The Terror of Knowing

Welcome one, welcome all, to Top Ten Tuesday! For those who are unaware (or who might need a reminder) Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by book bloggers and list lovers, The Broke and the Bookish, and is now hosted fantastically by Jana from That Artsy Girl! Each week a topic is chosen for bloggers to respond to.

This week’s topic is Books I Could Re-read Forever which is a pretty simple topic and requires little to no explanation, excepting this: I am a serial re-reader who is trying to be much better this year about not just re-reading previous favourites and forgetting about the potential in new releases. I’ve implemented a project called the Bookish Savings Jar to help me (/fine me) and everything! Because of this, there are SO MANY books I am dying to re-read right now but I’m really trying to hold off and read some new-to-me novels instead, so this Top Ten Tuesday post has come at exactly the right time to help me blow off some steam! I’ve purposely forced myself to sit down and, in one go, list ten books I’d re-read forever if given the chance, and I’m not allowing myself to change the titles listed after the fact because I think, if they immediately spring to mind, that says a lot. So let’s take a look at the books I could (quite literally, if given the chance) re-read forever…

10. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Not a single one of these characters is likeable in the traditional sense – they’re uppity, condescending, patronising, in equal measure – but I love them all the same. This is the kind of book I never plan to re-read, I always just find myself randomly picking it up and reading the first few pages and before I know it I’ve embarked on a full-scale reread. It has a compelling quality though so I find it pretty damn impossible to put down once I have picked it up.

9. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca is one of my favourite books so it’s really no surprise that I can re-read it forever, if given the chance. It’s a book that has so many layers to it, that I’m sure during re-reads for years to come, I will notice things I didn’t notice previously, and I will never not enjoy the book so this is going to be a firm re-read for many years.

8. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

As I type this I have just bought an audiobook version of Pride and Prejudice so that I have yet another means through which to re-read (/re-experience) this story and these characters. I love Pride and Prejudice and whilst Persuasion might technically be my favourite Austen, it’s not exactly the most cheery, so I tend to re-read Austen’s most famous book most frequently. I’m not mad about that, it’s become nostalgia by this point to sink into the book and the lives of the Bennet family.

7. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

I re-read this twice in a year, and I’ve recently re-read it, so… I couldn’t not put this cutesy contemporary on my list. I think it’s so damn re-readable for me because it IS cute but it also deals with ~real issues~ and in dealing with the ~real issues~ the college experience that its main character, Cath, has is much more like my own was than a lot of the other contemporaries out there – for this reason alone, it will always hold a special place in my heart.

6. The Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon

I’m a sucker for this series, especially the second book, The Mime Order which has Victorian-style underground criminal gangs having fights with their clairvoyant powers… I mean why wouldn’t I want to read, and re-read, that over and over again? It also helps that I find these books enormously readable so it isn’t even a chore to read like a 400-page book.

5. The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

I have this book in paperback and audiobook, a thing that is reserved only for the books I really want to re-read, because I’m maximising my opportunities to do so. Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys is one of those very few. I adore this story and the audiobook narrator, Will Patton, has an especially good voice for this kind of slightly off-kilter, eerie storyline. I will forever be in love with said Raven Boys, to the point that I still haven’t read the final book in the cycle, The Raven King, because I just can’t have it concluded, I’m in denial. But I know that even when I do finally bite the bullet and finish this series, it won’t be the end, because I’ll be re-reading these books forever.

4. Shades of Magic trilogy by V.E. Schwab

I love V.E. Schwab’s idea of parallel Londons, each with their own level of (and attitudes towards) magic. I wish I could sink into her stories (ok maybe just Red London, I’m not about White London) and I love her characters, particularly the hot mess that are Rhy and Alucard, especially Alucard. Everyone loves a pirate, after all, sorry privateer. I’m well over-due a re-read of this trilogy because I have a deep need to sink back into the Londons and walk amongst them with Kell. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of these stories.

3. Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo

Much like Shades of Magic, this one hit me like a ton of bricks. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the Grisha trilogy but I wasn’t in love with it, not anywhere near the extent to which I adore Bardugo’s Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. What can I say? I’m a sucker for a gang of merry misfits that are pretty much just criminals but live by their own little (twisted) moral code so you definitely root for them in the end. Also, it features one of my favourite things in books ever – uppity, stick-in-the-mud tol falls for feisty, makes-them-blush-with-their-scandalous-nature smol. It’s like my favourite thing and I love it in this book, so obviously I could re-read it to my heart’s content.

2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I love Neil Gaiman and this is probably my favourite of Neil Gaiman’s books, especially the audiobook as read by Neil himself. I find this story so simultaneously charming and absolutely sinister in equal measure which is pretty much my favourite kind of thing, and Neil Gaiman is especially brilliant at it. So many of the quotes in this book will stay with me forever, so it’s unsurprising that I could re-read this book forever. If you haven’t read it already, go read it, NOW!

1. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

I know this won’t come as any surprise, but I am of the generation that grew up alongside Harry Potter – as I aged, the next books in the series were released, and I genuinely can’t quite remember life before I had read them. Which is probably the marker of them being so ingrained in your formative years, isn’t it? (Kind of like how I don’t remember ever consciously learning the words to Bohemian Rhapsody, they’ve just always been there in my head.) I can’t see a point in my life when I’m not thinking about reading, or reading, Harry Potter so this had to take the top spot on this Top Ten Tuesday list.

That’s all folks, those were the Top Ten Books I Could Re-read Forever! What books could you always re-read? Are you a big re-reader or do you tend to only read books once? Let me know or link me to your own Top Ten Tuesday post if you have one!

Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram