Last week I talked about my reading quirks. With so many books in the world, I like to cover as much ground as possible by not reading the same author twice. I’m told this is unusual. For the same reason people go to Starbucks and Club Med, readers like to know what they’re going to get. Books sales indicate that people tend to favor series and the familiar pleasure of authors they’ve read before.
Despite my lone wolf status, I break the rules sometimes. Here is my second list of authors I’ve read at least three times.
1.
Although I give Anne Tyler official credit for turning me into a leisure reader, Sue Townsend deserves some credit as well. While living in Germany at age seventeen, a friend gave me a copy of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and I fell in love. It was no mere fling: I kept with the series about an earnest naif in Thatcherite England until I was in my mid-thirties. Bittersweet, funny, and spot-on, her books are another gem from Britannia.
2.
On the other side of time, I recently discovered Taylor Jenkins Reid and have plowed through three of her books in as many years. Fiction centered in show business, there is a page-turning simple pleasure to living vicariously through her heroines. Daisy Jones and the Six is in my top 25 books. I liked Evelyn Hugo a little less and Malibu Rising just fine.
3.
An Oprah pick, Elizabeth Berg is a little difficult to otherwise categorize. I can’t say I relate to this type of domestic novel as much as I enjoy spending time in the world of its protagonists. Open House was my favorite, but I also enjoyed this one and Never Change.
Books Smitten 