Read It Again!

The most reliable demand of my childhood.  "Read it again, Mom!...Again, Dad!"  Whenever I picked up a book, you could bet that I'd be reading it again in an hour...a day...a week...and so on as I grew.

One of my best girlfriends from gradeschool once asked me why I was rereading something.  She hardly ever reread books. But the books I read were The Animorphs.  She read Jane Eyre, and The Lord of the Rings, and who knows what other giant novels.  And let's face it, giant novels are daunting.  The thought of rereading them, even your favorites, can be discouraging.  I remember reading in one of the Baby-sitters Club books that Kristy's grandmother rereads Gone with the Wind once every year.  I read Gone with the Wind and it took me a year to get through.  But ever since I read that Baby-sitters Club book (damn you, Ann M. Martin for writing so well for an audience like me), I wanted to have a book like that.  One I loved so much that I could reread it once a year and never be sick of it.

Sure, I have Charlotte's Web and The Outsiders...but not since I became an adult have I found a rereadable book that fits the once-a-year must-read criteria.  And in truth, my thirst for new reads surpassed my yearning for old favorites around the time I turned 15.

So what do you do when you dream of the perfect book?  I need recommendations stat.  What are your rereadables?  How do I get back in the swing of it? Halp!