books you could re-read a thousand times

I'm really in love with witty and elegant phrasing.

These are the books I can't help diving into whenever I pick them up:

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
Greenwillow by B. J. Chute
Penrod Jashber by Booth Tarkington
The Melting of Molly by Maria Thompson Daviess
Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Clementina by A. E. W. Mason

I'm mostly a classic re-reader; and while I always hate giving obvious answers, for about ten years straight, I re-read the six main Jane Austen novels each year. Certain Dickens and Trollope novels stay in rotation, too.

The first book I remember obsessing over was The Magic Pudding. :) My most recent outbreak of compulsive re-reading was George Meredith's The Egoist.

I'm interested in your mention of A. E. W. Mason, who is a writer I haven't yet managed to get to.

Here's what I thought of off the top of my head:

Shogun by James Clavell
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie King
The Pride of Chanur by CJ Cherryh (and then I have to read the others, too!)
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
The Full Cup by Peter S Ruckman
Conagher by Louis L'Amour

I know there are others....

I can't believe I've passed half a century and haven't read Anne of Green Gables yet; I need to remedy that. Oh, 2wonderY, The Enchanted April! It vies with the 6 hour Pride and Prejudice for my favorite movie; I watch both of them every year. Confession, though - only last year did I finally read those two books! My two most-often re-read books are Ester Ried, Asleep and Awake and Four Girls at Chautauqua, both by Pansy and both about spiritual awakening.

Certainly, I'm fond of The Enchanted April as well, but for me in this genre of reading, the following are high on my list:

The Making of a Marchioness as well as The Shuttle, both by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary by Ruby Ferguson is a tear-jerker of the very best kind.
An Old Fashioned Girl as well as Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day which I loved before anyone even thought of making it a movie.

I've read Pollyanna and Anne of Green Gables, too.

And I have a secret collection of Grace Livingston Hill that is dragged out in times of stress and adult angst.

All of this is most comforting reading. And I'm so looking forward to more.

I just read Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins last year, and really liked it, but haven't yet gotten to the second one in the series, Rose in Bloom. This is an interesting discussion, and prompted me to add a stack of these books to my wishlist!

(5) jillmwo wrote "All of this is most comforting reading. And I'm so looking forward to more."

That's a good way of explaining how some of us feel about certain books...sort of like "comfort food", things that make us feel better when we're unhappy or stressed.

"Comfort books" sounds like a new category...

I love Eight Cousins so much because I always wanted an Uncle Alec for myself. He's a perfect blend of indulging with pretties and disciplining with expectations, and no nonsense about how a woman should value herself.

I thought of another 'comfort' book/books, all by Anne McCaffrey:

Dragonsong
Dragonsinger
Dragondrums

I love the characters in these stories about the Harper Hall, of Menolly and Piemur etc.

5> Jillmwo, I can relate to your secret Grace Livingston Hill collection , since I have a similar set of Emilie Loring books. Elizabeth Cadell is also a favorite. As for other older "comfort" books I could reread for ever, they include Jane Eyre, The Harvester and Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter, Pride and Prejudice, Madam Will You Talk by Mary Stewart and Random Harvest by James Hilton. I have lots of newer re-reads as well, of course -- this list doesn't touch the fantasy or children's books!

I find it amusing how often negative reviews push a book to my wishlist. The Harvester is one of Gene Stratton-Porter's that I haven't read, so I took your link to its page, where the first review said that it was "packed with drivel about Love and Keeping a Clean Body" and "not a book for anyone with an iota of feminist sensibility". And I thought, hmmm, that sounds like a really good book. Something about life in earlier times, even as seen through rose colored glasses, becomes a comfort read for me, when shared through the pen of a good writer. I've heard people say "a simpler time", though I remember my grandparents working hard "from can't see to can't see", and heard stories of their forbears, so it seems a harder time in many ways. Perhaps a simpler time, though, with its absence of "feminist sensibility" and other modern angst.

Elizabeth Cadell's The Corner Shop hopped on to my wishlist as well. Loved the tag - "gentle".

