Day 337: My favorite novels

[maeve66]

Okay, I give up, I'm doing this random topic.

There are certain mass produced giant novels, and certain Young Adult Fiction classics, which I read over, and over, and over again. Maybe I should try to list them in the order in which I first encountered each of these texts. Very few of them are classics, or literary in any sense.

First, I think I read some 19th c. classics early, and then often:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Captain's Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Then, after an actual trip to Prince Edward Island with my family on vacation in 1976:

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery
Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery
Anne of Windy Poplars by L. M. Montgomery
Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery
Anne of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery
Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery
Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery (a horribly jingoistic pro WWI screed, but I still reread it)
The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery
The Tangled Web by L. M. Montgomery
Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery
Yeah, the Emily books too, but I don't reread them nearly as often. Emily is annoying.
I've read the other main ones, but don't care about rereading them much.

Then, in middle school:

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey
The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey
Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey
Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey
Dragondrums by Anne McCaffrey
Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey
All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
Yeah, and all the rest of them, and all the rest of her work, but those are the ones I reread. The recent collaborations with her son are pretty deadly awful, and also poly, ew.

And then, in adulthood:

Shogun James Clavell
Tai-Pan James Clavell
Gai-Jin James Clavell
King Rat James Clavell

I can't tell you how many times I have read Shogun... More than thirty, I am going to guess.

It by Stephen King

First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough
Fortune's Favorite by Colleen McCullough
Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough
Caesar by Colleen McCullough
The October Horse by Colleen McCullough

Morgan's Run by Colleen McCullough

The entire Roma Sub Rosa series about Gordianus the Finder, by Steven Saylor

I have been known to read and reread Scruples and Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz, though nothing else of her dreck.

Possession by A. S. Byatt (lots of her other novels, too)

And I have reread several of Marge Piercy's novels:

Woman on the Edge of Time
He, She, and It
The City of Light
Sex Wars
And more often than any of her others, Gone to Soldiers, which I WISH would be published as an ebook, damn it.