Ask HN: What book have you re-read 3x or more?
Ideally, please also share what it's about and why you feel drawn to read it again and again.
A Harry Potter fan-fiction where Harry is a master of rational thinking and decision making. The plot is incredibly clever and exciting, and at the same time you learn a lot about how to think properly, but also a bit about science in general.
In the first chapters, I find Harry a bit annoying sometimes, but I beg you to ignore that and continue a bit, it gets so good!
Hyperion series. I got it in an uneven way, first the 3rd Book (Endymion), many years later Hyperion (I still think that by itself is one of the best books that I've ever read, and read it many times), and after more years, finally found locally the other 2 books, and read the whole series 2 or 3 times.
Dune (the first 5 books), Ringworld, The end of Eternity, The name of the wind, Small Gods, Ender's Game, Foundation trilogy, Flowers for Algernon are others that I remember now to have read at least twice, probably more.
There are books that are good, but small hints make me remember all/most of the plot. Probably can't read twice any of the Agatha Christie books because of that.
And there are books that I have the intention to read at least once more, maybe taking notes while doing that, but never gave it the time. The Incerto series by Nassim Taleb is one of them.
Seriously?
The movie is garbage, it's not worth watching. The most interesting stuff happens in the main character's internal dialogue.
The main character is an intelligent outcast and that thinks differently, very enticing to a kid that feels the same way.
Ender's Game was on the U.S. Marine Corps' reading list.
(I might have read Ender's Shadow two or three times as well.)
I enjoyed the whole series. The first book is the best IMO, and the piggy world was the worst, but had some interesting ideas in it. I still think a lot about the sub-vocalization technology.
Bean was great, though. I think more than Ender.
Ender's Shadow
Rotterdam IIRC.
I read it when I was trying to find a writing tone that I was comfortable with. Should it be casual, cool, and excited! with lots of exclamations? or detached, clinical, and precise? or, flowery, fluffy, and inserting difficult words, especially "dichotomy" everywhere I could?
One ideal I enjoyed was the 90s hacker writing aesthetic. PG's essays for example. It is easy to say "edit, edit, rewrite", but the tone was not easily pinned down.
Clear and Simple as the Truth is the best writing book that I've read - it answered these questions for me thoroughly, and the writing is delightful. I've read it cover to cover twice, and find myself enjoying a few quotes on occasion.
A quick takeaway among many - it is the sophistication and clarity of thought that matters, not one's facility with the language.
"Great painters are often less skillful than mediocre painters; it is their concept of painting—not their skills—that defines their activity. Similarly, a foreigner may be less skillful than a native speaker at manipulating tenses or using subjunctives, but nonetheless be an incomparably better writer. Intellectual activities generate skills, but skills do not generate intellectual activities."
I read The Wizard of Oz at least 5 times and the whole 12 books series three times. I read several Choose your own adventure books dozens of times (I particularly liked, Journey to the Year 3000), and the full set of Death Gate Cycle three times plus parts of a fourth in the Chinese translation. There were probably several Zelazny books and some of Anne Rice’s vampire books I made it through three times as well. All of these books were world-expanding or exploring ideas that were new to me in some way.
I definitely tended to do a lot more rereading as a kid and even as a teenager than as an adult.
The first two were handed to me by my father when I dropped out of high school. Zen was a slog the first time I read through it, I came back to it my late twenties and have read it at leaset two more times since then.
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe,
Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island,
Most of the Jules Verne's books,
The Iliad and The Odyssey from Homer,
The Godfather from Mario Puzo,
Hermit in Paris, Under the Jaguar Sun, The Complete Cosmicomics from Italo Calvino,
The Name of the Rose from Umberto Eco,
In the World from Maxim Gorky,
...
First works coming to mind but there should be more... Also I probably re-read many times basic printed materials related Abrahamic religions like Torah, Quran and Bible.
Re-reading is inevitable if you love books.
And a few other novels by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Cherryh.
Probably will re-read Foreigner series again, but it's quite a few books. I find Cherryh's worlds a bit terrifying, but the characters are so much fun, and remind me of countless people I've known in my 6+ decades.
I loved both. They got into my book- and film- appreciating soul and never left. 2001 is still my favorite movie. It's partly because it infiltrated my being at such a young, impressionable age. There is nothing like the receptiveness of a 12-year-old. But it's also because it's legitimately superb.
I may have seen the movie 20 times now. Most recently, with it projected on a screen at Lincoln Center in NYC with the NY Philharmonic playing the score live.
DEFINITELY SEE IT ON THE LARGEST SCREEN YOU CAN, PREFERABLY IN A THEATER. SCREEN SIZE IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL.
Getting back to the book...
The book was co-written with the film and certain plot elements were created on the film set rather than by Clarke, which work very well and add to the momentum of the plot. Probably read it 4 or 5 times. Loved it every time. In those days, Clarke had a way of combining hard science with a poetic sensibility that has never been equalled. I feel that his writing declined at some point, and that the books he co-wrote with other authors in his later years actually sucked. But 2001 and pretty much all of his books through Rendezvous With Rama shared the same sensibilities and were uniformly excellent.
