Kevin's Watch

We all have that feeling when you're reading something for the time that its fresh and fun and new. I mean, think back to when you read LOTR for the first time, or Thom Cov Chron.

So the topic is as it plainly states above, if you could read a book all over, having no knowledge of it, fresh and new, what would it be. I realize the rather stupidity of this topic but its fune anyways. If you could catch that fun book feeling that you get when reading a book for the first time, which ones would you like to go back and re-experience that feeling with.

Safe to say we'll have most people here list Thom Cov Chron, so lets think outside of that particular box.


Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Deathgate Cycle Book 2: Elven Star
Frank Herbert - Dune
George R.R. Martin - A Game of Thrones
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. That book blew me away.

Neverness and The Broken God by David Zindell
Dune
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest

Probably any of them. WoT, aSoIaF, and tCTC especially, but also War of the Flowers, LotR, TotMBotF, and many, many more, heh.

The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay. Absolutely the most haunting ending of any novel I've ever read.

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes.

And I would read King's Desperation and The Regulators in the proper order. I read The Regulators first, and I think it lessened my enjoyment of what King was doing with the parallel characters.

The first real sci fi book I ever read was War of the Worlds. I hadn't read anything like it before. I hadn't seen the movie version (even though its creation pre dated my own). That experience in a way led me to all of you and I would like very much to re experience that moment in my life.

FizbansTalking_Hat wrote:I mean, think back to when you read LOTR for the first time

I'd rather not

Only TCTC comes to mind. Nothing else has has anywhere near that kind of impact.

I understand the idea behind it, but I don't think I'd want to read any book again for the first time. The written words of a book may be static, but my life and my mind are not. Like Heracleitus said, "You cannot step twice into the same river." The book may be the same, but it wouldn't be the same to me. What if, for some unknown reason, I didn't like The Chrons this time around? What a loss that would be.

You know, I still remember being 10 years old and reading The Chronicles of Narnia for the very first time. I was enveloped with such wonder and magic. I would love to pick it up again and have that same feeling. It defines my childhood.

Then, of course, came LOTR, and TCTC, etc... but, Narnia was the beginning....

I'd love to re-read for the first time David Gemmells Waylander. i first read it when i was 13 and at the time it blew me away, it must have been the first real book i ever read.

Waylander is great. I was a similar age when I read that for the first time. Although I'm not bothered about reading the whole book again as though for the first time, there are a couple of moments that made my spine tingle. Waylander protecting Danyal and the children from a group of soldiers, by just prescence alone. Very nice.

The list of mine is endless but I'll try to post a few...
TCTC all six books
Lightning by Dean Koonz
Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster
The Christ Commission by Og Mandino
The Bible by various authors (not faiths... King James version please)
The Stand by Stephen King
It by Stephen King

and the list goes on

Didn't Adam Sandler make a movie out of this, titles "50 First Books"? Anyway, my list would be full of Donaldson, Asimov, Tolkein, Clarke, Sturgeon, Ellison, and Lewis; just like the first time!

Apart form the Chrons:

His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta
The Sight by David-Clement Davies
Artemis Fowl 1, 2 and 3 by Eoin Colfer

Books that I would want to re-read for the first time would have to be books that created within me an incredible sense of magic and wonder - never to be recaptured again, if only because lightning doesn't strike twice. Those books would be:

-Baum's Wizard of Oz series
-LeGuin's Earthsea
-Tolkien's Hobbit and LOTR
-Donaldson's Covenant
-Jordan's tWoT (it used to be good...sadly, no more, so I could care less where it goes)
-Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire - although I'm still reading it as it has yet to end
-Zelazney's Amber
-Rowling's Potter (again, yet to end)

definitely Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson