I've always thought of it as a terrible habit, but I've come recently to realise that a big part of my love of books comes from reading the same ones over and over again.

Andrew Marr, infamously, claims to read War and Peace every year. I can't yet lay claim to such feats of repetition, there's a lot to be said for developing a lifelong relationship with a small cabal of books that sum up the magic of words for you.

Favourite books are like good friends: to see a person only once before moving on to the next would increase the number of people you get to meet over a lifetime, but would also deprive you of some rich and meaningful relationships. I have a friend who never reads the same book twice while being happy to meet up with the same people regularly. Although I see her point, that the best book ever may be just around the corner, I can't help but hunker down with the ones I know I can rely on.

My rereading list is small enough to ensure that I get through a fair number of newies - which includes oldies, if you know what I mean - and varied enough to make each one crucial to a particular part of my life. Brian Eno's diary, A Year With Swollen Appendices, gets a yearly look-in because its boundless curiosity always enthuses me. Howard's End is another perennial, joined last year by Zadie Smith's EM Forster homage, On Beauty: both remind me to connect.

I've read The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, every year since 2001 because it's so sodding brilliant. George Orwell's Down and Out In Paris and London, depressingly, never ceases to be relevant. More rarely, but often enough to feel like distant but much-loved aunties, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are dusted down for reappraisal. Both of these remind me, among other things, to read more books written before the invention of the light bulb. (I may read a lot, but it doesn't make me well-read).

Not every act of rereading is purely for its own sake. Each year begins with a solemn promise to myself that I will read Proust's In Search of Lost Time in its entirety. This generally means that I read Swann's Way every January. I haven't got more than halfway through the second volume since 1998: not because it's boring - you can tell from the first book that reading the rest will change your life - but because the call of my other favourites becomes too loud to ignore. So, what are your favourites?