While I was at the Bosoms signing in Durham, I met author Virginia Kantra, and as is my habit, I scribbled a note about something she said, then promptly lost it in the depths of my purse. I just found it and I think I know what it says.
As is normal when romance novel fans get together, we were standing around talking about books. Kantra asked, “What book do you wish you could re-read for the first time?”
There’s a couple I would love to restumble into and rediscover. Books like Charms for the Easy Life or Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal are much more layered and amazing upon rereading but I’d still love to go through the jaw dropping experience of reading them for the first time and realizing how much of the awesome is going down in those pages.
I know when I started glomming the Julia Spencer-Fleming series, someone commented that they were envious I was able to read them for the first time – I get what that person meant. When you realize you’re reading something truly extraordinary, it’s one of the best moments. Often with books like these I remember not only the book but the feeling I had when reading it.
What about you? What books do you wish you could rediscover or read again for the first time?
Naked in Death
I’ve been reading the series since it began — with the LONG 6 months wait between books — so I often envy the new-to-the-series readers who get to glom all the books at once. Although I suppose with the now 30+ books and novellas it may seem an overwhelming task to start.
Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series. Though I love rereading them, reading them for the first time just blew my freaking mind.
Oh I wish I could discover the Outlander series again, or the time travellers wife, or Karen Marie Monings fever series the wait for her books kill me!!
Oh, so many different books.
Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer—all I remember is that I laughed until it hurt when I read it the first time, and that it was the perfect book for the horrible mood I’d been in.
Also The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, one of my favourite books; in fact, I would love to relive my experiences of reading most of my favourite books, though perhaps not Wuthering Heights, since I read it when I was fairly young and was mostly confused by it (on the second reading, I fell in love).
The Time Traveler’s Wife was an amazing read for me. So beautifully written and such an interesting premise…I can’t get over how deft the writing was. Interestingly, I read recently that publishers were initially leery of the book b/c they weren’t sure how to market it – romance? too genre-y but a little literary too?
What happened to “this is a fantastic book. buy it and see!” Audrey Niffenegger got a $5M advance for her next book…not bad for something no one wanted initially.
Kalafudra and I are on the exact same wavelength, my first thought was, I want to re-read The Eyre Affair, for the first time. It’s so insanely clever, with hidden jokes and meanings.
I also love to re-read, for the first time, The Curse of Challion – there are so many layers to this book – the mystery, the romance, the spiritual. I devoured it too quickly when I first read it, and it is one of the few books that I routinely reread, and each time it’s like reading it for the very first.
Lita
Spam word – Common67 – It’s common for me to re-read a book I love 67 times or more.
I’m doing that right now!
A Knight in Shining Armor was my very first romance and I finally managed to find it this weekend. Reading it got me hooked on romance, so it is nice to see that it still works for me years later.
Part of what made some books so special is that I read them at exactly the right time in my life for that particular book. Books that I adored and would love to rediscover, page-by-page: Blindness by Jose Saramago & Northanger Abbey by Austen.
Thinking about some of my fave roms, I love knowing & remembering those characters more than my desire to rediscover them for the first time.
For me it would be the re-discovering the thrill of Linda Howard for the first time while being cooped up inside due to a terrible ice storm. I remember vividly reading her books tucked into bed under a mountain of quilts with my cat curled up at my feet. Her books were set in warm climates and had the first really hot love scenes I’d ever read so it was like discovering something hot and naughty that you could sneak under the covers with.
The Thorn Birds. Or Anne Rivers Siddons’ Heartbreak Hotel.
Outlander
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Simply Love by Mary Balogh
The Romantic by Madeline Hunter
Jane Eyre
Faking It by Jennifer Crusie
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
That makes three of us in the Fforde column. Although he was recommended by a friend, I really had no idea what I was getting into (have lived in the woods way too long). Anything by Georgette Heyer and Dorothy Dunnett, too.
Guardian Angel by Julie Garwood. I was only about 15 when I read it, new to the romance-novel-thing. The twist was one I never saw coming—the moment Uncle Harry says “We like to call her Pagan” still gets me every damn time.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society, which is the best book I’ve read all year.
Bet Me and Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie (actually, pretty much anything by this author, barring Don’t Look Down)
Maria V. Snyder’s Poison Study series.
Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles
Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising
I could go on and on with this list . . .
Lord of Scoundrels was a biggie for me!
