Day 9- A Book you’ve read more than once

Yes, I'm a day late. I just didn't feel like posting yesterday. I have a lot of gripes lately and am debating if a griping post would make them easier to deal with. They are the kinds of things that annoy more than anything else.

Plus, yesterday's topic caused me to spend a lot of time thinking about it. The way my reading goes now, it's rare that I read a book more than once. I love reading Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde. Pratchett's Discworld series is filled with wonderful lines that can be quoted again and again. But other than the, "Which book has that one line in it?", which causes me to skim them again, I haven't gone back to read the books once I finish them. I have a large library of books I don't want to give away, but will I go back to them? Probably not.

Hence, finding something that I've read more than once was a bit of a challenge. I thought about the cookbooks I return to again and again. I have been known to sit down and read a cookbook as a novel. After all, I don't think you can get the flavor of the book by checking just the recipes for chocolate cake.

As I sat in the office last night sorting some piles my eye caught one shelf of books. I have most of J.R.R. Tolkien's books. He wrote more than just the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He wrote a prequel of sorts to the Hobbit, a very dense book called The Silmarillion. He wrote Letters from Father Christmas and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Legend of Sigard and Gudrun. He was quite prolific but he will always be remembered for Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and their 4 book adventure.

I have read those 4 books at least 3 times. I didn't see my copies on the shelf upstairs. It's possible they are on the bookshelf in the basement. Each time I read them, I discovered something I hadn't read before.

For voracious readers, these are kind of "Well, yeah. Everyone's read them more than once." So, I struggled to find something else that I have read more than once. Shakespeare falls into this category as I read one of his plays every year. But, I have already talked about Macbeth. I'm looking for something I might have read that you might not have since I have rather eclectic tastes.

I don't know what triggered the thought this morning as I was searching Barnes & Nobel.com for a photo to illustrate this and Day 10's post. The book leaped into the front of my mind just like a teenage cheerleader at a football game.

In 1971, Gene Hackman won a Best Actor Oscar for the movie, "The French Connection". I don't remember how I came by the book on which the movie was based, but it had a photo of Gene Hackman on the cover. I didn't see the movie until the 1980's, but I read the book at least 3 times. In fact, my copy was so worn, the back cover fell off at one point.

I remember being gripped by the story; raw heroin being smuggled into the US by a suave Frenchman and the initially unlikable cop who intends to stop this guy. I'm thinking this might be the first "I can't put this down" book I remember reading. I know I read it during the summer when being glued to a book until 2 a.m. didn't impact the next day's schooling. I also know I raved about it and got rather confused looks from schoolmates.

So, I'm going to list these two, one kind of obvious and one very much not. I far prefer Gene Hackman on the cover of the book.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb