I've just finished reading "I Captured the Castle" by Dodie Smith, authoress of 101 Dalmations.  It is a fabulous book.  I wish I'd read it when I was younger because I would like to be reading it again and again which I think I will.  It's that sort of book.  There's a bit of a description below:

The glorious return of one of the century’s most beloved novels! I Capture the Castle is as brightly witty and adventuresome today as it was when it was first published fifty years ago. Long unavailable in American stores, it has been lovingly passed down from generation to generation. Until its reissue, it enjoyed the rare privilege of being one of the most requested items of used bookdealers.

I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the old castle’s walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has “captured the castle”--and the heart of the reader--in one of literature’s most enchanting entertainments.

"You’ll love it, it has been one of my favorite novels. Cassandra Mortmain is one hell of a narrator, offering sharp wit, piercing insight and touching lyricism. She is a heroine we readers wish we could be, a young woman it is impossible not to adore. " ———Susan Isaacs

"To say that I couldn’t put it down is hardly original, but true…I think it is a book that will be much lived in by many people, because you can live inside it, like Dickens. " ———Christopher Isherwood

"Dreamy and funny...an odd, shimmering timelessness clings to its pages. A thousand and one cheers for its reissue. A+ " ———Entertainment Weekly

" It’s as fresh as if it were written this morning, and as classic as Jane Austen. I’m very happy to have met it. " ———Donald E. Westlake

"Much more fun than the reader has any right to expect " ———The Weekly Standard

"A delicious, compulsively readable novel about young love and its vicissitudes. What fun! " ———Erica Jong

"It is an occasion worth celebrating when a sparkling novel, a work of wit, irony and feeling, is brought back into print after an absence of many years. So uncork the champagne for I Capture the Castle. " ———The Los Angeles Times