Tell me your absolute number 1

Favourite book ever has to be
Ender's game - Orson Scott Card. So much detail, such a clever plot and so much empathy for the main character.
After that there is
Jane Eyre
Cat's eye
Rebecca
Gone with the wind
A thousand splendid suns
Mansfield Park
Behind the scenes at the Castle Museum

The Hearts Invisible Furious - on Audible . Oh go this book made me laugh and cry! Just wonderful

The Pillars of the Earth

Stuart a life backwards by Alexander masters. Made me laugh out loud and cry

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Pride and Prefudice - Jane Austin
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Those are the three that get a yearly reread.

Others that have stayed with me and/or that I return to:

The Assasination of Margaret Thatcher - Hilary Mantel. I adored Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies too, but they’re huge, and this collection of short stories really blew me away with her talent.

Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood - the only book I’ve ever immediately started reading from the beginning again as soon as I’d finished it, because I missed ‘Grace’s’ voice

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingslover

The World According to Garp - John Irving, a lot wrong with this book I suppose but I love it still.

The House of Spirits - Isabelle Allende

Mine aren’t high literature but my favourites are:

Harry Potter (I couldn’t leave this off as I’m a huge fan)
Little Women
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series
The Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M Auel

I’m always reading something so love this thread and now have lots of books to try 🙂

Jude the Obscure
Serpent War books by Raymond Feist
Wizards first rule by Terry Goodkind
Outlander
WHeel of Time by Robert Jordan

Bilgewater - Jane Gardam I think but hard to decide. Off to look up all the others people have suggested might be the kick I need to stop messing around on here and get reading again.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (snap, pallisers!)
The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte
Green Dolphin Country, by Elizabeth Goudge

Why be happy when you can be normal? - Jeanette Winterson

A Fine Balance
Cutting for Stone

Any Anita Shreve, Carol Shields or Ann Patchett

Oh and the bell jar & a thousand splendid suns! Too many! I'm now browsing amazon on all the great recommendations x

Probably On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill. Every time I read it I notice something I have missed previously.

The thirteenth tale
Jane Eyre
Little boy lost
The night circus
The book thief
All Kate Morton books are easy to get lost in
Memoirs of a geisha

Huge fan of Anton Lesser here! Yay! I love coming across other AL devotees.

@Didiusfalco I've never read the Falco books - I really should. I only know them from the Radio 4 dramatisations. In The Silver Pigs the aforementioned Anton Lesser breathes "I want you to stay" (to Helena Justina) in such a way that I am reduced to a quivering jelly every time I listen to it.

as you have such excellent taste Well, of Trapido's other novels, I am very fond of Noah's Ark. I also like Kate Atkinson: Behind the Scenes at the Museum and particularly Emotionally Weird. I know a lot of people on here don't like that one but I love it. Strangely, I wasn't as keen on Human Croquet which lots of people seem to rate.

Otherwise, I'm a Trollope fan (Anthony not Joanna) especially the Barsetshire and Palliser novels and some Dickens, in particular, Little Dorrit. I love George Eliot's Middlemarch but don't get on so well with her other novels.

I really should be quiet now. You will have gathered it's a terrible mistake to ask me about the books I like, I can go on for hours!

Favourite author is Jane Austen, closely followed by PG Wodehouse.
Favourite book is more difficult, probably either Agatha Christie’s autobiography or John Aubrey’s Brief Lives.
If it has to be a novel, as most people seem to have interpreted it, then probably Mary Wesley’s The Camomile Lawn.

@BeatriceJoanna. You have been reading it longer than I have then, and I think I first got it over 20 years ago - I’ve just had a look at my copy and it is a battered black swan edition from 1991.

Yes to Katherine deserving better! However I think I liked the fact that there was no pretence that life is perfect, the happily ever after was complicated which felt authentic.

Didiusfalco is in homage to Lindsay Davis’ Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco. The Silver Pigs is excellent.

Out of interest as you have such excellent taste is there anything else you love, just in case I haven’t read it?

Great thread. Lots of old favourites mentioned - might have to reread One Hundred Years of Solitude again now, and Captain Corelli, and Jane Eyre.

But no-one has mentioned The Colour Purple!! Definitely my favourite

Clara ~ Janice Galloway
Alexander trilogy ~ Mary Renault
Tess

Childhood favourite was The Eagle of the Ninth, I lived not far from Lullingstone Roman villa so the setting was very vivid for me!

(Huge fan of Anton Lesser here!)

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts,
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

They’ve stuck in my head. Not sure if I have an absolute favourite though.

@Didiusfalco Have had a name change since I posted that.

I thought BOTMFJ might be a bit too obscure for most people, I doubted if anyone else would have heard of it. I'm old enough to have read an extract from it in Cosmopolitan when it was first published and I went straight out and bought the book. I'm on my third copy now, having worn out two since then.

I sort of enjoyed The Travelling Horn Player but I hated that Jonathan turned out to be such a bastard. Nor was I impressed with Stella - I reckon Katherine deserved better.

Just speculating from your username but are you, by any chance, an Anton Lesser fan?

@AnnaMagdalenaGluck I think you must be my book double! Persuasion and Brother of the More Famous Jack are my favourites, I was just coming on the thread to say that - and I thought the second one was quite niche. Really enjoyed the travelling horn player too.

So many great books on this thread, and so many new ones to add to my reading list.

I could never pick just one book, but to anyone who enjoys sci-fi I always very strongly recommend the magnificent Dark Eden trilogy by Chris Beckett.

A couple of others that don't seem to have cropped up yet; The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro left a big impression on me and Dark Matter by Michelle Paver is probably the most perfect horror I have ever read.

Little Women.
Gone with the wind.
War and Peace.

I've just bought the paperback versions of The Secret History and The Goldfinch to re-read (I have kindle versions)

I've also purchased Steppenwolf - if windchimes can read it 5 times it must be worth a read

Reading as a youngster - especially Enid Blyton - helped me through a very chaotic childhood. The Magic faraway Tree was one of my favourites as a child.