Coming Back For More of the Same

[kerravonsen]

I've been thinking, the past few days, what it is that makes a book worth reading twice. There are three types of books in the world: those worth reading twice, those worth reading once, and those not worth reading at all.

While most discussions about books tend to be trying to divide between those worth reading and those not worth reading, I'm wondering today what it is that distinguishes those worth reading once between those worth reading over and over.

A book that's worth reading once can have good ideas and good plot, but good ideas can only be novel once, and a good plot, while that can still be part of the appeal, it isn't sufficient to be coming back for, because once you've read it once, you already know what happened. What I'm wondering today is, what is it about a book that makes it worth reading again even though you already know what's happened in it, even though you already know what nifty ideas it has.

Here's a few: style, snappy dialogue, a love of words, scenes you want to savour. For example, I absolutely adore the proposal scene in Lois McMaster Bujold's "A Civil Campaign", and also the Nikki-refuses-to-come scene just before that. It's just so delicious I want to read it again and again. But what makes a scene delicious may vary from person to person.

Ideas?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_finn_/]

How about those with the plots so detailed, that you never actually understand completely the motivations etc, the first time through, and only after a few readings do you understand more?

Otherwise there are those that portray a world so interesting, that reading it again means enjoying that world all over again... I often find myself re-reading a lot of L E Modesitt Jr's books (although not the soprano sorceress series... that one was a bit odd) The Recluse series is always a good read, especially the books focusing on the White orders.

[kerravonsen]

Oddly enough, I didn't like L. E. Modesitt Jr's books... neither the Order/Chaos ones nor the Soprano Sorceress ones, and the main reason why I didn't, was because I actually disliked the worldbuilding in them. I disliked the Soprano Sorceress because we get a world in which the beauty of music has been replaced by doggerel, and that's too bleak a concept for me to enjoy. And I didn't like the Order/Chaos world because I didn't like its metaphysics; I don't believe Order and Chaos are like that.

I also suspect that I'm enough of a "character junkie" that interesting worldbuilding isn't enough; there must be likeable characters populating said world. I mean, for example, Greg Egan's "Permutation City" was what I call an "idea" book -- it had some really cool ideas in it. But I couldn't care less about the characters, so it's a worth-reading-once sort of book, for me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_finn_/]

Ah yes, the metaphysics of the Recluse world. I think I accepted it because I read it more as 'There are two powers in the world, one called Chaos, the other Order' rather than applying any previous definition of it all.

I kind of liked it due to the fact that it switched the usual Good/Evil thing around at times, Black was Good, but not necessarily 'good' and the same with White. It was interesting to see the propaganda on both sides in regards to who was the good guys and who was the bad guys. That world is a lot more belivable to me due to the political machinations than any other 'Race X is evil evil evil, while Race Y is goody good' style story, everyone has an agenda, which does not necessarily make them evil per se, just having different goals than the 'main character'. It also is based on a world that is technologically regressed rather than just unevolved, so the histories and use of technology is interesting.

I guess what gives them readability for me, is that every single book ties in with each other in some way or another, and reading them again lets me locate those links and think "Oh wow, this situation is written from the other side in that other book" or "This is how that action was marked down as history from that previous book", it's a series of well mapped out concepts, even though it spans centuries of time.

Have you tried his 'Ghost' series? Starting with 'Of Tangible Ghosts' it's an alternate history style book series, which is quite well written.

If you're for character driven, Spider Robinson has some fantastic books, if you can wrap your mind around his writing style...Wonderfully re-readable

[kerravonsen]

'Ghost' series by whom?

Didn't Spider Robinson set all these stories in a bar or something?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_finn_/]

By L E Modesitt Jr =) He's also written quite a few scifi that aren't too bad. His Ecolitan series is almost purely a political space opera style on an environmental scale.

And yes, Spider Robinson's main series is set in a bar (with various facelifts as time goes by) that started with the name Callahan's crosstime saloon and bar. He's written other once-off books that are quite good to re-read.

[kerravonsen]

On an environmental scale? What do do you mean?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_finn_/]

lets say ecological, rather than environmental... It's been a while since I read them, but I recall somewhat that the main character defeats the bad Empire by threatening to destroy the ecology of their home planet. It's an application of a long-term solution to problems rather than a short term 'kill the head badguys' style of story. LE Modesitt, in his SF series really considers consequences, and applies tactics forthwith.

then there's Jane Austen...

[reveilles.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, it's mainly Pride & Prejudice that I enjoy reading over and over. It's the archaic English prose, which must be additionally parsed and translated, and which sounds so lovely. It's the I'm-still-laughing-at-this character interactions. It's the wonderful pacing and the thoroughly realistic-sounding plot. I love the intelligence, the humor, the comfortable dresses, the enigmatic Mr. Darcy (who you like more every time you read it, because you see some new nuance), and the fact that book is not a long tome. For a book of that era, it's quite lively and very concise. There's not a single wasted word or scene in the whole book, no polemicizing. You get all the good stuff about that era and none of the Dickens- or Hugo-style "I'm getting paid by the word so I'm going to keep filling pages with them" prose.

Love it love it love it!

