Comfort Reads

I am a re-reader. I have a little stable of books that I read again and again, in increments, in the window of time between when I lay down in bed and I turn out the light. Sometimes, after a few re-readings, I have to retire a book, permanently or for a number of years. In other cases, I half-regret finishing the book (again) because I wish I could still be reading it, and/or could start it again, right away. These are the core books. My top three core books are Lolita, Infinite Jest, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

• Lolita has, so far, proved inexhaustible, for seventeen years now. I've read it at least 12 times, and probably more than that--the last time, just this past November. It's a rare book in that I read every page, every time. 
  
• Infinite Jest has a lot more material to withstand my exhausting it. I've read the whole text more than once, but I usually do skip certain sections or, at best, skim them.  (It is a lot of book and either the content or the dialect in some sections can be excruciating.)  My copy's about twelve years old now, and I most recently re-read it this past summer, when Infinite Summer was going on--although, I inexplicably stalled out less than fifty pages from the end, this time around.
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay has been holding up very well to re-reading, so far, but it's not as established as the other two, yet.  And there is one section that I read only once, so far. (I suspect that most people familiar with the story could probably guess which section, right away.) I particularly love the earliest sections with the New York setting, and the obvious pleasure that Chabon takes in rending comics into pure text.

"Comfort" read is actually a lousy way to describe these, now that I think about it--the subject matter of all three is grim, at root (i.e. pedophilia, substance abuse, the Holocaust). And all three are difficult, in their own way. But that is where I find the value in them; with these books, I get the benefit of familiarity without the boredom of re-ecountering a fully knowable fictional world.