When I think of books I want to experience teh first time again, I’m usually drawn to my childhood books. Anne of Green Gables and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nihm come to mind as being at the top of that list.
The first Harry Potter did that for me: when I read it I felt I was reading a book that I had adored as a child but just hadn’t happened to read before. Weirdest thing.
And thinking about Susan D’s remark that you read some books at exactly the right time in your life, HP is probably one of the books that came at the wrong time in my life. I wish I could have followed that series as a child. So I want to read it again for the first time, but this time be aged about 8, if that’s all right.
Katherine by Anya Seton. I doubt this title’s ever been out of print. I first read it when I was 13 or so, and I would love to first-read it as an adult. Le sigh.
The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase
The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer
Nora’s Sacred Sins (aka the first rom-susp I ever read) and Outlander.
In both cases, I can remember where I was as I devoured them, and how it annoyed the people around me that they couldn’t drag me away from those books.
A Suitable Boy
Wouldn’t The Dark is Rising make a great movie? Especially the 2nd (still my fave, altho the first great too).
When I was an intern at Pocket, one of the editors took me into the Book Room and gave me Flowers From the Storm. “You need to read this,” she said emphatically, “to understand why it is I do what I do.” After I finished, I remember I wanted to run around the English building at my college, book in my hand, shouting, “Look at this, look at this!” I remember laughing at almost every page. Not because the story is funny, in fact, it’s really not, but because I felt like I was reading the Rosetta Stone for my future. This book somehow was able to translate all my frustration from those indulgent smiles my family and teachers gave me into a secret smugness that to this day, I still feel whenever someone rolls their eyes over a book I’m reading. So in a way, that “first” feeling is always with me.
The first several of Pern and the Talent series by Anne McCaffery
The Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey
Both great series that I’ve read so much that each time I reach for them again, the entire series flashes through my mind and feels like spoilers.
I take this to mean, read again and still feel as you felt the first. (Because it could mean, “read again now that you have the life experience to really get it”, which would be a completely different list.) I do re-read a lot of the books that I’ve really loved, but you never quite capture the magic of the first time you read something that just pulls you into that world and makes you feel like you can actually reach out and touch the characters, do you? For me, the first two books I think of—that instantly come to mind, in fact—are completely different from each other. The first is The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton. I was 13 when I read that book and it was the first one I’d ever read that made me laugh aloud and cry over the death of a character. I so desperately didn’t want it to end that I tried to start over and re-read it immediately after finishing the last page, but it didn’t work. I still loved the characters and the story, but that extra little magical fizzle of discovery was gone.
The second book was The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. It didn’t have quite the same dramatic impact as the first book, but it had a great, goofy charm that just made me happy when I read it. Maybe I’ve gotten too old and cynical to feel that now. I read it the first time when I was 16. When I re-read it a few years ago, I still liked it, but it just didn’t dazzle quite as much.
I second Shancara on the first couple Pern books and the first couple Valdemar series. Also “The Hero’s Crown” and “The Blue Sword” by Robin McKinley.
The more I thought about this question, the more books popped into my mind. As previous comments have noted, most of them are linked to specific periods in my life, and their impact may have been driven by circumstances. I wouldn’t necessarily want to go back to those times, but I’d love to be blown away by these books once again. So, in no particular order, here’s the short list. (Stop me before I think again!)
Wyrd Sisters / Terry Pratchett
These Old Shades / Georgette Heyer
One for the Money / Janet Evanovich
Dead until Dark / Charlaine Harris
Auntie Mame / Patrick Dennis
Mr. Blue / Myles Connolly
The entire Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny series / Dorothy Dunnett
Mame and Blue were favorites when I was very young, and I loved both of them and reread them many times. Except for Dunnett’s Crawford series, most of these books served as a gateway to the author’s entire body of work. It is the sense of surprise and delight that I experienced with the first book that I’d like to relive. However, Dunnett’s series demands to be read in its entirety. It is too rich and layered and amazing to read piecemeal. I think if I picked it up today, it would be like reading it for the first time.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Prince Ombra by Roderick Macleish
the fabulous Dark series by Christine Feehan
The Stupidest Angel
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
The books I *really* wish I could read for the first time are the ones I’ve written. Everything else, I did at least get to read for the first time once, but my own I never do. I’d love so much to be able to see it all fresh, not to know what’s going to happen next, to get the full impact of a plot twist, to be surprised when a favourite character comes back. I envy the readers a lot sometimes for getting that chance.
