Tell me your absolute number 1

The Harry Quebert Affair - Awesome
The Night Circus - Magical
Anything by Kate Morton for escapism and intrigue

Wolf Hall
Bring Up The Bodies
Fingersmith
Lolita
Olive Kitteridge
An Amateur Marriage
I Capture The Castle
The Haunting of Hill House
Cold Comfort Farm
The Stand
The Goldfinch
Americanah
The Underground Railroad
The Sellout
Music and Silence
The Road
Rebecca
Any PG Wodehouse
Middlemarch

All my total favourites, and if I had to pick a selection to take with me to a desert island, they are what I would take.

My top books are
"We ve always lived in a Castle"
"Mr Pettigues last stand"
"Oranges are nt the only fruit"
"The Secret Scripture"
"The Guernsey Literacy and Potatoe Peel Society"
I picked these as I never reread but would reread these...

Sorry should read deployment

carbon. I totally agree I read Ruth Rendal in my early 20's and loved them but stopped reading them....
Joanna Trollope earlier books were really well written but her last 4 or 5 were hit and miss. Can't remember the title of the one were the husband come s back from a deploym? This was well written as my DH is in the forces and I ve lived it. However her recent one is bad... it's sitting on my bedside locker for months...

piggy I agree that Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendall's later books weren't always up to the standard of some of her earlier ones, but as the old saying goes "when she was good, she was very, very good" and imo no one else wrote or writes quite like her. As well as Asta's Book, also loved A Dark Adapted Eye, The Chimney Sweeps Boy, The Minataur, The Blood Doctor and loads more the titles of which elude me at the moment. On the subject of other authors who wrote some good stuff and then when right off. Joanna Trollope springs to mind, her earlier books conjured up family dynamics wonderfully well, particularly Other People's Children, the title alluding to those who split with the partner of their own children only to find themselves living with their new partner's kids. One of her later books that made me realise she'd lost it was Friday Nights, complete drivel.

Wolf Hall
The Goldfinch
The Magician's Assistant
A Suitable Boy

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson

The Stand - Stephen King

Emily of New Moon (trilogy) LM Montgomery

The Three Body trilogy - Cixin Liu

Wildly fond of loads of others mentioned too!

Naming just one is impossible.

The Grapes of Wrath
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
A House for Mr Biswas
An Equal Music
Rebecca

A Suitable Boy, my copy has an introduction that says something like like (its in the other room and I'm waiting for DD2 to nod off) 'if you make time for these characters they will stay with you forever' and it is true. I read it15 or more years ago and it has stayed with me more than any other book.

Can’t think of an all time favourite so I’m going to suggest starting with A Man Called Ove which I read this year. It will be a very gentle and entertaining way to get back into reading.

I loved a Little Life but don’t read that first!

The Snow Child is a beautiful read too.

Having read the Goldfinch Andy really enjoyed it, I was excited to read The Secret History.

I hated it. Just didn’t like any of the characters, didn’t connect with it at all.

My favourite used to be Never Let me Go by Ishiguro but the film ruined it for me.

Favourite book of all time? Easy.

Pollyanna.

One only?

It’d have to be Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel

Why don't they put a good Barbara Vine on TV any more? They were always good!

I remember A dark Adapted Eye being on years ago.

The Secret History Donna Tartt .... the only book that I have read more than once ....

I too loved Asta's Book. Haven't read it in an age. A Dark Adapted Eye was also superb.

The Time Travelers Wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
Still Alice

carbuncle I too love Asta's Book! I had forgotten it until you mentioned it!

Sadly, the later Barbara Vine stuff declined, I think.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin - made me cry in a a public place!

Beloved - few books are so powerful

God of Small Things - amazing

Tess

White Teeth

Am and English teacher and have returned to these books by necessity many times. They always move me.

Nobody has mentioned Gone Girl??

Which is why I will be returning to this thread

Burial rites

.

Star of the Sea
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
The Crimson Petal and the White
The Quincunx
Atonement
The Goldfinch
The Blind Assassin
Life After Life
We Had It So Good
The Forgotten Garden
Gone With The Wind
Angela's Ashes
Possession
A lot of Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell such as Asta's Book

If I had to choose just one, Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor

Belgravia by Julian Fellowes