101 Comments

For me there is only one answer to this question, and it's The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. I will never forget what reading it for the first time felt like. I wish I could do it over and over again.

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Thanks, Laura! That's great! I've been wanting to read that novel for years!

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I am so jealous you get to read it for the first time!

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It's such a great book. Although I think the "whoa!" factor might have been slightly higher for me on The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Her worldbuilding is really extraordinary.

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Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. A melding of ingenuity, a tug on your heartstrings and a beautiful friendship involving a sea creature.

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Thanks, Charlene! I love that description. I'll check it out!

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Sep 23Liked by Books on GIF

I'm reading it for the first time right now!

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So wonderful!

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My book club is reading this in a couple months! I’m excited :)

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

I’m torn between two choices: “The Stranger” by Albert Camus, which I read in high school, and it was the first assigned book that made me excited to read. The other is “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. That one started my love of all things Beat (at least in my late teens and twenties) and helped me to see how to travel (and, essentially, just live) with an eye for everyday detail.

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Donna has entered the chat! Thanks for this! I also read The Stranger in high school and was very much affected by it as well. I think it opened the door a crack to my eventual love of philosophy, a door kicked in by Nietzsche when I was in college. You know, I've never read 'On the Road.' I think I have a copy on the shelf, or maybe I got rid of it because you have a copy on the shelf. Either way, maybe we should both read it!

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

This might be a cheat answer because it’s a whole trilogy, but I would love to be able to read Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago by Octavia Butler for the first time again. The most impressive world building I have ever read, I was so engrossed and could not get my head around what Butler had created (in the best way)! I wish I could experience it again.

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Thanks, Martha! You remind me that I really need to read Butler. She's been on my list for way too long!

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Mike - I think you would absolutely love the Dawn Trilogy. Seriously, it has everything you tend to enjoy in a novel.

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OK! I will check it out!

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'The History of Love' by Nicole Krauss.

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Thanks, Petya! What aspects of this book make you want to read it again?

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I reread “Matterhorn” by Karl Malantes about an ambitious but green Lieutenant who takes command in Vietnam, a place so foreign and unwelcoming he’s in over his head. The scenes and characters are vividly drawn, all in the context of trying to survive.

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Thanks, Geoff! That sounds riveting!

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Harriet the Spy. Yes, that’s going back a ways, but I’d do just about anything to recapture the feeling of reading that book for the first time.

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Ah, Harriet! I love it! Thanks, Sarah!

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

I totally agree with you about Rebecca! My parents had an old, dust-jacket-free hardback on their shelves from the time I was small, and I remember thinking that when I was "grown up," I would read and love that book. Why I picked that particular one out of their stuffed shelves, I cannot remember, but boy, did that reading experience pay off. I also feel that way about Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I love a long, immersive read, and the arch writing style (especially those footnotes!) and the world she built left me captivated.

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Thanks, Jill! I love your story about Rebecca! It's such a wild book, and I'm so glad you enjoyed it, too. I need to check out Susanna Clarke's work. She's been on my list for a while!

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Sep 22·edited Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

It might have been a time and place thing, but growing up in Italy, reading the Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, was a wonderful experience for my adolescent self. For starters, the style of the prose is so breathtaking I still remember many passages. The in medias res opening alone is brilliant.

But the scope of the work is what keeps bringing my thoughts back to it. It's about a few people in Sicily at a time of dramatic change: the founding of the kingdom of Italy at the dawn of the 20th century. The European powers are playing their game, the local nobles and priests theirs, the mafia dons theirs, and, amid all that, individuals try to find love or happiness, with mixed success. It begins and ends with death, as befits any true history. The movie is beautiful, but it only captures about half the book, which is a glaring omission. But I'm not sure the second half of the book would work as a movie.

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Hello, my dearest and most wonderful friend! Thank you for responding to this thread! I love what you've written here. I read 'The Leopard' many years ago, likely based on your recommendation, and I remember enjoying it very much. Did you read it in Italian? Or English? Or both? I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether the writing is as moving in translation.

