What is your favourite ever book please?

[Spinderellacutituponetime]

I’m looking for holiday reading recommendations! Just finished my last purchase and trying to find something amazing to read in the last few days of freedom. Will tolerate almost any genre except except extremely romantic /soppy....please help with next choice!

Am I allowed several .

Atonement by Ian McEwan
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton - Jane Smiley
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Regeneration - Pat Barker
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett

A town called Alice - nevil shute
Rebecca - daphne du maurier

Brilliant! Yes. 😊More than one is of course fine! I realise its a very tricky question!

My grandmother went out with Nevil Shute briefly! Only claim to fame. 😉

Love Margaret Atwood! She’s fabulous.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Not everyone likes that one but I personally think it's magical.

@baldyfromstressy loved that book. Been a while since I read it though.

Another vote for His Dark Materials, pretty much anything by Stephen King, Phantom by Susan Kay is brilliant.

I'm currently reading The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe which is fabulous so far (about 1/3 of the way through).

Controversial but I really love We need to talk about Kevin, because of it's ambiguity. See also Never let me go, similarly ambiguous, initially at least.

I am Pilgrim because it's so bloody gripping.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Euginedes for a great story.

@originofspecies is that mad-men-esque? It sounds like it is similar...

Great suggestions!

Never Let me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (NB film awful, book awesome)
Plus I second Station Eleven

I love saga type or British detective so

Earth children Series by Jean Auel
Outlander series by Dianz Gabaldon
Sarum, New Forest, Paris by Edward Rutherford
Pillars of the Earth series Ken Follett

Detective anything tartan noir but best is Stuart McBride

A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber
Under the Skin also Michel Faber
Life after Life and Human Croquet, Kate Atkinson
Lucky, Jackie Collins
Polo, Jilly Cooper

I can read them all over and over.

The Alberta Trilogy by Cora Sandel (translated from Norwegian.)

The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

The book thief
The time travellers wife
Girl on a train

We have always lived in the castle - Shirley Jackson.

She's the master of freaking the feck out of you without being able to put a finger on it.

The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien.

I am about as unreligious as you can get, so it is a surprising choice as it is set in a convent. But it is so cleverly written, encompassing so many human virtues/foibles/failings within one small space.

I'm so glad someone above mentioned A Fine Balance, it's such a vivid work. I'm going to dig it out of the cupboard tomorrow!

A Fine Balance is wonderful!