And aside from the Bible, which is a different sort of book altogether, I can't really think of that many books that I want to read again someday. "Redeeming Love," Francine Rivers. "The Sparrow" and "Children of God", Mary Doria Russell. "Ender's Game", Orson Scott Card.

I recently re-read the Lioness Rampant series, by Tamora Pierce. I remember loving it when I was 13, but it didn't quite live up to expectations at 25. :)

Beside, with so many UNREAD books still in the world, and limited reading time, I'd really rather read something new! :)

Re: then there's Jane Austen...

[kerravonsen]

Yes, there's always Pride & Predjudice. (happy sigh)

Never heard of "Redeeming Love", but your other three choices give me the impression you really like angst! I mean "The Sparrow" and "Children of God" were really good, and they're on my shelf, but I don't see me re-reading them very often, because they were so harrowing. And I prefer "Speaker For the Dead" over "Ender's Game" because it has a more hopeful feeling.

I recently re-read the Lioness Rampant series, by Tamora Pierce. I remember loving it when I was 13, but it didn't quite live up to expectations at 25. :)

I read those much later than 13, and I didn't like them; too pagan.

Beside, with so many UNREAD books still in the world, and limited reading time, I'd really rather read something new!

With so many books in the world, I know I can't read but a drop in the ocean of them, so I'd rather read something I know I enjoy -- at least some of the time.

[several-bees.livejournal.com]

(Wandering by via communicator)

There are very few books that I'll read once that I won't willingly read again at some point. This includes dictionaries and reference books and collections of essays. It's partly because I'm a fairly fussy reader first time round - I probably finish fewer than half the books I start, if I've got something else to replace them with when I give up - but also partly because the characteristics that appeal to me on a first reading are characteristics that remain appealing after that: likeable tone or characters; jokes; ideas and facts that are initially slightly outside my area of competence; a writing style I enjoy.

Tom Stoppard generally scores particularly high for rereadability, combining most of the above with a density sufficient that I notice something new at least the first couple of times I reread. Other reread books, and the age I was when I first read them, and approximations of the number of times I reread them, because I'm trying to avoid being productive:

5: The Book of Brownies, Enid Blyton. Reread maybe 5 times. There was a section where the brownies were trapped in the Land of the Very Clever People, and had to talk in rhyme all the time; that particular section I reread about twice as often.

8: The Prisoner of Zenda. Reread probably 9 or 10 times. Liked the characters, liked the whole swashbuckling-adventure thing, cried at the end the first several times.

11: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, subsequently reread far more often than I'm willing to admit, particularly over the next few years.

13: A dictionary of classical allusions. Reread 6 or 7 times. I'm not sure why; the scraps of compelling stories, I suppose, and the way I remembered more each time, so all the stories became more tightly meshed together.

14: The Walled Orchard. Finished it at three one morning, started rereading it when I woke up four hours later, then another several times within the next year. The decline of democratic Athens, told from the point of view of a desperately likeable and embittered rival of Aristophanes.

15: Wodehouse's Psmith books. several times each, because Psmith was so very very lovely.

16: Swordspoint, maybe half a dozen times, because I'd open it to look at first page's lovely wintry town, and then realise that oh, I'd just read it again.

17: Assorted Saki short stories, 3 or 4 times (I'd just gained access to the university library, so had more books, and thus reread the ones I liked less often).

19: Metamagical Themas; some chapters only once, others 4 or 5 times. Never liked Godel, Escher, Bach, so was surprised by how much I enjoyed this.

Haven't reread much over the last few years, mostly because the time available for doing so has declined somewhat, but it's still quite rare that I'll find a book worth finishing and not have reread it within a year or eighteen months.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_finn_/]

19: Metamagical Themas; some chapters only once, others 4 or 5 times. Never liked Godel, Escher, Bach, so was surprised by how much I enjoyed this.

Hrm, what's Metamagical Themas like? I've read (scatteredly mind you) through GEB, and found it often strangely compelling at times, yet a huge struggle to hack through. The story, while interesting at first, got quite irritating, yet the concepts it portrayed were interesting enough to keep interest. It has the qualities of a 'interesting' reference textbook, where everything builds on information previously interred in the pages, (ie reading it backwards is difficult) but explains concepts that are interesting enough to try and work through, in an entertaining manner...

[several-bees.livejournal.com]

Metamagical Themas is (mostly) a collection of fairly long essays that Hofstadter originally wrote for Scientific American, and I think because of that lacks many of the characteristics I found annoying about Godel, Escher, Bach: less of the saying-the-same-thing-several-different-ways, less look-at-me-I'm-endearing stuff like the Achilles/tortoise dialogues in GEB. He deals with a lot of different subjects, so there'll probably be some sections that don't appeal (I skipped a chapter or two on Rubik's cubes, for example), but there's also almost bound to be a lot that does, and although they're all tied together to some extent (there's additional material written specifically for the book on most of the subjects covered), you don't have to read the boring sections to understand the rest. Definitely worth a look.

[kerravonsen]

Sounds interesting! I admit I only got about a third of the way through GEB, even with more than one attempt. I liked the Achilles/tortoise dialogues, though.