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

I miss you: I'm sad that I didn't get enough time to seek you out this past summer...

It's a book I've recommended to a few people, so it would have been odd if I had not done so to you. I've read it in both Italian and English, and I don't remember the latter being as memorable as the former, but that might simply have been my particular experience. I don't remember having any serious complaints about the translation, although I'm sure I had a qualm or two about some of the translator's choices, perfect translations of long texts being impossible.

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I miss you, too, and we will see each other again soon! I love reading translated works, but I always wonder how much is lost or changed in the process of translation. I guess being 80? 90 percent enriched is better than not being enriched at all, but I always wish I had the ability to read things in the original and get the full weight of a book. This is why I am so fascinated by Jhumpa Lahiri. Maybe one day I can do what she did.

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Sep 25Liked by Books on GIF

Thank you for reminding me of this book. I loved it and remember specific scenes very well (which I can’t say of some novels). I was lucky to be able to read it while visiting Sicily and visiting an old estate of one of the nobles whom I believe was the inspiration for one of the characters (don’t ask which one—maybe the main one?)

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Sep 25Liked by Books on GIF

You're lucky to have visited those breathtaking locations. Although the patriarch is a baron and a prince of Lampedusa, the location of some of the more memorable parts of the story is the small community around and in the palace of Donnafugata. Both Lampedusa and Donnafugata were bombed heavily in World War II, but there is nonetheless an abundance of history to be seen around there. Here's a Googly-Mappy link if anyone is interested.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/SF4PpENAY3tzkGth9

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Sep 25Liked by Books on GIF

Thank you! I want to reread this—it’s right there on the shelf of books I will never give up.

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Donnafugata is an incredible name.

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

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Thanks, Kim! What about the novel makes you want to read it again?

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Sep 24Liked by Books on GIF

It's such a masterful depiction of the tedium of life, even in the midst of crisis. Alam does an amazing job of threading tension through every moment, and there are images and moments that I still think about, almost weekly. (The movie is pretty good too, though the book is better, of course!)

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This is great! Thanks for sharing, Kim!

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. Being a teenager and discovering my first beautifully written romance literature… The shock of a device - a non-gendered narrator. I’ve read it 20 times maybe since then, but would love to experience those first feelings.

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Thank you for this, dear friend! 20 times--wow! Based on that and on your description of it, I'll have to check it out. It sounds really interesting!

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Oct 31Liked by Books on GIF

YES!!!! This book was everything to me when I read it towards the end of high school. A revelation for sure. I'm a Winterson completist, but this title stands apart.

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

I adored An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddin and Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Both were beautifully written and drew me in from the first page. Two very different plots and protagonists in two countries I’ve never been to, yet the authors made me feel like I was there.

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Thanks, Lisa! We're on the same page about Olga. I really enjoyed Drive Your Plow, and just this week got her latest work in translation. I'm excited to read it! I love what you wrote about how wonderful it is when authors can transport you to places you've never been but make you feel like you're there. It's truly a magnificent feat!

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Just looked up An Unnecessary Woman. Putting it on my TBR.

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Sep 23Liked by Books on GIF

Have you read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth? Gorgeous, gorgeous book!!

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson comes to mind first. Knowing how that one plays out is only really going to hit the first time! The Oxford Time Travel Series by Connie Wilson (supposedly she's working on another one, at least!), and any E.L. Doctorow novel would also be on my list.

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Thanks, Keke! That's a great list. I'd be interested to know more about why those books stuck with you.

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

I think when I consider books I wish I could read for the first time again, the thing I wish I could recapture is that feeling of wanting to know what happens next so badly that I'm distracted during the day, or thinking and even worrying about the characters as if they were real people. I guess that means these are books that are pretty plot forward and/or have really memorable characters?

Life After Life is about a woman, Ursula, who keeps dying and then starting her life all over again. She's born in the early 20th century and her actions mostly impact the ordinary people in her life but the book also opens with her shooting Hitler. How do you best use such a power? I couldn't wait to find out and I still think about Ursula a lot.