I heartily recommend them all (up to RwR).
I also really enjoy how the writing changed - raw and somewhat hard to read but so much chaotic energy with the first books. Each following novel had increasing refinement. Then they went downhill in my opinion, with too much polish and a lack of that original energy. (I don't think that was a reflection of the author's health, just how the books were planned and written)
I guess I love stories of travel and discovery of which all the books have them in droves.
https://archive.org/details/representationso00said
Only a little over a hundred pages, and quite accessible—straightforward, even—but like other books in this thread full of profundities that take on different meaning as the reader passes through different seasons of life.
Huygens and Barrow, Newton and Hooke by VI Arnold: neither a popular science book nor a technical treatise, it discusses mathematical ideas from Newton's times and their modern mannifestations. I learn something new each time I read it.
Chaos by James Gleick. Mostly I read and re-read this before university. It's clear and presents the science and its personalities in an engaging way. Now that I actually work in dynamics and have met a number of these people, I'm not sure I like it as much. But still a good general science book IMO.
Cannery Row by Steinbeck. I grew up in the Bay Area and visited Monterey fairly often, and though the Cannery Row in the book hasn't existed (and perhaps never has?) for a very long time, somehow it evokes a certain nostalgia for me. (We don't live in CA anymore.)
Glenn Gould Reader. Actually an collection of his writing, and I don't re-read every piece. But something new each time.
Pulling a small thread of trivial inconsistent accounting value to in the end exposing an international spy ring.
I grew up in the cold war, so I have always been interested in what went on. First recommended by a lecturer at Uni. The book reads like a techno-thriller but happened. Full of technical detail, I learnt a lot about UNIX system when I first read the book.
I would still say the book offers a great primer on computer security concepts and the logical processes people use to understand a systems. Always good to be reminded of that from time to time.
NOVA made an episode based on the book [2]
There are some great insights and reminders about how life is. I also like the perspective on humans over time, and how little has changed within our minds in millennia. We still face the same problems, the same temptations, the same expectations. I find some comfort in that.
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham,
Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein, and
Dune by Frank Herbert. Just the first book though. I really disliked the rest of the series.
Honourable mention must also go to The Tripod Trilogy by John Christopher: The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire. I did read these a few times in my teens but lost track of them. Stumbled across a boxed set not too long ago and read again and they're still just as good.
More recent fare that I've read and/or listened on audiobook to at least three times are:
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North, and the
Bobiverse Series by Dennis E. Taylor which I'm about to start listening to again.
Links:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/826845.The_Chrysalids
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50851.Farmer_in_the_Sky
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44767458-dune
https://www.goodreads.com/series/40878-the-tripods
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35066358-the-first-fifte...
Essentially, the book contains 100 short lessons about running a business.
Running a business can be extremely lonely and a solo fight against your own mental health. I often re-read the book in difficult times and realise it'll all be okay in the long run.
The ideas apply to basically anything in life or business, and I take away something different each time I open the book.
https://littletonpublicschools.net/sites/default/files/HHS-2...
The reason I come back to it is the writing style. It's from the perspective of a young man. It's a short, simple story, but the style & inner dialogue is just great. I've never read anything else quite like it.
The Hobbit -- it was a gift from a friend in my second or third grade and I'm still drawn to read it from time to time many years later.
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement -- a well described process improvement progression in the format of a novel. It keeps reminding me that focusing on local optimizations can (and likely will) lower the overall performance of the system.
This book man.. it resonates so hard, until I came to "Chapter XIV: On Formally Undecidable Propositions of TNT", which imo is incredibly dense.
It really really is wonderful for people having done / doing CompSci. Surely other people will enjoy it too.
In every reading, there is always something new that I learn, a new perspective and new lessons that I can apply to daily life.
(My books/reading list: https://krishna2.com/books)
The Hobbit - Quite an enjoyable story.
Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? - Pure madness. What is real?
Call of Cthulhu, Dunwich Horror - HP Lovecraft
Quite a few of the Philip K Dick shorts.
I think I've probably read most of my books twice. I always feel that the second reading really seals it in my mind!
The Physician - Noah Gordon
Never Split the difference - Chris Voss
The Big Lie: Exposing the nazi roots of the American left - Dinesh D’Souza
The Rational Bible: Exodus - Dennis Prager.
^^ listening to the exodus one was so enlightening by how much of the freedoms and the US Constitution was influenced by the Torah.
religious: The Rational Bible: Genesis - Dennis Prager.
Grew up reading the Bible almost daily, cuz parents forced me to as punishment, lol! I don’t hate it, surprisingly.
Can't recommend it enough. I've listened to the audio book version several times. It has made a meaningful difference in my life.
“Lord of the Rings” trilogy — J. R. R. Tolkien
“Siddhartha” — Herman Hesse
A blog post I happened to run across begins:
""" I have a problem: I’ve already read Lonesome Dove.
And Lonesome Dove is the most totally absorbing wonderfully awesome novel on the planet.
So nothing else really compares.
