In yesterday's Observer a number of authors wrote about the books they found themselves re-reading, with some of the reasons why. The books didn't have to be great literature, but if you took them off the shelf you couldn't help starting again at chapter 1. An itch that needs scratching, as it were.
Looking at my little list, I must admit that it's rather unliterary, perhaps others here might impress us more!
In no special order:-
Lewis Carroll -- Alice Through the Looking Glass - I first read this curled up in a rocking chair just like Alice, I was about 8 at the time.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings --The Yearling - I empathised with the lonely young Jodie in the Florida Everglades.
HG Wells -- All the early fiction up to Tono Bungay. including Mr Polly, and of course The Time Machine.
PG Wodehouse -- Joy in the Morning, or anything with Jeeves or Blandings Castle, not so taken with the other books.
AP Wavell -- Other Men's Flowers -- still one of the best poetry anthologies ever compiled.
Evelyn Waugh -- Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, --- most of the others, come to think of it.
Donald E Westlake -- The Dortmunder Novels -- Wonderfully funny crime capers with believable characters in absurd situations.
Raymond Chandler -- Still the best crime novelist.
Well, no Proust, no Tolstoy, no Martin Amis, is it too late ? ( I have read all of Dickens and Jane Austen, but don't revisit them often enough for it to qualify )
Over to you all.
Looking at my little list, I must admit that it's rather unliterary, perhaps others here might impress us more!
In no special order:-
Lewis Carroll -- Alice Through the Looking Glass - I first read this curled up in a rocking chair just like Alice, I was about 8 at the time.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings --The Yearling - I empathised with the lonely young Jodie in the Florida Everglades.
HG Wells -- All the early fiction up to Tono Bungay. including Mr Polly, and of course The Time Machine.
PG Wodehouse -- Joy in the Morning, or anything with Jeeves or Blandings Castle, not so taken with the other books.
AP Wavell -- Other Men's Flowers -- still one of the best poetry anthologies ever compiled.
Evelyn Waugh -- Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, --- most of the others, come to think of it.
Donald E Westlake -- The Dortmunder Novels -- Wonderfully funny crime capers with believable characters in absurd situations.
Raymond Chandler -- Still the best crime novelist.
Well, no Proust, no Tolstoy, no Martin Amis, is it too late ? ( I have read all of Dickens and Jane Austen, but don't revisit them often enough for it to qualify )
Over to you all.
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