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Original poster

What is your favorite book of all time?

179 replies

Fishpants · 19/10/2011 15:33

I'm hoping to gather some ideas and some real people recommendations rather than the Top 100 Novels to Read Before You Die type lists.

Disclaimer: I know it's hard to pick just one, so you can pick more than one if you really must. [hwink]

OP posts:
Sossiges · 20/10/2011 10:28

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Hullygully · 20/10/2011 10:07

Middlemarch! How could I have forgot. Yyyyyyy.

And Jane Eyre

And all Austen and The Mayor of Casterbridge

Colyngbourne · 20/10/2011 09:51

Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford - outstanding

Mansfield Park - Austen
Middlemarch - George Eliot
The Cloister & the Hearth - Charles Reade
Fire & Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Aquarius - Jan Mark
Never Let Me Go - Ishiguro
Wuthering Heights -

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Oryx & Crake/Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood

LadyEvilEyes · 20/10/2011 00:31

The Once and Future King by TH White.
The most beautiful book on the Arthurian Legend I've ever read.

bruffin · 20/10/2011 00:25

Rebecca
Jane Eyre
The Dead Zone
The Chrysalids

AScatteringofPoorSardines · 20/10/2011 00:25

As I walked out one Midsummer Morning - Laurie Lee

You will fall in love with him

kerrymumbles · 20/10/2011 00:23

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

GossipWitch · 20/10/2011 00:14

A hand maids tale and ps i love you

dizzydel · 20/10/2011 00:12

Memoirs of a Geisha

FearfulYank · 19/10/2011 22:40

It is, isn't it Hully ? It makes me tear up at times. Blush And I just love those old no nonsense relatives of hers. :)

Oooh, James Herriot! His books make me feel so happy and content.

DiscoDaisy · 19/10/2011 22:28

The War of the Worlds - H.G Wells
Pride and Prejudice

qo · 19/10/2011 22:25

Reindeer Moon By Elizabeth MArshall Thomas,

some reviews ...

"Simply one of the most fascinating books I've ever read."

"This is a great novel that needs to come with a warning. It's has such an rich and authentic texture that those readers who like to submerge themselves in other cultures might get lost in this and never wholly emerge afterwards."

"The reader is quickly drawn in and stays involved right to the end. It?s a book you think about when you are not reading it, and long after you?ve finished."

Hullygully · 19/10/2011 22:20

I've just read Understood Betsy - it's fab.

Flashfix · 19/10/2011 20:54

Pretty much everything ever written by Milan Kundera.

FearfulYank · 19/10/2011 20:43

I'll check out Her Son's Wives, Hully . I have a soft spot for Fisher as I loved Understood Betsy when I was little.

Ghastly the only thing I can think of is My Antonia, but he's not an immigrant and she doesn't die. :o

MumPotNoodle · 19/10/2011 18:17

fishpants avid tudor fan also but found Wolf Hall dire, one of the very rare books that I didn't finish! Much prefer Alison Weir Grin.

GHAHSTLYGHOULYpants · 19/10/2011 17:17

angelas ashes, yes i remember the ho ha about that, kind of took the shine off of it, but it is a gripping yarn.

Bucharest · 19/10/2011 17:15

Cote- perhaps the shitty way Bob treated her??? How odd, I thought she'd still be all protesty and worthy. Sad

morale- IIRC there were interviews with members of his family who said "hold on a minute...." I think some of it was true, but not the awful abject poverty, or the fact that his Dad thumped his Mum and was a boozer. (It was ages ago, and I might have remembered that wrong, but I think the friction was caused between his Dad's side of the family because of how he had been portrayed.

posey · 19/10/2011 17:14

Pinot I'm going to have to read it again! I'll tell him what you said. I think he's used to people telling him they blubbedSmile

exoticfruits · 19/10/2011 17:13

sorry prejudice

exoticfruits · 19/10/2011 17:12

Sebastian Faulks-especially Birdsong
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Pride and Pejudice
Jane Eyre
Miss Garnet's Angel-Salley Vickers
I Capture the Castle-Dodie Smith

whatdoiknowanyway · 19/10/2011 17:01

Remains of the Day
To kill a mocking bird
Time travellers wife
Pride and prejudice
David copperfield
The help

GHAHSTLYGHOULYpants · 19/10/2011 16:59

moraletotallydestroyedbypoopoo No I had a google and it is not him, this is going to drive me nuts. I am sure the author had the name Kingsley either as a 1st or last name. Drat. Might have been about baseball as well. My brain is CRAP.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. yy me too!

renaldo · 19/10/2011 16:52

Hully its 'a vicarage family' by noel streatfield
Its a gem - in fact have just ordered it for 12 year old DD

reelingintheyears · 19/10/2011 16:49

And Sebastian Faulks Girl at the Lion d'or and Birdsong and Charlotte Gray.

And Human Traces.

I love Sebastian Faulks.

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