Oscar Wilde once said, "If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all." The process of rereading often allows us an opportunity to notice aspects of the book that escaped our attention during the first read, while reminding us what made us love it the first time. With that in mind, we've compiled a list of books that beg to be reread. From Pauline Kael's electrifying film essays in I Lost it at the Movies to the laugh-out-loud antics of Gary Shteyngart's The Russian Debutante's Handbook, these books will leave you asking for seconds and thirds.
Angels in America: Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony KushnerA Distant Mirror: A Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara TuchmanA Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'ConnorA House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. NaipaulA Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley CashA Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer EganA Walk in the Woods by Bill BrysonAlice James: A Biography by Jean StrouseAll the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthyAngela's Ashes by Frank McCourtAnsel Adams: An Autobiography by Ansel AdamsBlind Assassin by Margaret AtwoodBrooklyn: A Novel by Colm T’ib’nCall It Sleep by Henry RothCheating at Canasta by William TrevorCollected Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton ChekhovContinental Drift by Russell BanksDiane Arbus: A Biography by Patricia BosworthDiary of Anais Nin 1931-1934 by Anais NinDisgrace by J.M. CoetzeeDown These Mean Streets by Piri ThomasDrown by Junot DiazExtremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran FoerFences by August WilsonFor Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake ShangeFrida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden HerreraGlengarry Glen Ross by David MametGod's Fool by Mark SloukaHeir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia OzickHell's Angels by Hunter ThompsonHouse of Mirth by Edith WhartonHousekeeping by Marilynne RobinsonI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya AngelouI Lost It at the Movies by Pauline KaelInterpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa LahiriIronweed: A Novel by William KennedyJust Kids by Patti SmithKiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel PuigLittle Disturbances of Man by Grace PaleyLost in Yonkers by Neil SimonMister Pip by Lloyd JonesMotherless Brooklyn by Jonathan LethemNaked Lunch by William BurroughsNever Let Me Go by Kazuo IshiguroNew York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan by Jill LeporeNickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara EhrenreichNobody's Fool by Richard RussoOn the Road by Jack KerouacOne Writer's Beginnings by Eudora WeltyOutwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books by Aaron LanskyPassage to India by E. M. ForsterPilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie DillardPortable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy ParkerPossession by A.S. ByattPower Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert CaroRagtime by E.L. DoctorowRandom Family: Love, Drugs, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlancRules of Civility by Amor TowlesSchroder by Amity GaigeSecret History by Donna TarttShip of Fools by Katherine Anne PorterSilver Sparrow by Tayari JonesSlaughter-House Five by Kurt VonnegutSula by Toni MorrisonThe Big Sleep by Raymond ChandlerThe Buddha in the Attic by Julie OtsukaThe Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston HughesThe Corrections by Jonathan FranzenThe Dead and the Living: Poems by Sharon OldsThe Death of Vishnu by Manil SuriThe Dollmaker by Hariette ArnowThe Glass Castle by Jeanette WallsThe Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCulloughThe Guggenheims: A Family History by Debi Unger, Irwin UngerThe Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de WaalThe House on Mango Street by Sandra CisnerosThe Letters of Vincent Van Gogh by Vincent Van GoghThe Lover by Marguerite DurasThe Moviegoer by Walker PercyThe Plot Against America by Philip RothThe Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary ShteyngartThe Shipping News by Annie ProulxThe Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen GreenblattThe Things They Carried by Tim O'BrienThe Tin Drum by Gunter GrassThe Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea BarrettThe Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel WilkersonThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki MurakamiTime's Arrow by Martin AmisTo Kill a Mockingbird by Harper LeeTownie: A Memoir by Andre DubusTriangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von DrehleTropic of Cancer by Henry MillerUnbearable Lightness of Being by Milan KunderaUtopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell by Deborah SolomonWaiting for Godot by Samuel BeckettWe the Animals by Justin TorresWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond CarverWinter's Tale by Mark Helprin