/.../
Anthony Burgess -
Earthly Powers; The Long Day Wanes (also known as the
Malayan Trilogy); all four of the
Enderby comedies.
Earthly Powers is fairly well-known, but I would like to give a special mention to the Enderby books. I doubt if I have ever read anything funnier! I read all four of them every couple of years, and it is always a sheer pleasure, like eating a delicious chocolate cake with lots of cream. If you like
A Confederacy of Dunces, please try the Enderby novels.
Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The only book I have ever read where, as soon as I reached the end, I just turned back to the first page and started again.
Thomas Harris -
Red Dragon; The Silence of the Lambs; Hannibal
PG Wodehouse
- Psmith in the City; Leave It To Psmith
Iris Murdoch -
The Sea, The Sea; The Book and the Brotherhood
Oh yes, Dirk Gently has been re-read to shreds and back by me--but it belongs to the stuff discovered in pre-adult years, just like Mr. Wodehouse. But Burgess--yes--an adult discovery! Although I tend to lurk the neighboring territory of Kingsley Amis (they have their overlaps, for example "The Doctor is Sick" with "Jake's Thing" or "Girl, 20"), and the awesome "real-lit" forays of Brian Aldiss (the Squire Quartet*) and Michael Moorcock (the Colonel Pyat quartet).
...Interesting how some people readily re-read (or re-watch) stuff, while others feel that there’s too much unread and unwatched stuff out there to be able to afford the rereading etc.
I personally discover from time to time some awesome new stuff, but generally am very much aware of the territories in which I can find stuff I’ll likely love, and the territories in which it will be rather a waste of time to sift through the endless titles and authors until I possibly find something which doesn’t completely depress me with its style, content, and general banality (as in different from the banality that I crave).
Just like I know perfectly well the half a dozen genre (and temporal!) territories of music in which I’ll find what I need, and mostly ignore the remaining 80-90%, it’s the same with literature. Or films and TV. Can't stand 90% of films or TV,
can stand 10%, of which I can fall in love with 1%, which I shall then readily re-watch.
I’d very much rather listen again to a certain album I’ve known inside out for decades, or try to discover
similar albums and musicians, then try to force myself to find some shred of pleasure in most other musical areas which are alien to me.
I this sense I don’t really feel that OMG there’s so much to read and so little time. I can totally afford to reread favorite books because I know how rare it is to find something I really and truly enjoy to the extent that I’ll integrate it, allow it to become part of myself, and these are islands of stable joy to which I regularly return for another fix, before continuing the leisurely quest of finding what else was written in the decades and genres by the type of authors that I like….
It must be nice to be so open to new stuff from all directions, but that's not me. Not quite sealed in an existing bubble, but expanding it very carefully in very specific directions--that's me. And that's why I can afford to constantly re-read, re-watch, and re-listen to stuff and not feel that I'm losing out in any way...
___
*Starts with a novel about a semiotics conference. Wonderful low-key stuff.