vgriff

One of my reading goals this year is to reread some old favorites, so I was pretty stoked when I found out that this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic (from thatartsyreadergirl.com) is Books I Could Reread Forever. Because I’ve already got a list of those going! But it was also a good excuse to go and peruse my bookshelves, looking for my literary comfort food—those books I can pick up and read again and again, in whole or in part, and never, ever get tired of them. Some because they’re so meaningful to me or remind me of where and who I was when I first read them; some because they make me laugh; some because they’re just plain beautiful. I’ll let you guess which one is which—here is my list, in no specific order:

1. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. I might have mentioned this a hundred times already, but this is the book that made me want to be a writer back when I was thirteen years old, when I first read it. And since then I’ve read it so many times, I’ve lost count. It’s probably, for obvious reasons, the book that means the most to me in the world, which I guess is why I have so many copies of it.
2. Collected Stories by Tennessee Williams. I had such a thing for Tennessee Williams when I was in high school, and reading this book takes me right back to senior year, to cutting class to hang out in Mr. Buhtanic’s office—the head of the English department who turned me on to the wonders of Tennessee and other authors I probably shouldn’t have been reading. (I remember him recommending Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. but telling me not to let anyone know he told me about it. He was the best.)
3. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding. When this book came out I put off reading it for a long time because it was so popular, and I thought it was just more dumb chick lit. But when I finally picked it up, I was hooked because I was Bridget Jones. In my twenties I smoked too much and drank too much and often found myself getting involved with good-looking but highly inappropriate men. I was clumsy and awkward, always ready with the wrong thing to say. I’m older and married now, but I still relate to Bridget probably more than I should, and rereading this book always brings back some entertaining if not blush-worthy memories.
4. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I reread this one last year for the third or fourth time (listened to the audiobook, actually, and it made my best-of-the-year list) and was still incredibly impressed by it. The story is so immersive, so sweet and scary and so, so tragic all at the same time. Every time I read it’s like I’m getting to know Clare and Henry all over again, and their story fills me with a sense of wonder and longing and hope that it will work out for them, even though I know how it’s eventually going to end.
5. The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Another one I reread last year, this one for I believe the fifth time. At 524 pages, you’d think once or twice might be enough, but I feel like I could read this one every year and still enjoy it. Tartt is a queen of world-building, and her characters are insanely flawed but flawlessly executed; I love that all of them, even the ones you’re supposed to like, have something vile about them. No one is completely likable here, and I just love that.
6. The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. Particularly The Vampire Lestat (one of my personal classics). I was so obsessed with these books when I was fifteen-sixteen. I had never read anything like them: the florid language, the epic story lines, the beautiful but damned characters. The fact that Interview with the Vampire didn’t have a happy ending was a complete revelation to me the first time I read it; it seriously turned my literary world upside down. These books had such an influence on me, everything I wrote in my mid- to late teens sounded like Anne Rice (and I think sometimes, to some extent, it still does). I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Interview and loving every overdramatic minute of it.