The Golden Gate was really well done! It was a bit odd reading the sonnets at first but once I got into it, I almost didn’t notice that it was in verse.
A Suitable Boy is very long, yes, but so very, very good. As far as I remember, I had no trouble keeping the cast of characters straight the first time through, even though there are a lot of them. And the action takes place during a single year, so it doesn’t have that weight of a long family saga.
Little, Big by John Crowley
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Name of the Wind & A Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
Freedom and Necessity by Steven Brust and Emma Bull
I was told to stick with it to page 300, which I did, and then couldn’t put it down. You need the first 300 pages to set up all the characters; you have the girl, the boy, the girl’s family, the boy’s family, and many, many other characters whose stories intertwine. And the ending is right.
God Stalk (et sequelae), P.C. Hodgell.
Declare, Tim Powers
A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons.
Snow Crash is such a fun, thrilling read that every time feels like the first time all over again.
That said, I’d have to go with Catch-22.
Zounds. Along with The Chosen, I read that when I was a kid.
I’ve had The Vorrh on my to-read shelf for a couple of years.
Will push it to the front now, thanks.
Et Tu Babe by Mark Leyner
I too loved it the first time, but when I tried again a decade later, some of it, including much of the humor, no longer worked for me. So yeah, maybe for other readers it does work as this kind of “first time” book!
I reread it decades later and it had lost the magic.
I know! The third time I read it, I didn’t even see the humor. It was just really, really depressing at that point…
And you didn’t have to sell your soul! 
(No spoilers here: Expect alternative history, cyber-punk, myth, and very strange magic.)
BTW: I highly recommend Shogun to anyone who enjoyed Dune, the novel. Similar to Dune, its ‘[unusual] stranger in a [very] strange land’ storyline had me glued to its 800 pages. As to the 1980 mini-series, it’s but a scant and superficial slice of what’s in the incredibly dense novel, mixing fiction with actual historical events, e.g., there really was a 17th century Englishman who became a samurai.
Thanks @hecep , I’m looking forward to it.
Books I read more than once as a kid were LOTR and Hobbit, but then I was young, I don’t think I could be bothered to tackle them again nowadays.
Books I would LOVE to read for the first time again:
Anything by Iain ( or M) Banks.
Hitchhikers Guide
Fluke or Magic Cottage by Herbert.
Once Upon a river by Diane Setterfield
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1) by Ada Palmer
Books of the Old and New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Lord Of Light by Zelazny
Dhalgren by Samuel R Delaney
Keep this link open I’ll think of more
The movie equivalent is Alien.
For me, it would have to be Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith, which I reread every few years. I picked it up blind - just based on the back cover text on the way to Heathrow - and spent the next 8 hours having my mind blown. It’s the book I recommend to everyone that I think might be compatible with my worldview (not as a test, that’s what “Weetzie Batt” is for).
I reread it again every few years, and it remains incredible. But to have that first experience over again would be bliss.
Can we get that quote on the the cover of every one of those books? You have captured their essence!
The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams.
If only because I’m not sure I’m up to reading it again.
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