The best book you’ve ever read?

[ICECream821]

There we go! Sorry if there is a thread like this…but what’s the best book you’ve ever read? Or I guess the book that left you thinking about it for days after?

For me I would say The Kite Runner

Mine is not very well known :- blood sugar by Suzannah Dunn
It's a coming of age type book about a group of friends - starts in 1981 when they're in sixth form and every chapter is the following year over the next decade and catches up with what they're doing - it's brilliant

I’m not sure it’s the best book I’ve ever read (novel-wise that’s The Secret History for me), or the one that’s moved me the most (That’s The Choice by Edith Eger I think). However, the book I return to again and again, when I’m blue, tired or want to escape is Armisted Maupin’s Tales of the City. I love how I absolutely lose myself in it, every single time. I even have my own room, imagined in exquisite detail at 28 Barbary Lane.

Gosh, just one book?

The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer both by Barbara Kingsolver.

The Handmaid's Tale the Maddadam Trilogy all by Margaret Atwood.

Birdsong Sebastian Faulks.

I can't choose between the Allende books.

1984 Orwell

Michael Pollan The Botany of Desire

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See.

What I loved by Siri Hustvedt

Julian Barnes: Arthur and George

Curtis Sittingfeld American Wife

Sarah Waters books.

Paula McClain The Paris Wife

Elizabeth Gilbert The Signature of All Things

And my new discovery? Ann Patchett. Loved, loved loved Bel Canto

Best lately was The Kite Runner for me as well. I too loved (and cried over) The Poisonwood Bible.
To Serve Them All My Days by RF Delderfield. I read it as a young teenager and then 40 years later. I liked it the first time but got way more out of it recently, and it did stay with me for a while.

A child called it - utterly harrowing, difficult read but powerful story

Tears of the desert

I loved the Book Thief, and Shantaram purely as it was gripping and kept me going over a 3 week trip round India, during which I spotted practically every 5th person reading it! I can't believe all that happened to one person, and the story still could have gone on for another book and I'd still have been gripped. I appreciate some people might have found it boring as hell though.

So many, but a constant on the list is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt is the book I wish I’d written.

@Thirtyrock39

Mine is not very well known :- blood sugar by Suzannah Dunn It's a coming of age type book about a group of friends - starts in 1981 when they're in sixth form and every chapter is the following year over the next decade and catches up with what they're doing - it's brilliant

I remember reading this a few years ago and loved it too - I've still got it somewhere, think I'll read it again, thanks for the reminder!

I am glad someone else put To Serve them All My Days - wonderful book.

Straight Jacket my Matthew Todd, genuinely life changing and so many things in there were just completely me. I genuinely think everyone should read it.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini. I've read it countless times and often find myself thinking of the book.

Another vote for secret history by Donna tart.

I'm reading Shantaram now - it's amazing.

Favourite three are The Heart's Invisible Furies, The Goldfinch and Shuggie Bain.

Another vote for The Secret History. I Iove Donna Tartt.

Madame Bovary

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. So warm, so vast, so relatable.

Two of my favourites of all time are The Sopranos by Alan Warner, and Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson. Honourable mention goes to She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Too many to mention.

Recently Shuggie Bain. I'm Glaswegian, so I felt it to my core. Thankfully I had a very different upbringing, but I cried for the recognition.

I recently read Home Going by Yaa Gyasi and thought it was brilliant. The story of two sisters, one married a slave trader, one ends up becoming a slave. And each chapter is the next generation down the line from each one.

Best book ever? Not sure but over the years I've really enjoyed Birdsong, A Dark Adapted Eye, Where the Crawdads Sing, and The Red Tent. The last one is the only book I've read a few times, basically once as a teen, once in my 20s and once in my 30s. I get something new from it each decade.

I'm reading Shuggie Bain just now. Not very far into it but not enjoying it much...

@impressivelycunty, I was considering saying Shantaram, brilliant book!

Good to see Shuggie Bain on your list, just started it.

I love wide-ranging books with large casts so I enjoyed A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and The Frederica Potter Quartet of books by A.S.Byatt. I read the quartet in the wrong order when I was in my 30s. I’m looking forward to reading them all again when I retire!

@DonLewis they made a film of Bel Canto with Julianne Lewis as the opera singer. Not a patch on the book, obviously.

The last of the mohicans is the only book I’ve ever finished and immediately went back to the start so I could relive it again

The autobiography of Malcolm x is a standout book for me

Probably not now but at the time, the Beach by Alex Garland.

Also Pride and Prejudice.

Excellent thread idea. Coming back with my notebook.