Tim Ware on AtD

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>What, exactly would motivate an "again and again" reading?

In a word: pleasure! In Pynchon's case, the sheer pleasure of the prose is 
enough motivation for me to read and reread his novels ad infinitum. In the 
case of GR, the urge to reread it once a year or so is almost physical.

>And how many of us have a list of books that we'd want to read "again
>and again?"

Well, as the many answers probably made clear: most of us. My best reads are 
usually rereads, and after having a daughter a couple of years back, I find 
that most of my increaingly precious reading time is devoted to rereading 
novels such as these:

V. (6 times)
Lot 49 (9 times)
GR (9 times)
Vineland (7 times)
Mason & Dixon (5 times)

But also (off the top of my head):

The Great Gatsby (6 times)
Lolita (5 times)
(next to Pynchon's novels my two favourite books)

Pale Fire (3 times)
Infinite Jest (3 times)
Crime and Punishment (4 times)
The Idiot (3 times)
The Wind-Up-Bird Chronicle (3 times)
The Trial (3 times)
Journey to the End of the Night (3 times)
Heart of Darkness (5 times)
Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust (3 times)
The Third Policeman/At Swim-Two-Birds (3 times)
William Gibson's Sprawl-trilogy (3 times)
Money/London Fields/The Information (by Martin Amis) (4 times)
Lemprière's Dictionary (3 times)
The Pope's Rhinoceros (4 times)
1984 (3 times)

....well, you get the idea. And I won't even begin to list the books I've 
read a couple of times (although that list includes the Harry Potter-novels, 
which I'll certainly read again, Don Quixote which I will probably read 
again, and The Recognitions and Ulysses, which I thought would be on my 'to 
be continually reread-list', but which I upon rereading them decided weren't 
as enjoyable as I initially thought - if I reread them at some future point, 
it will be for my general edification, not for pleasure).

I think it was Nabokov who once said that it was better to know one book 
intimately than 100 books superficially, and I certainly agree with him. It 
may sound like a severe case of OCD, but I like to make a little tick in the 
back of each book after reading and rereading it - not as a way of pissing 
off territory, but as a little visual reminder of my intimacy with the book 
in question.

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