Books I could re-read forever

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. 

This Top Ten Tuesday was a challenge for me at first. I don’t do a lot of re-reading. But I’ve recently starting picking up books I read as a teenager or college student just to see how they sit with me now that I have some life experience. Some are still awesome and some, upon a second read, fall flat. But I was absolutely shocked to see that I came up with 15 books I could happily re-read over and over. Who frikken knew?

1. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

I read this several times as a teenager, which makes me proud of lil Shannon because I was not real woke back then.

2. The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkein

I recently read this for just the second time (except for Return of the King, which I never got through the first time for some reason).  Still love the characters and the story and will the rest of my life.

3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

I just love an unfortunate (and then very fortunate) governess, what can I say?

4. One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

I re-read this for the third or fourth time recently and enjoyed it immensely. It’s one of those books that puts early American history into perspective.

5. The Doll in the Garden by Mary Downing Hahn

This book freaked me out as a kid and tbh it freaks me out now.

6. The Ruins by Scott B. Smith

A nail-biting vacation gone wrong. You can see tragedy about to happen and you’re powerless to stop it. My favorite.

7. Timeline by Michael Crichton

What really gets me about this book is the way Crichton drives home the toughness of medieval people. Think you could fight a medieval knight? Best get to the gym yo.

8. Illumination in the Flatwoods: A Season With The Wild Turkey by Joe Hutto

This is the book that made me fall in love with wild turkeys. Yeah, I know it’s weird.

9. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb

I’ve read this about a hundred times. It’s just such a sad, beautiful novel. And Wally Lamb is one of my favorite fiction writers overall.

10. Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott

I clung to this book when Jake was little. It totally validated my own exhaustion.

Yeah, I’m still going…

11. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Loved this book as a kid. I had a beautiful illustrated hardback. I wish I knew where that was. Anyway, I love it as an adult and it’s about time for a re-read…

12. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Ditto this one.

13. Another Place at the Table by Kathy Harrison

Memoir by a loving foster mother to hundreds of kids. Gets me every time.

14. Back Home by Michelle Magorian

As a kid I was fascinated to learn that children from the UK had been shipped to other countries during WWII.

15. Perfect English by Ros Byam Shaw

And a decorating book because I just want to dive in and live between these pages.

Check out what other people are endlessly re-reading over at That Artsy Reader Girl.

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