I am the Kat that Walks By Itself

(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.