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So, what books do people here think are worth reading 100 times?
by weavie 12y ago
So, what books do people here think are worth reading 100 times?
- bmelton 12y agoI've read "The Princess Bride" about as many times as I've seen the movie, which, while I haven't kept a close count, is a lot. I don't know that it's something I'd recommend to everyone, but the book has its own sort of whimsy that is distinct from the movie, though both are enjoyable. Kerouac's "On the Road" is another that I read often. Somewhere in the once-a-year phase. "Slaughterhouse Five" is another I read with some regularity, and I find it different every time I read it, as I have a new set of personal beliefs with which to apply to it approximately every time.
- Tenhundfeld 12y agoWRT "The Princess Bride", I've read it a few times as well. My perspective is slightly different, reading it after watching the movie many times. I agree that it "has its own sort of whimsy", especially in the context or meta-story, but when I first read it, I was struck by how similar the humor is to the movie. If memory serves me, almost all of the memorable lines and jokes from the movie come word-for-word from the book. I'd assumed some of the jokes, e.g., those by Miracle Max (Billy Crystal) or Fezzik (Andre the Giant), were adapted to suit the actors. But they weren't. I don't know if that speaks to the quality of the writing or the casting or what.
- ashark 12y agoPRINCESS BRIDE (THE BOOK) SPOILERS The great thing about it, IMO, is that the novel's not about the story from the movie, really, but nevertheless you can do to it what the protagonist is doing to the fictional Princess Bride book and tell it to your kids as if it were the movie, by skipping the "boring parts", i.e. the important parts if you're reading it as an adult. It's a great and funny adventure story for kids, wrapped in a melancholy meditation on relationships with children and recapturing lost time and experiences for adults[1], which is (rightly) absent from the movie. The story itself tells you how to adapt it for reading to kids. It's its own instruction manual. I absolutely love the notion of a kid picking up the book as an adult, expecting the story their parents read to them, and being surprised by the discovery of the real story, hidden from them in exactly the same way the bits about economics and such were from the protagonist. It's simply brilliant, and a scenario I fully intend to set up for my kids :-) [1] This is from memory—I read it several years ago, and if I revisit it I'm sure my take would have more nuance now, and would find this to be an embarrassing misreading or oversimplification.
- wernercd 12y agoEnder's Game. I haven't read it recently (I have audio-booked it though), but I've probably read it ~25 times. (Often to refresh as new books come out, still often to just refresh). It amazes me how, even in a book as simple, it still speaks to me.
- rokhayakebe 12y agoBook worth opening everyday for the rest of one's life: Discourses (Epictetus) Books worth reading 10 times: Social Contract (Rousseau), Republic (of Plato), Apology (Socrates), As a Man Think, Inquiry into the Wealth of Nation (if you can muster the energy) Books worth reading 3 times: Lucretius (on the nature of things) And pretty much most books in the Great Books of the Western World list
- qachaos 12y agoamerican gods
- cableshaft 12y agoIlluminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. I've reread it at least five times now, and it's so dense with historical and literary references and parodies interweaved into its plot that I notice new things every time I reread it that I previously thought were things the author made up, were actually subtle (or not so subtle) references. Plus the plot bounces around constantly, sometimes mid sentence, between characters and times and realities, that you get a better feel for the plot when you reread it anyway.
- lozf 12y agoIndeed do many things come to pass.
- mswift42 12y agoPride & Prejudice.
- jerven 12y agoI also love this novel! Read it a lot of times probably more than 20 but not yet close to 100.
- krelian 12y agoI haven't reached 100 but If ever will it will probably be one of these two: One hundred years of solitude Blood Meridian
- pagnotta 12y agoOne hundred years of solitude is the only one I ever re-read, first the original Spanish, then in Portuguese, then in English.
- laichzeit0 12y agoAnything by Schoppenhauer.
- aidenn0 12y agoFrom the original article, notice that the advocate of reading books 100 times has personal reasons for reading both books as much as he did. In one case it was to achieve a superior level of familiarity for the text, in the other it was because he derived an unusual amount of comfort from it.
- kirse 12y agoThe Bible, worth reading daily.
- tomcam 12y agoReading it 100 times deeply informed many of the greatest minds of the age, and naturally created an educated citizenry for generations.