Connie Willis is at her best with her time travel books (Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout, and All Clear). In a near future where time travel has been developed, historians go back in time to conduct research. She just exploits this premise really well and they're all gripping. I think I read the final 150 pages of All Clear in a single sitting.

E.L. Doctorow's works are probably the least plot driven on my list, but he's so dang good on a sentence level and his characters are so larger than life that I just soaked them up like sunshine. I particularly recommend The Book of Daniel, a fictionalization of the trial of the Rosenbergs as told by their son who is...having a hard time to say the least; and The March, a fictional account of Sherman's march through Georgia during the civil war.

This was such a great prompt and I'm enjoying reading all the answers!!

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Keke! Really great! I'm glad you enjoyed the prompt. I was so worried no one would respond to it! I love what you said about getting so involved in a book that you think about what's going to happen to the characters next, even when you're not reading it. I had that experience with a novel I recently finished. I wasn't worried about her, but I often wondered what hijinks awaited me when I returned to the book. It's a thrilling feeling when a book does that!

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I had enjoyed some of his other work but put off reading this one for years. Finally in the deep winter of 2020-2021 (during lockdowns and snowstorms) I picked it up and could not put it down. It transported and challenged me in ways I was not prepared for. I look forward to rereading it someday but I know it likely won’t be nearly as powerful an experience as the first time.

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Thanks, Allison! Blood Meridian is an amazing and powerful book. I had a similar reaction to it. I went into it completely cold, knowing nothing beyond that others had said they'd loved it, and it hit really hard. I have also read The Road, and I look forward to tackling his other books, too.

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Thank you for this question, it was a fun one to consider! The Road and All the Pretty Horses have stayed with me in special ways too. I struggled with The Crossing but part of what I love about McCarthy’s work is that it isn’t always easy or comfortable.

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Difficult and uncomfortable for sure! McCarthy reminds us that sometimes we need to be shaken out of our complacency. In life generally, and particularly in our reading life.

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Time in its flight. It’s one of my all time favorites and it’s just about a family in the north who live and die but so much more

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Thanks, Susan! I'd love to hear more about why this book is one of your all-time faves.

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Relatively recent, but definitely the one book that immediately came to my mind: Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir). I first read it a few months into the lockdown times, in summer 2020, and it engrossed me so much I stayed up most of the night finishing it, something I hadn't done since I was a teenager. I had become so intensely invested in the characters, in the story, and I felt exhilarated and utterly heartbroken and breathless with the immensity of where it was all going. I was so lucky I came relatively late to the party, since the sequel (Harrow the Ninth) came out two weeks later, and I similarly devoured it, and Nona the Ninth later on; I'm sure it'll be the same with Alecto the Ninth, if and when it comes into the world. I re-read these books a fair amount, and get something new out of them every time. But it would be amazing to experience any of them again for the first time, to have to hold on for the wild ride without knowing what twists and loops and drops are coming.

Related to the question posed in this post: in addition to Gt9 being a book I wish I could read again for the first time, it was also the book that reignited a real passion for reading in me after many years of not feeling that breathless thrill about reading a book. I always enjoyed reading, but this book really lit a wildfire for me, and I started seeking out specifically what I now know reliably excites me (generally sci-fi by female and/or queer authors) and have been on a roll ever since. I also credit Muir's work with getting me deeply into reading during a time when a lot of people were saying they couldn't read, didn't have the bandwidth or the focus or whatever. It sustained me through and out of the lockdown months, and I will always love those books for that.

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I love this answer so much! Thanks for sharing it! It's so great to see that a book not only was engaging in and of itself, but also that it rekindled the joy of reading. That's terrific!

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

I must thank you for the thought-provoking question. It sent me down a very pleasant rabbit-hole of thought this Sunday. You remain the insightful man I love and admire.

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Sep 22·edited Sep 22Author

Thank you, my friend. I was actually worried that no one would respond to this question. That it was too convoluted or confusing. I am overjoyed at the response, and also because it allowed us to have this conversation! And that it inspired a pleasant rabbit-hole journey!

