[Sybarite]

I'm sure there will come a time when I return to some of those that I have read for the first time in the last few years, and I do intend to re-read a number of books that I first read around 20 years ago and don't remember, but in terms of regular re-reads, then really just three:

• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann;

• The Tin Drum by Günter Grass;

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

• the Philip Marlowe novels of Raymond Chandler and the Maigret novels of Georges Simenon.

Having said that, in recent years I have to books that I first read at school, only to appreciate them now where I once hated them. William Golding's Lord of the Flies and Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd are two such examples. And I've also re-read a couple of children's classics – Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which are interesting to see from an adult perspective.