Ani's Summer Friday Faves: Favourite Single Novel Rereadables

My favourite rereadables (yes, that's not a real word) are a strange mix of novels I'm drawn to reread every 4-5 years.

Indian Horse was written about the area where I reside in the summers. Reading Wagamese's words of a family fleeing the residential school recruiters (a way nicer name than they deserve) from the town ten kilometers from my cabin broke my heart. I have read it several times.

My mom loved everything to do with King Arthur. I'm guessing he was her fantasy crush (we all have them). Mary Stewart's Crystal Cave Merlin series was her top KA read but I prefer and have read Marion Zimmer Bradley's more feminine version of the KA story in The Mists of Avalon numerous times. You can tell by how ratty it is how many times I've carted it around.

My friend Jodi recommended Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. I wasn't sure about it since I'm the one human being who hated The Poisonwood Bible. I read PS for her though and it became one of my most read novels. I love all the characters. It is hilarious when old crotchety Garnett catches a snapping turtle with his boot and pulls it along thinking he's having a stroke or some other medical issue affecting his leg. He's also always fighting with the old hippy Nannie Rawley who lives next door. She's me in twenty or thirty years so obviously is my favourite character. The whole story is entrancing and funny (and I learned a lot about coyotes and tobacco too).

A few years back I wrote an unreadable 230,000-word novel that takes place on the East Coast of Canada. I won't blame Ami McKay for my terrible manuscript but I will say she was part of the inspiration for it. I chose the East Coast for my honeymoon because of this book. Since then, I've had such fond memories of the East that I sometimes fantasize about running away and starting a new life there. I adore how the women in The Birth House gather together to protect each other subtly and quietly. If a husband was seen drinking heavily at the pub and had tendencies to come home when in this state and beat his wife, the women would create an urgent need to knit socks for soldiers and all the women would answer the cry thus saving the wife and children from the husband's fist and his pride is saved because he has no clue the women are hiding behind the socks.

I will say more about the Bronte sisters in a future post but I need to mention Jane Eyre now. I love this book and have read it a dozen times and watched every miniseries and movie released. It's dark, dramatic, and soul-wrenching at times. It's superb.

Juliet Marillier is another author I'll speak on again during my Fave Fantasy Friday. The Daughter of the Forest was an accidental purchase. I was working in the middle of the woods at a fishing lodge near my cabin. I had a lot of time that summer so I joined the Science Fiction Book Club. I'll explain what this club was (for the young'ns). The SFBC got you hooked with a dozen or so free books. Once you received them you were on a contract to purchase another half a dozen books at some point. Every couple of weeks, I'd get a box in the mail with two books. If I liked them, I kept them and paid for them and if not, I'd send them back free of charge. One time, I used a box cutter to open it and cut through the dust cover of Daughter of the Forest so I was forced to keep it. I eventually read it and realized it was based on a fairytale I love, The Wild Swans. I read it whenever I need a light, warming book that feels like family.