The Corner Shop is one of my all-time favourite books! I hope you can find a copy.

Found some more:

Ross Poldark
Demelza
Jeremy Poldark
Warleggan

etc.

The Anne of Green Gables books. The Betsy Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. The Beany Malone books by Lenora Mattingly Weber. Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion by Jane Austen. (I like Sense and sensibility and Emma almost as well.) Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley. It's all good.

Also The Scarlet Pimpernel When we were young, I managed to trick my sister into reading it. I told her that I would read the first chapter of her current favorite book, Francis Drake, master mariner if she'd read the first chapter of the SP. I didn't finish Francis, but she went on to read all the Pimpernel books. I've read them as well, but the first one is the most magic.

(15) Uh oh, another one to add to the TBR list...

I'm a bit late to the party, hope it's OK to leave my two cents worth here.

Anything Can Happen by George Papashvily
The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald
The series of Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
All of the Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout
The Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L. Sayers
LotR by J.R.R.Tolkien
Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters

Not sure all of these were published before the 1950s, but they are the books on my shelves which I HAVE read again and again and will continue to do so.

I'd missed this thread the first time, so thanks for waking it up, MrsLee!

Jane Eyre, the Woodbury Pony Club books by Josephine Pullein-Thompson, the Chalet School series (all 58 books of it!) and Little women are all perennial favourites of mine. I'd also have to second fuzzi's love for the Harper Hall books of Anne McCaffrey although officially they are more recent than the remit of this group. Although they are recent discoveries for me, I'm with MrsLee in loving Betty MacDonald's memoirs, especially Onions in the stew. And Gerald Durrell's My family and other animals is always good in times of stress too, especially during a dark cold winter.

I could go on, but will stop here before I become boring!

No! Not boring at all!

Since @Bjace mentioned The Scarlet Pimpernel, I have read and thoroughly enjoyed it!

Probably everything by Elizabeth Goudge is something I will re-read, but especially The Scent of Water. The Master of Hestviken by Sigrid Undset, The Door in the Grimming by Paula Grogger are books I've read more than once and loved more with each reading.

Ah. The Scarlet Pimpernel!

Most of Rumer Godden's books, but especially The river, In this house of Brede and Thursday's children also have to go on my list.

I haven't read Thursday's Children. Requesting.

Just remembered: Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather, mainly because of the apothecarist.

The ones I return to most often are Mary Stewart's Merlin series (my favourite is the first The Crystal Cave), some Heyer favourites and Tim by Colleen McCullough.

Oh, I forgot about The Scent of Water! I read it over and over several decades ago. Loved it! Thanks for the memory, SaintSunniva.

>20 SaintSunniva:, 25

And great reviews. Another on order for me.

I started reading The Scent of Water last evening, and I'M IN LOVE!!

With the characters, the countryside, the mood, the writing! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

Also reading A Thatched Roof and enjoying it almost as much. His relationship with the Bristol glass is excellent!

>27 2wonderY: You're welcome! A Thatched Roof is new to me. When was it published?

Ruth, how does The Scent of Water compare with other books?

Of the classics, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Something about this story just pushes all my buttons. If I could only keep one book it would be this one. Probably.

Of more contemporary books -

In Viriconium by M John Harrison. A work of fantasy but none of that tired swords and sandals stuff though there are, on occasion, knives in the dark. There are also wellington boots, egg foo yung, peeling stucco, crumbling villas. Viriconium is hauntingly familiar, but at the same time completely alien; on sober reflection I know I really wouldn't want to go there but still it pulls me so that I have to keep going back.

Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. Not so much Titus Alone, the third in the trilogy. A tour de force of the imagination and writing like warm treacle.

20,000 Streets Under the Sky and Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton. London between the wars. Pubs and streets and people in them.
Both of these are kind of depressing but his characters have got under my skin so that I have to keep rereading them in the hope that maybe this time things will work out for them.

>29 fuzzi:
Well, the first word that came into my mind was Voluptuous to describe the sensual memories and experience of the cottage and grounds. And then we start meeting the characters and Goudge seems able to show us their innermost beauty in just a few sentences. It's impossible to dislike even the least likable townsfolk, as there is always a sadness behind their inabilities.

>30 PhilJackson: Phil, "writing like warm treacle" made me sit up and notice. Nice!

Having the internet so convenient to me four days a week, I find I’ve gotten out of the habit of cracking open my basic reference books. This long weekend, (weekends, I have to go borrow someone’s wi-fi, usually the library’s) though, I pulled out my Webster’s Book of Synonyms to re-discover the differences between ‘sensual’ and ‘sensuous.’
Both sensuous and sensual can imply reference to the sense organs and then come very close to sensory in meaning, but more typically both apply to things of the senses as opposed to things of the spirit or intellect. In this use sensuous is more likely to imply gratification of the senses for the sake of the aesthetic pleasure or the delight in beauty of color, sound or form that is induced; while sensual tends to imply the gratification of the senses or the indulgence of the appetites as an end in itself (lust, gluttony.)
I correct my review to use of the word sensuous.

Same goes for Beverley Nichols with A Thatched Roof, written in the 1930s. He is a delightful sybarite and I would have loved to be his friend.

>32 2wonderY: When I was a kid there was a guy named Shirley who worked at the Penney's gas station. Somehow, this is the first I've heard of Beverley being a man's name!

How about George Beverly Shea?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dk_syXee_cw&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Ddk_syXee...

:)

33> My great-great-grandmother was sent to stay with her great uncle Bev after her parents died. Her census entry at the time said "just staying here". Methinks the child did NOT like being so far from home (home was San Francisco, Uncle Bev lived in Pennsylvania). From everything I've heard, Uncle Bev was a delightful fellow.

Many names we now consider common names for girls started out as surnames and then were later given names for boys. Madison, anyone? Wait, don't ALL of you raise your hand :-).

8> Uncle Alec is awesome. Great description of the particulars.

I regularly re-read:
- Many of Georgette Heyer's romances. (NOT Cousin Kate ).
- Many of the My Friend series series by Jane Duncan. Most often, I re-read My Friend Muriel and My Friends George and Tom.
- Mrs. Tim Carries On, Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, well, and the other two in the series, too.
- Miss Buncle and Miss Buncle Married. Well, and many other DES titles.
- Another fan of The Corner Shop here. Of Elizabeth Cadell, the other I most often re-read is Shadows on the Water. The heroine of the romance is a middle aged grandmother! This appealed to me even when I was in my 20s.
- I've only read The Making of a Marchioness once (quite recently), but I can totally see re-reading it.
- I re-read Anne's House of Dreams and Rilla of Ingleside most often of the Anne of Green Gables series.
- Recent to me children's books I re-read are Theater Shoes, Dancing Shoes and Ballet Shoes.
- I also regularly re-read the Melendy quartet.
- Rosy is My Relative (fiction) and My Family and Other Animals are two of Gerald Durrell's that I re-read regularly.

Each one, I know the plot, I remember the dialogue word for word. Many of them, I do at least a mental bounce when a part I particular enjoy comes up. Happy sigh.

There are several people close to me in RL who don't "get" re-reading at all. Thank goodness for LT and for a precious few folks I am close to in RL.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith; Sally's Family by Gwendoline Courtney; The Marlows and the Traitor by Antonia Forest; Miss Buncle's Book and The Blue Sapphire by D.E. Stevenson, and so many others...

>17 MrsLee:
Late to the party? Not possible, as we are holding an everlasting celebration.

Pass the chips, please.

I have some dip called Silly Dilly. Heavy on the dill and garlic.

Great! I was hoping you would. That stuff doesn't last around my house.

I'll bring Diamond nut chips........so good!

Silly Dilly is a terrific name for a dip.

Woodbrook, for starters... And, off the top of my head, for out of print, anything by Louis Tracy and Samuel Hopkins Adams