Gwen Bristow
The Winthrop Woman - Anya Seton (I love many of her books)
Portrait of Jennie - Robert Nathan
the Jalna series - Mazo de la Roche (my favorite adult series - highly recommended for anyone who loves family sagas)

Gospel - Wilton Barnhardt
Possession - A.S. Byatt
Time and Again and From Time to Time - Jack Finney
The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler (probably my most re-read book)
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
The Best of Everything - Rona Jaffe
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (my favorite classic novel)
 

I would love to hear from you.  Are you a rereader?  What books do you enjoy reading again (and again)?