This is a re-read, but I want credit for it for this year's reading challenge since it's been so long. It's always a little bit of a risk, returning to previously-beloved books after several years' worth of life + reading experiences. A book that spoke to you at a certain point in your life may have lost some of its appeal with age (yours or its). Thankfully that was mostly not the case for me with Dragonflight. 
 I love, love, love all the thought that went into building the world of Pern. It's not just a nice map and a complicated political system -- although those things are certainly important. The entire world has its own backstory. How did dragons come to exist and how do they function? What is Thread and how does it work? Why is there a whole extra abandoned continent and what sort of undiscovered stuff is going on over there? 
 McCaffrey didn't just plop down some random dragons and dream up an extra-dangerous version of acid rain; pretty much every aspect of Pern is well-planned and I am SUCH a sucker for a unique, detailed setting. I can usually forgive a few undercooked characters or predictable plots as long as the world in which those things are happening is a really interesting place that provides for lots of fruitful daydreaming. The more I read, the more I realize that a so-called high fantasy with a really fantastic setting is my genre krytponite (/ht Book Riot). 
 That's not to say that certain aspects of Dragonflight aren't problematic. It's very obvious by the way women are portrayed and treated -- even the best, "strong" main women -- that this book was written in the 1960's (and it's worse in the next book in the series, Dragonquest, which I'm reading again right now). As a middle schooler who hadn't yet thought much about feminism or any other social issues, much less about how those things might apply to the books I was reading, this didn't phase me. Now, though, certain character descriptions and scenes (the hero of the story actually shaking his leading lady several times like some kind of naughty child?!?!) were jarring enough to snap me completely out of the story. If I was reading these books for the first time as an adult I think I'd be much more irritated.