Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and it is now being hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads. For details of all of the latest prompts for January to March, see Meeghan’s post here.

Today the topic is Top 5 books I want to reread in 2025. Are you planning to reread some favourites in 2025? Maybe that classic you read back in school. Or maybe there’s a new book coming out in a series, and you want to remind yourself what happened in the last book. Whatever it is, let’s share all of our reread plans!!

I don’t often reread books, with the exception of Pride and Prejudice and A Christmas Carol both of which have reread many times.

This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and I’ve joined Brona at This Reading Life in her Austen 2025 project to reread her books, along with the Classics Club’s Sync Read (or readalong), so two of these books are by Austen.

The descriptions are from LibraryThing:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I first read this when I was about 11 or 12 and have reread it many times since. It never fails to delight me. This time I’ll be reading The Annotated Pride and Prejudice edited by David M Shapard. In this classic 19th century story of love battling pride, we meet Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth is a smart, well-rounded woman, and she is one of five unmarried daughters of the country gentleman, Mr. Bennet, a country gentleman. Marriage is at the forefront Mrs. Bennet’s mind, especially since her elderly husband’s estate will not pass down to any of their daughters. The Bennets’ small town is in an uproar when two highborn, eligible gentlemen, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, come to stay. Mr. Bingley takes and instant liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane. Elizabeth’s prideful self does not realize her life is about to change when she meets the intolerable Mr. Darcy, who will make her questions her sensibilities.

Emma by Jane Austen. I’ve only read this once. Emma is the story of a charmingly self-deluded heroine whose injudicious matchmaking schemes often lead to substantial mortification. Emma, “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” Her own great fortune has blinded Emma to the true feelings and motivations of others and leads her to some hilarious misjudgments. But it is through her mistakes that Emma finds humility, wisdom, and true love. Told with the shrewd wit and delicate irony which have made Jane Austen a master of the English novel, Emma is a comic masterpiece whose fanciful heroine has gained the affection of generations of readers.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens. I first read this after watching the 2005 BBC adaptation with Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock and Charles Dance as lawyer Mr Tulkinghorn. A enthralling story about the inequalities of the 19th-century English legal system Bleak House is one of Charles Dicken’s most multifaceted novels. Bleak House deals with a multiplicity of characters, plots and subplots that all weave in and around the true story of the famous case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a case of litigation in England’s Court of Chancery, which starts as a problem of legacy and wills, but soon raises the question of murder.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I can’t remember how old I was when I first read this, but I think I was about 10. It was a Christmas present. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol under financial duress, but it became one of his most popular and enduring stories. The old miser Ebenezer Scrooge cares nothing for family, friends, love or Christmas. All he cares about is money. Then one Christmas Eve he is visited by three ghosts: Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet To Come. These encounters leave Scrooge deeply moved and forever changed. Historians believe that A Christmas Carol contributed greatly to the modern sentimental Christmas.

Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. I first read this many years ago, whilst I was recovering from flu (years before Covid). I loved this book, beautifully written and capturing a vanishing way of life as countryside farming turns to Victorian towns An autobiography of “Laura” – as the author calls herself – which describes in detail her delightful life in a country village. Her self-sufficient world of farm labourers and craftsmen working to the rhythms of the seasons and enjoying their traditional festivities is preserved for readers in this interesting and entertaining narrative.