Hence, my problem. """ https://blog.pshares.org/the-lonesome-dove-problem/
We named our youngest Augustus after Augustus McCrae. It’s amazing how a novel that really shows the randomness and absurdity of life in the west ended up being such a beautiful and meaningful story. But, maybe that’s kind of how all of life is at any time period.
I still bought it when I heard about it as an adult. I'll read it soon.
But I followed through. I bought a 40-acre homestead I'm working on. I'm the last place on a long dirt road, up a mountain in the Ozarks.
It's a great time to chase that dream; you can WFH in remote areas, and not have to rely on savings or trying to make the place profitable. "Enough" isn't that much, depending on your comfort zone.
Book of 5 Rings
Tao Te Ching
There is one that I read frequently but that I have never read from cover to cover:
Tha Avatamsaka SUtra
Along with books compiled in the Bible. Both proverbs and psalms visited with frequency.
First read when I was an undergrad. Then multiple times during grad school. Hit a raw nerve somewhere.
(There's another book with the same title, so note the author).
Fight Club - I love the pace and the style. It's a dopamine hit to read it.
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Hobbit and LOTR - JRR Tolkien
Magician - Raymond E Feist
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Sadly, like all authors who write about the future, as what they describe becomes reality, later readers start to dismiss their work - think Jules Verne as an example. So now the idea of a portable handheld device containing all the information you can imagine connected via invisible communications system doesn't seem as amazing as it did in the 80s and 90s.
But now that we're entering the age of Artificial Intelligence, Adams insights are yet again showing his astounding prescience. Every time Alexa responds to me with some overlong response spoken in some pseudo-hip manner, I can't help but think of Adam's Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's Genuine People Personality™.
Just in the last several weeks alone, as the various AI image and text services have gained popularity and people started exchanging elaborate prompts which produce the best results, I've been amazed at how much they resemble Arthur trying to describe to the Nutri-Matic Drinks Dispenser exactly how to make a cup of tea.
> “No,” Arthur said, “look, it’s very, very simple…. All I want… is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Now keep quiet and listen.”
> And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting the milk in before the tea so it wouldn’t get scalded. He even told it (briefly) about the East India Trading Company.
> “So that’s it, is it?” said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished.
> “Yes,” said Arthur. “That is what I want.”
> “You want the taste of dried leaves boiled in water?”
> “Er, yes. With milk.”
Think of the detailed prompts given to GPT-3, DALL-E or Stable Diffusion to help guide it to create the right output. If you're not amazed at a book written in the late 1970s predicting with such clarity our interaction with artificial intelligence decades later, then I can't convince you. Adams was truly a prophet.
Also, of course, his humor and mastery of English turns of phrase makes it all the more better.
This book helped me a lot, to know what need to prioritize for my business
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
The Bible isn't it.
But we can be gracious and understand what people mean. When asking a question like which books have you read multiple times, you would expect a lot of answers like "The Bible", it's certainly the book I've read most often, far more than any other book.
Unfortunately there just isn't too much of a reason to re-read books other than absolute classics, for example Shakespeare also falls into the category of "should re-read", or perhaps favorite collections of poems, but again these would typically be classics (modern poetry, like modern literature, tends not to have a broad audience, or even bother with trying to reach a broad audience).
With the rise of alt-texts such as social media, blogs, online information sources - books have definitely taken a beating, as have the institutions that produce books. It only takes 10,000 book sales in one week to make a NYTimes best seller. There are 385,000 Bibles sold each week - and many more given away, 100 million Bibles are printed each year.
I wonder if, in the future, there will be bible-based video games and other entertainment that will take up the time people spend reading the Bible as there have been things like television and video games that have replaced many people reading things like detective stories or adventure/romance stories.
The Earthsea trilogy.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
The Iliad.
Moonheart by Charles De Lint.
Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
The Gap series by Stephen Donaldson. It's grimly compelling, very dark characters.
Way Station by Clifford Simak, an odd one maybe but I always liked it.
Was obsessed with this book while in high school. Don't think I've given it another look for the past 30 years.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter
Fantastic book on the limits of computation.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig
A very reflective autobiography told as part of a hero's journey into their own madness and how they overcame.
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
Love this simple approach to Zen
Another Roadside Attraction - Tom Robbins
Kicked off my love of Tom Robbins' books! I don't read much fiction, but Robbins is sublime and this is the book that started it all. If you're not familiar with Tom Robbins then you need to fix that!
I don’t typically reread fiction but the poetic style of writing, combined with great scenes and characters makes almost any page worth a reread from time to time.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever find a book as good across so many dimensions…
The Honor Harrington series by Weber Up to book 10. It is a horatio hornblower in space and just good entertainment. The Lt Cleary series by Drake This one is Aubrey/Maturin in space. Entertainment. LoTR, Hobbit by whatshisname(as a teenager)
Of course, I wish I could say that I have read the cyropedia more than once, or bridge of birds ...
Don't think I need to explain what it's about at this point. As to what drew me to read it multiple times, that's due to it still being the greatest high fantasy story ever created. And it's a very balanced story. Every character, even the most powerful ones, has their flaws and weaknesses. Every choice has consequences, and could be the undoing of everything that the heroes are working towards.
Man, I love that book.