The book I keep going back to...

[DamianLake]

By the way, though you are probably aware of them, I wanted to mention Adams' Dirk Gently novels and recommend them in case you aren't familiar.

Ah, yes! Poor Dirk never seems to get the recognition he deserves. I love both those books, and actually have them on audio as well as in paper, and read by Douglas Adams himself no less. He certainly adds something to Dirk's conversation about Schrodinger's Cat, and his theory on how a man can behead himself using a record player, (but only if it is Japanese), is certainly mind bending. I actually spent some time trying to figure out exactly how that could happen.

As for Discworld, I too put off reading it for many years. Then when I finally did, I was upset I had cheated myself for so long. Each has its own appeal depending on personal taste, but those two I recommended are usually popular. In "Guards! Guards", the broken down and sad remnants of the city watch are tasked with dealing with a marauding dragon terrorizing their city. It sounds simple enough, but only Pratchett could have written a story with a secret society filled with disgruntled simpletons, a nearly seven-foot dwarf and million-to-one chances that crop up nine times out of ten.

With "Reaper Man", Death, (the Grim Reaper), is forced into retirement. He's given a cheap gold watch and pushed out the door. Now with no one doing Death's job, the dead of the Disc are started to really get testy as they discover that the afterlife is, in fact, this one, since no one is taking them away following their demises. And if there is a surefire way to make a tricky situation even worse, it is to get the wizards of Unseen University mixed up in the whole mess.

[R. LeBeaux]

Thanks Damian, for the additional info. I was thinking I should start at the beginning with the Discworld series, but after checking out Pratchett's website, I realized this is probably not necessary, so will try the two you recommend first. And you're right about Gently never seeming to get the recognition he deserves. It amazes me how many Adams fans I talk to who have never heard of these two novels. Whenever I feel the need for a little mind-bending humor, I read them again, and the only thing that disappoints me is that Adams went to his grave without finishing the third novel in the series, "The Salmon Of Doubt." I read the posthumously released version, and it was interesting, but I would have much preferred a complete Dirk Gently novel.

[LS Burton]

Every so often I have to read something by Steinbeck, or Kerouac. Every xmas when I go home to visit my parents and get my old room with my old bookshelf, I tend to go on a bit of a Terry Pratchett reading spree.

Past couple years however, I've found I've been rereading a lot of Charles Stross' books (not the fantasy, his speculative fiction books), as they satisfy some sort of itch for books usually outside my purvue.

[deathscythe210]

i've ended up re-reading "White Oleander" by Janet Fitch quite a lot. I can't explain why, but Astrid's journey through her different foster homes and how she grows as an independent woman out of her mother's shadow while still retaining the lessons she's learned keeps me addicted to it every time i read it.

[javaduke95]

The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald. Read it in high school and felt that the plot was flat and characters uninspiring. Read it again about a decade later, and took away from it an entirely different set of thoughts. The degree by which the rich/poor divide, the sense of isolatio, the pain of lost opportunities, discussed by that book remain relevant today.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is another favourite that explores a lot of the same themes and feels different each time I read it.