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!

The Help
Time Traveller’s Wife
Gone With The Wind
Jane Eyre
Elinor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
The Flirt (by Kathleen Tessaro - very funny)

Anything by Daphne du Maurier but especially Rebecca.
Howard's End E M Forster
The Goldfinch and the Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Wolf Hall - Hillary Mantel

Sorry got carried away! Station 11 mentioned above is also brilliant.

Some that have already been mentioned that I can second are:
Daphne Du Maurier - ‘Rebecca’
Lionel Shriver - ‘We need to talk about Kevin’
Kate Atkinson - ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’
Margaret Atwood - ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

I also really love Atwood’s Maddadam trilogy (‘Oryx & Crake’, ‘The Year of the Flood’ and ‘Maddadam’).

Of mice and men

IT Stephen King, terrified me but I couldn't put it down, read it many moons ago but I still remember it!The Revenant was also unputdownable!

For something a little lighter I never tire of "my family and other animals". I read it once a year and I laugh out loud every time.

The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien.

I love this too but my favourite of hers is probably The Ante Room.

I love anything by Trollope, especially The Last Chronicle of Barsetshire. Could and have re-read them over and over.

Love Kate Atkinson, especially Life After Life and A God in Ruins.

I love a trilogy by an american writer Cheryl Mendelson Morningside Heights, Love Work Children, and All for Jane.

One of the best books I have ever read is Gilead by Maryane Robinson

Miss Marjoribanks by Mrs Oliphant is a delight.

Also the Rizzoli and Isles series of books by Tess Gerritson

Portobello - Ruth Rendell. Don’t be put off by her Wexford books, this is a little gem.

I loved both The Kite Runner and a Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini but I think my favourite is The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

For really gripping books the Shardlake series by CJ Sansom is amazing although bit grim. I also loved Blood and Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

The grapes of wrath or east of Eden, John Steinbeck, were life changing books for me as a teenager.

'Don't let's go to the dogs tonight' - Alexandra Fuller. An autobiog, not my favourite genre but it was so gripping. What a life.

Requiem for a Wren - Neville Shute
Cat's Eyes - Margaret Atwood
The Persuit of Happiness - Douglas Kennedy
Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild

Currently reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and absolutely loving it

I never got on with Kate Atkinson until Life After Life and A God in Ruins - loved them and have re-read them twice, so I recommend giving them a go.
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

Apparently I'm obsessed with wartime novels!

The blue castle by LM Montgomery

@EugenesAxe you must read this if you haven't already ❤️

The blue castle by LM Montgomery

Read this because of a thread on MN. So lovely.

For anyone of a romantic bent I also strongly recommend Eva Ibbotson - lovely books. Not high literature but well written love stories that are delightful.

Oh and OP am so envious of your grandmother having darted Nevil Shute! My dad loved his books (and I did too as a result - think A Town Like Alice is just wonderful)

Death and the penguin by Andrey Kurcov (black comedy)
Douglas Coupland books
Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton is making the film atm)
Maximum bob - Elmore Leonard
The princess bride

Watermelon by Marion Keyes

Purpletigers I also loved The Good Earth, a wonderful book which I must re-read.

I loved Gone With the Wind, the book rather than the film, they are very different.

Katherine by Anya Seton is probably my favourite book ever. A well written, romantic historical novel. It was also my late grandmother's favourite book & I have her hardback copy. I feel a connection with her whenever I read it.

I've got so many great suggestions for future reading from this thread, thanks all.

Shamelessy place marlking so I can write some of these down.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

And

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

I read these two one after the other on vacation a few years ago and was fascinated. Hemingway is writing about his time in Paris as a young writer. It is an early novel of his. The Paris Wife is a novel focusing on Hemingway's life in Paris with his first wife Hadley.

I think I read A Moveable Feast first. They complement each other very well.

Any Agatha Christie
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (Very Different from the film)