I’m feeling all better now, just in time for my son to go into the hospital this morning to have his tonsils out. Since that means I’ll be spending the next few days helping an almost-three-year-old recuperate, I figure I’ll have some reading time as he snoozes under the benefit of painkillers. In a situation like that, however, I don’t want something new and challenging. I want an old favorite, a familiar tome that doesn’t challenge or surprise, but welcomes me back like a old comfortable sweatshirt, or a Labrador retriever in front of a fire.

That means I am hitting my re-read shelf. Every bibliophile has (at least) one – the repository of those favored volumes that will never be discarded, or traded in for credit at the used book store down the street. So, dear readers, fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviewswhat’s on your re-read shelf, and how do you decide what earns its place on the keeper list?

As for me, I’m going to go blow the dust off my copy of Mercedes Lackey’s By The Sword, and tuck it in my purse for the waiting room.

Post a comment and we’ll enter you in a drawing to win a copy of Jennifer Estep’s Spider’s Bite. Or, if that book isn’t to your fancy, we’ll let you pick one out of our stacks.

Author

  • Ruth Arnell

    RUTH ARNELL (on FanLit's staff January 2009 — August 2013) earned a Ph.D. in political science and is a college professor in Idaho. From a young age she has maxed out her library card the way some people do credit cards. Ruth started reading fantasy with A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — books that still occupy an honored spot on her bookshelf today. Ruth and her husband have a young son, but their house is actually presided over by a flame-point Siamese who answers, sometimes, to the name of Griffon.