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Sep 22·edited Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

I have not read REBECCA. I’ll put it on my list and you can live vicariously through me for that first read if you want. I guess I would say Woolf’s ORLANDO. It threw open the door to lasting literature for me. At 23, I couldn’t believe it was allowed to write a story like that and be held in esteem so many decades later. And also, oddly, I have not been able to re-read it. I am not much of a re-reader anyway but that one I have tried. I always feel this sense of disappointment that it does not feel the same (and the problematic parts stand out much more for some reason, which I have found distracting).

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Oh man, Abra I am so excited for you to read Rebecca! So good! I'll have to check out Orlando. Thanks for sharing how it inspired you. Virginia Woolf is a major gap in my reading. I have to get on that. I am also not much of a re-reader, generally speaking. I once thought I'd read Siddhartha every year, but after the second year I realized I just don't have time for it.

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Sep 22Liked by Books on GIF

Great question!

I have two:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

Mexican Days: Journeys into the Heart of Mexico by Tony Cohan.

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Thanks, Steph! I really enjoyed The Secret History, too. I'd love to hear more about what you love about these books.

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Sep 23Liked by Books on GIF

I read The Secret History soon after it was first published and it just blew me away. The suspense, the writing, the characters. I'm actually scared to read it again LOL because I'm not sure if I would be as enamored of it today.

Mexican Days, ahh what a treat. Such an interesting book about Mexico by someone who loves that country despite (or maybe because of) its "flaws". Gorgeously written with a deep appreciation of Mexican culture.

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This is great, Steph! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You're so right about Secret History. It's a fascinating book; well plotted with memorable characters. I loved it. I need to check out Mexican Days!

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Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebanjo

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Thanks, Emmanuella! I'd love to hear more about why you chose that book. What about it stuck with you and makes you want to read it again?

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Sep 23Liked by Books on GIF

Low-brow selection alert... but the literal jaw-drop I did at the plot twist in Gone Girl was delicious.

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No such thing as low brow here, my friend! There are few things as good as a jaw-dropping plot twist! Thanks for sharing!

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I would read that and Big Little Lies all over again if I could too!

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A Farewell to Arms. It’s the first Hemingway book I ever read, the one that got me hooked on him. I haven’t reread it since, because that first reading was so…powerful.

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Thank you for sharing, friend! I think this was my first Hemingway too. Either this or Old Man and the Sea. I can’t remember, it was so long ago. But I remember a classroom analysis of Farewell that was about how the short sentences emphasized the intensity of battle and the long sentences the boring stretches in between. That always stuck with me, even if the details of the story have faded in my mind.

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Oooh, I love that. It totally makes sense!

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Sep 23Liked by Books on GIF

I gotta pick my favorite, Harriet the Spy. Although a close second would be Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.

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Thanks, Justin! Another shout out to Harriet!

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maybe its because I've got spooky on the brain, but I wish I could read The Silence of the Lambs again for the first time without having seen the movie first! Hannibal Lecter is one of the greatest fictional characters ever created. Also Rebecca because there is nothing else quite like it. Lastly, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury because it captures childhood so beautifully without being a book for children.

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ooh! I love these. Rebecca, of course, is amazing. But I'm also intrigued by The Silence of the Lambs--I always forget it was a book. And I'm pretty sure I read Something Wicked as a kid, but I have no memory of what happens. Maybe I should revisit it, too!

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I think you should always revisit Bradbury during the fall so I am biased :)

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Sep 23Liked by Books on GIF

This is a wonderful question! I've been pondering it and I've decided that, more than any other book, I wish I could go waaaaay back in time and re-experience the sheer delight I felt with every page of The Phantom Tollbooth. The wordplay and the whimsy and those wonderful illustrations by Jules Feiffer. Gah! Perfection.

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I love this and I'm so happy you enjoyed the question! I'm ashamed to admit I've never read The Phantom Tollbooth. I'll have to get on that!

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I've read The Phantom Tollbooth more times than any other book on the planet except for Where the Sidewalk Ends but those are poems so they don't count. That book changed my life

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OK two awesome people have now vouched for this book. I have to read it!

