Searching to Recapture the Memory

[memelaina]

There are certain books - mostly long books or series - that I pick up every few years to read through in, I suppose, an attempt to recapture the ambiance, the mileau, the feelings that reading the books have given me in the past. Partly it's an attempt to spend time with characters that are old friends. Partly - for some series - it's the feeling that if I read the whole thing through from the beginning, it will all make more sense and those odd, fragmented bits will come together. (I've read Farmer's RIVERWORLD books through about three times thinking that -this- time it would all make sense, but it still doesn't.) Right now I'm on number nine of the twenty-four Tarzan books - it's a slow journey as I'm reading them online and mostly only during my lunch break at work. Even the Tarzan books go pretty slowly at 20 minutes a day. At worldcon, I picked up SURVEILLANCE - the first of Julian May's Galactic Mileau series. I deeply enjoy these books, but am always a little disturbed that I can't put all the pieces together as smoothly as I think they should go. When I read Julian May, I have to keep a word list on my bookmark as I find the very -best- vocabulary for new Scrabble words. She writes at a level of erudition that would make even Jon Singer take notice.

What other series do I return to? Every couple years I romp through all twelve of the David Eddings books. About once a decade I take half a year to read AND LADIES OF THE CLUB. Now and then I decide to read all of MZB's Darkover books, but I never actually make it all the way through, and I usually get diverted to reading THE CATCH TRAP, and then put MZB behind me for a few years. I take a pot shot at McCaffrey's DRAGON books from time to time, but rarely do more than four or five in a row - although I do reread her FREEDOM books with my pleasure at the beginning slowly turning to disgruntlement as the writing gets poorer and poorer towards the end. I re-read David Palmer's EMERGENCE and Dianne Day's Fremont Jones books (but rarely to the end of the series). I've read (or listened) my way through all the Mrs. Pollifax books several times. In the right circumstances, a quick re-read of Elizabeth Enright's MELENDY or GONE-AWAY books can give great pleasure and a return to the perceptions of childhood. And I will still pick up and read through all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books occasionally. Oh, and the three March family books by Alcott.

I used to read my way through Tolkien's trilogy every year or so, then once a decade, then less often. There are still parts of it that move me deeply, but I also tend to get distracted in the middle and find the second or third book lying buried somewhere that I set it aside months or years past. I return to several of Laurie King's BEEKEEPER books with great regularity, but avoid certain others of them as not worth the read. Bujold, definitely - and all three of her series offer a different kind of emotional nostalgia. Zelazny's AMBER books call to me sometimes, and they are one of the series where I keep thinking I can pull all the pieces of plot together, but I never quite do. Stirling-memories keeps begging me to return to Nantucket or to the Emberverse, which I do, but never again for more than the first three books - after that it just went crazy.

I read through Shinn's ANGEL books, and LeGuin's EARTHSEA. And with heartfelt joy I'll pick up my wonderful NESFA collection of the Zenna Henderson books and read them through and through.

What sets of books do you return to over and over? What emotions are you looking to recapture and what friends need to be revisited?

Comments

[ericavdg.livejournal.com]

I always go back to Heinlein. Even at my current reduced rate of reading (chronic headaches eat up a lot of my free time), I read a couple a year. I recently realized that the last time I read "Stranger in a Strange Land" was in May 1991 when I was recovering from pneumonia. This serious lapse will be remedied as soon as I finish the three books I'm currently reading. Not exactly a series, unless you count nearly everything Heinlein wrote as part of his future history.