Forgive me if this has been raised recently- and direct me there if so.
I've just been re-reading Gone With The Wind thirty years after the first time I read it. (Can't quite believe that last sentence, but hey...) I was filled with anxiety that I would hate the reader I was, then, (13 years old) and also hate the book, but I just found reading it a totally different experience- for lots of reasons. Race, class, Scarlett's characterisation, the pace of the book- I just wish I could have a conversation with my thirteen year old self about it. I'd love to know what you all re-read or want to/are scared to re-read and why...?

I don't think I was 13 when I read "Room At The Top" but may have been 15 or so. It made a huge impact on me. I thought, when I watched (not read) the recent TV drama production of it, I'd hate it, because Jo Lampton would appear to me - as a feminist (and a post-feminist!) - as a male chauvinist pig and I would hate him. But I didn't. I loved this book, and the way it tackled class, gender and post-war malaise, just as much this time around. The character of Alice was just as jaw-socking second time around - and this time, (or maybe it was through the lens of a post-feminist analysis) Jo seemed much more troubled and sympathetic a character. I am still disturbed by the manner of her death. Women cannot be let off for their adultery or free approach to life - not in the the 1950's not even in a year 2012 re-interpretation. Shocking end for her!

I'd be scared to read Catch 22 again...read it as a teenager and loved it, but wonder whether I would now.

Slaughterhouse 5 is another.

My all-time favourite book is The Go Between by LP Hartley. Would break my heart if I didn;t like it on re-reading so I'm not going to test it out!

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Oh yes ditto on Room at the Top! I also loved a bit of Stan Barstow and Alan Sillitoe. Would be disappointing to find I didn;t like them on re reading...

I've never dared to re-read Charlotte Sometimes, because it scared me so when I was ten, even though I absolutely adored it.

But I re-read Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day, which I read in my early twenties, and loved it just as much - and perhaps even more in awe of her technique. Even blogged about it!

But my real old friends I re-read endlessly, in bits, over a meal or a bath. Gaudy Night, various Heyers...

Books read as a child and re-read as an adult - The Railway Children (Nesbitt) and Emil and the Detectives (Kaestner). Both withstood the adult test brilliantly. Kaestner's observation and humour (unnoticed as a youngster concentrating on the story) are amazing.

Books read more than three times include Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak), Angel Pavement (Priestley) and the Sword of Honour trilogy (Waugh). I'll almost certainly come back to them again.

I loved L Shaped room as a teen. I really need to read it again.

Forever Amber is another

Fascinating discovering what we get from reading books when we're older that we missed/went over our heads- I agree about the anxiety, as well, that we might not love that old favourite...might even be mortified that we felt so strongly. Keep them coming! I'm off to hunt down the Railway Children now as this thread has made me want to read it again.. My current re-read is Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities which I read as a twenty year old, and get more and more from it every time I re-read it, same with Steinbeck- East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath.

I read The Silver Sword and Blackhearts in Battersea to my boys last year which were two of my favourite books as a child. It was wonderful to discover they were just as brilliant as I'd remembered. Silver Sword even had me sobbing in the same places as it did forty years ago.

I reread Gatsby all the time. Read it first in my teens and have loved with with a passion close to obsession ever since. It never gets any worse, but it is different each time.

Haven't yet reread all the classic sci-fi stuff I adored in my teens - like Brave New World and 1984. I loathe sci-fi but that stuff was so stunningly written (in memory), I'd love to have another go.


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Ooh you're all mentioning some wonderful books to reread. L-Shaped Room was one i loved and reread in my teens. Sword of Honour Trilogy is stunning. All of Waugh is stunning.

I still love everything that I loved when I was much younger.

This reminds me of that great quote from Terry Pratchett, which goes something like, 'At 15, if you don't think Lord of The Rings is the greatest book ever written, there's something wrong with you. If you still think that at 50, there's definitely something wrong with you. '

Ah, yes, the L-Shaped Room. I even read the sequel, which I don't remember being as good.

'At 15, if you don't think Lord of The Rings is the greatest book ever written, there's something wrong with you. If you still think that at 50, there's definitely something wrong with you. '

Ah, well, there may have been something wrong with me at 15, but at least I'm on the mend...

'At 15, if you don't think Lord of The Rings is the greatest book ever written, there's something wrong with you. If you still think that at 50, there's definitely something wrong with you. ' Ah, well, there may have been something wrong with me at 15, but at least I'm on the mend...

Nope, still broken...

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Silver Sword even had me sobbing in the same places as it did forty years ago.

That's the thing with kids, they may be expensive, time-consuming thieves of sleep, but they do allow you to relive your favourite books. I remember sobbing over Tom's Midnight Garden when my daughter and I read it a few years ago. It was sad (but mainly creepy and exciting) when I was a child, but infinitely more heart-breaking this time round.

I still loved Charlotte Sometimes, Emma, when we read that, but I didn't dare read Marianne Dreams with her - I remember that as being terrifying.

'expensive, time-consuming thieves of sleep'

Best definition of 'child' ever!

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Love 'em though, obvs!

Silver Sword - oh, yes, yes. Lord of the Rings. Sorry. Never. Not at fifteen, fifty or even upward thereof. Also loved The L-Shaped Room.

As a teenager I adored "The Country Girls" - read and re-read it. I wonder what I'd think of it now.

Also the MArgaret Drabble early novels - "A Summer Birdcage" etc. Wonder if they would still resonate with me.

Lord of the Rings. Sorry. Never. Not at fifteen, fifty or even upward thereof

Me neither. At about 15 I got half way through, and started feeling like the Monty Python colonel who comes along in the middle of sketches and says, "This is silly. It's very very silly. Stop it right now. " It was when the trees started talking that the final nail went in for me.

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'expensive, time-consuming thieves of sleep'

Is that a quote? It doesn't come up as one. It's beautiful.

My mother read us the Hobbit, which I do remember quite enjoying but then that's true of lots of things that are read to you. But I read three pages of LOTR as a teen, and couldn't be bothered with any more.

I'm still missing the sf/f wiring. Just don't get it - why would you bother when you've got history to play in?

So as a result I don't know how to read it, and have no idea whether what seems to me to be recycled clichés are recycled clichés, or are as fundamental to the genre as bodies are to detective fiction.