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!

I also find rock autobiographies really immersive (some are ghost written, some are original). The best involve huge levels of debauchery committed by la very likeable person! My top three are:

Marianne Faithful
Nile Rodgers
Anthony Kiedis (from the Red Hot Chilli Pepoers)

I also really loved 'Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight' - had forgotten it but it's an incredible book.

Another beautiful and poignant memoir is Sleeping Arrangements by Laura Shaine Cunningham.

Two of the best books I've ever read are Middlemarch and Half of a Yellow Sun.

But the one I love the most is A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

The keeper of lost things was good

A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini is a favourite, couldn’t put it down. Also loved Memoirs of a geisha by Arthur Golding (I think that was his name)
More recently enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman.

The Kite Runner by Khalid Hussein.

I second One Hundred Years of Solitude

I adored Kite Runner
Favourite ever is Great Gatsby
Everything Jane Austen ever wrote except Mansfield Park
Of Mice& Men and Cannery Row Steinbeck

One that loads of people hate but I really really loved - We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. I loved that so much!

Sarum by Edward Rutherford

The Boudicca series by Manda Scott

LOTR by JRR Tolkien

Also,

11.22.63 by Stephen King. The tv series is fab too.

So many great recommendations here.
I'd add
The talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
Early Jilly Cooper (Imogen, Octavia etc).

I don't about my favourite book ever, but my favourite books I read in the past year were:
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Love this - have added several books to my (never-ending) wish list today after reading this! My favourites from the last decade:
Some Jonathan Coe like What a carve up!, the rotters' club and house of sleep;
The book of human skin by Michelle Lovric;
The secret scripture by Sebastian Barry;
Wild Swans : three daughters of China by Jung Chang;
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick;
Loisaida - a New York story by Marion Stein;
Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman;
The book thief by Markus Zusak;
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden;
Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist;
The Hand that first held mine by Maggie O'Farrell;
Stoner by John Williams (an absolutely beautiful book!)

I'll also add

A tale of two cities - Dickens.

@DotOnTheHorizon have you read the other trilogies that follow directly on from the Farseer trilogy?

Gone with the Wind
Rebecca
A Fine Balance
Anne of Green Gables
The Scarlet Pimpernel

Thanks all! Definitely some great food for thought! I’ve read a few of them already but will compile at list of some of the others. Always great to have suggestions for more reading fodder. 😊

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Ooh yes @WalkingInTheAir13 - love that book!

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin
Memoirs of a Geisha- Arthur Golden (have only read it once)
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman
The Bonesetters Daughter - Amy Tan (love all her books)
Unreliable Memoirs - Clive James (funniest book I have read)

@LemonGingerCakes yes I have, but I find the Madships books and the Dragon's a bit tedious.

I'm definitely much more a fan of Fitz and the Fool - the stories seem to flow much better and the characters are better written (in my opinion)

The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman

I have a habit of forgetting most books once I've read them, but ones that have stayed with me over time are:
Shadow of the Wind
Memoirs of a Geisha
A Secret History
The Goldfinch
The Help
The Hearts Invisible Furies

Currently reading The Second Coming, which is completely different to anything I usually read and is quite funny (in a dark way), but helps me escape. I have added a few of suggestions from this thread, so thanks OP for posting

Brideshead revisited
Middlemarch

I hated Life after Life too. I got bored waiting for yet another bloody death... and We Need to Talk about Kevin. I really wish I had never read that, so gruesome and upsetting, to no purpose.
Am mulling over a shortlist, too tired now, will post in the morning.

Yes, yes to The Hand That First Held mine - read it ? 7 years ago and still love it. Also recommend One Morning Like A Bird.