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Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Obviously I love a gothic novel. I just remember enjoying the reading experience so much I never wanted it to end.

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Thanks, Anna! Gothic novels are so great! I've never read Wuthering Heights, but have had it on my list for forever. I watched parts of a classic film adaptation and was intrigued. And, Kate Bush's song about it is a favorite, and a go-to karaoke jam!

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There are two that come immediately to mind. "Anathem" by Neal Stephenson is one. Though I've read it several times now (5? 6?) and have fun with it every time, I would love the experience of experiencing it again for the first time. The other is "Light From Uncommon Stars" by Ryka Aoki. I read it from the library and loved it so much I bought a copy to have and, eventually, to read again. It's one of those that I almost don't want to read again because I know it won't be nearly as good (of an experience).

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Thanks for sharing! I love it when a book is so good that you have to go out and buy it after borrowing it!

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You'd probably expect a horror from me, but I really love the nonfiction Sixpence House by Paul Collins. I've read it a couple of times. It's the story of Collins moving his family to the Welsh book town of Hay-on Wye.

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Thanks, Jennifer! I just looked up that book and a whole town full of books! Sounds like heaven!

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Sep 24Liked by Books on GIF

The Floating Opera-John Barth

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Thanks, Brian! What about the book makes you want to read it again as if for the first time?

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Sep 27Liked by Books on GIF

It had hilarious and outrageous stories mixed in equal parts with metaphysical speculation about the implications and purposes of Life and equally tenable justifications for ending it. John Barth’s Todd Andrews is one of my favorite characters in literature! And this book was my introduction to his work, about which I later wrote. I also corresponded with Mr. Barth for a time.

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Thanks for expanding on your post, Brian! Really interesting!

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Sep 25Liked by Books on GIF

What a great question. The comments prompted a number of adds to my TBR list. My first answer is Moby Dick. I read the Cliff Notes and not the book as a senior in high school, finally read the book many years later. I loved that feeling of entering (escaping to?) a separate, totally engrossing world that I knew from the size and pace of the book and the digressions would last a good long while. Savored that same feeling when I started In Search of Lost Time. My second answer is Amulet by Bolano. Unforgettable, trippy and dream like, like the Pedro Paramo novel you turned me on to.

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Thanks, Brian! It's embarrassing to say I've never read Moby-Dick. Yeesh, I gotta get on that. I'm so glad you read and liked Pedro Paramo!

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Sep 26Liked by Books on GIF

Not embarrassing! I was fifty maybe sixty before I finally read it. The older I get the more I think of novels like fine wines—the ones you save for later will get better and better.

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I love this, Brian!

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Sep 27Liked by Books on GIF

Probably The Clockwork Orange. I've read this when I was a teenager and even though I've seen the movie, it blew my mind. Also tackling the language choices / slang made up by the author, made it seem like an exploration to an unknown land.

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Thanks, Andriana! A movie that intense, I can only imagine that the book is even more so!

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Sep 29Liked by Books on GIF

I'm late to this but love the question. There are so many but perhaps the one I would choose is An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine. I have read it now three times and each time found something new in it but I will never forget the way that his protagonist with her sense of being apart, her passion for a secret project, the way one carves out an unexpected life in a city that is overrun by wars -- and men. I loved this novel.

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Thanks so much for weighing in, Betsy! I think someone else mentioned this book as well. I'm definitely going to check it out.

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Sep 30Liked by Books on GIF

One of the special aspects of this novel is that it brings in other novels -- the main character chooses to translate a novel a year and each means something ot her. I think you might enjoy this part.

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Oh! I like that!

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Yes to Left Hand of Darkness!! I refer back to that one so much and recommend it always.

My (other) picks would be Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. 👌

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Thanks, Gabrielle! I'm so glad you also enjoyed Left Hand of Darkness. I hope the people you have recommended it to have read it and enjoyed it. I really need to reread it. I've been meaning to read Piranesi for a long time, too.

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