The two books that absolutely blew me away in college were Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire and Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. I often think of them as the best books I’ll never read again because I know they wouldn’t have nearly the same impact now as they did then and I’ll never re-capture the feeling of experiencing them for the first time.
Someone mentioned The Dark Is Rising; that one I’ve been re-reading every Christmas since the age of eleven and it still captures my imagination. (FYI, it was filmed a few years ago, but it sounded as though it was changed almost beyond recognition; it was re-titled The Seeker and Susan Cooper was so unhappy she had her name taken off it. I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to.)
Another vote for Dunnett’s Lymond Series, also Fforde’s The Fourth Bear which has to be one of the funniest and cleverest books I have ever read—but I wasn’t quite prepared for its weirdness. How great it would be to read it again without knowing the conclusory scenes. In fact I’m grinning as I am writing this.
I wouldn’t mind having a chance to experience all of Georgette Heyer again for the first time—especially The Grand Sophy and An Unknown Ajax.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Shards of Honor, followed by everything else she’s written. I loaned my entire collection to a friend who was a Bujold virgin, and waited with bated breath for the semi-daily updates of OMG! This is SO GOOD! I re-read everything regularly, and love it every time, but that fresh, first read when you just have to pause in awe is such a nice feeling.
Also, McCaffrey’s Dragonflight, Robin McKinley’s everything, Joan D. Vinge’s Catspaw, and Annette Curtis Klause’s Blood & Chocolate.
Anything by Carla Kelly. I love her books. They’re so warm and comfortable.
Like many others…Outlander.
Also Kinsale’s Flowers From the Storm…it just wasn’t what I was expecting.
As for the Harry Potter series – that is one of the delights of having children, by reading the books to my girls – I do get to relive that first time experience!
This is so funny. This is EXACTLY the hook I always use to sell John Myers Myers’ SILVERLOCK : “I envy you the opportunity to read this for the first time!”
Fans of Megan Whalen Turnes THIEF series (A CONSPIRACY OF KINGS due out next spring, squeee!) often argue whether it is more fun to read the books for the first time, not knowing the astonishing curveballs the plot will throw, or to re-read them, and discover all the hints and clues and allusions.
@Elizabeth Wadsworth: absolutely Interview with a Vampire, as well as The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned. Those three, together, were some of the best reading experiences. I haven’t read them in a really long time, and knowing what I know about Anne Rice now, as well as how…flowery…her language is, I don’t think I would enjoy the experience as much as I did when I was 11. But those three, for sure, hold a special place in my heart.
I will also say Jasper Fforde’s The Jayne Eyre Affair. In my review on Amazon for this book, I said that I thought Jasper Fforde was right up there with Shakespeare, in his grasp of the English Language. The man is freaking brilliant and funny as hell.
A couple of others I would love to read again for the first time: Lord of Scoundrals (chase), Welcome to Temptation (crusie), Northeren Lights (NR), Kushiel’s Dart (Carey), The Price of the Stars (Debra Doyle & James MacDonald).
Oh, there are more…so many many more…;)
Janet, did you know they made a film of the second book? It’s truly, truly terrible. (And so true to the books – like the bit we all remember where Will’s twin returns…)
Actually, probably better not to know the film exists, so you’re never tempted to watch it.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Amazingly good.
Little Women
The Color Purple
Eat,Pray Love,
Bridget Jones Diary
The Poisonwood Bible
Immortal Highlander by Karen Marie Moning. You know that feeling you get when the emotion of a book overwhelms your body and feels like your chest will burst? that was The Immortal Highlander for me.
there are others too, but that’s the one I’m thinking of right now.
No wait!
An Offer from a Gentleman by Julia Quinn. The first time I read that book I felt so connected to the heroine. every emotion she felt I felt as well. In fact, I was on the bus when something particularly terrible happened to (I think it was) the heroine’s sister and i gasped “Oh no!” out loud.
That’s how you know you’re a good writer.
I’m one of those shameless JR Ward addicts and I’d love to read Lover Awakened for the first time again. It was the first of that series that I had to wait for and even now, after four more books, Zsadist is still my favorite Brother. I remember how horrified I was at his treatment as a slave and how beautiful it was to see him discover sexual pleasure for the first time and fall in love. I just love the rush I got when I saw him go from one extreme to the other. That rush just hasn’t been the same in subsequent rereads.