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!

@Fortunesrocks

I think that it’s probably my all-time favourite too!

Real "literature": The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan

Pure Entertainment: The Potter books if I'm honest

Another one I really love:

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky!

The books I recommend to everyone are:
Dark Matter- Michelle Paver
Pirates - Celia Rees
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson

The books that I return to time and time again, as old friends, are:
Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Rivals - Jilly Cooper
Malory Towers - Enid Blyton
A Parcel of Patterns - Jill Paton Walsh

Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine

Not favourite ever books but my holiday reads this year were

The silent patient
The perfect girlfriend

Both perfectly acceptable!

1984 - George Orwell

The Dark Tower - Stephen King (in fact all 7 in this epic)

Interview with the vampire - Anne Rice

Any Terry Pratchett

All books / series I've returned to time and agin

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Beloved
Tess of The d'Urbervilles
God of Small Things

I'm a doomed love story type, obviously!

I also love Amy Tan, as mentioned above. Amazing writer.

Another vote for A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

Lincoln In The Bardo - George Saunders

I hated Life after Life but it's getting mentioned on this thread.
What did I miss ???

Katherine by Anya Seton
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Lots more that i cant recall at the moment

Oh Wind in the Willows
Black Beauty

Wolf Hall

Sorry....The Hobbit

beanaseireann - probably because we are not all the same, so we all like and dislike different books

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (and the others that followed)
Anything by Daphne du Maurier but especially Rebecca
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Most Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie books

'She's come undone' by Wally Lamb is a perfect book.

Like some one upthread I'm reading 'The seven deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle' at the moment and it's amazing.

For a really fun read, try 'The queen of bloody everything' by Joanna Nadine, especially if you were a teen in the 80s

That's Nadin, not Nadine

Some great recommendations here, thank you!

Another note for Daphne DeMaurier - Rebecca.

Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong. An epic, I devoured and loved it and genuinely cared about the characters. One that stays with you.

Also liked Never Let Me Go (Japanese sounding author, sorry cant remember his name). Intriguing and original.

Everyone’s no doubt seen the films now which spoils it but I was gripped by Gone Girl AND Gone Girl

Enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant earlier this year.

Currently reading Nine Perfect Strangers by Lianne Moriarty - same author as Big Little Lies, and enjoying that.

I thoroughly agree with the list put up by @OriginofSpecies (are you me? ) and would also add:

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Riders by Jilly Cooper
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Ooh another really good one that makes me cry every time is 'A place of greater safety' by Hilary mantel. For me it knocks all her more recent ones into a cocked hat

I actually posted on Facebook a few days ago that Sweet Sorrow, the new novel by David Nicholls, is now my favourite ever book.

I don't think I've ever cared so much for a main character and the final paragraph is so clever and subtle that I reread it five times and it meant something different each time.

My other two favourites are:
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (I read it's also Barack Obama's favourite novel)
Atonement by Iain McKewen

Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotson. very moving. Very beautiful. Makes me happy.