The best books you've ever read

[JustNotFunAnymore]

Following on the from the other thread
where someone asked what the most ridiculous thing you've read in a book was. (And therefore ruining anything on my wish list 😂)
I want to know what the best book you've read is. What book I must read soon.

I'm partway through 'Becoming' by Michelle Obama. I got it as a sample and after two or three chapters had to buy it on my kindle. It's so good. She writes really well.

Also
As I walked out one midsummer morning - Laurie Lee
Read this for the first time aged 11, it was on my dsis O level syllabus. I couldn't put it down. Like all his other books too.

For me -

Rebecca - favourite of all time.
Secret History and The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
The Wolf Hall Trilogy
The Stand - Stephen King
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy

@Changeisconstant

Life after life by Kate Atkinson. Which reminds me I need to buy a new copy as I lent mine out and never got it back!

they are making into a TV drama - should be good (fingers crossed)

I love Kate Atkinson

I read 'Where The Crawdads Sing' by Delia Owens this year and have recommended it to everyone, it immediately joined my favourites shelf.

Other loves include:
'Where'd You Go Bernadette' by Maria Semple
'Beautiful Ruins' by Jess Walter
'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' by Karen Joy Fowler
'The Island' by Victoria Hislop - (though I think this just because I love Crete so much!)
'The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared' by Jonas Jonasson
'The Testament of Gideon Mack' by James Robertson

I always struggle to find good recommendations because I can never quite describe the genre I like, everything is a bit different!

More votes for The Stand and 1984

On the Beach - Neville Shute
The Woman went to bed for a year - Sue Townsend

Here are some of my faves:

Tender is the Night Fitzgerald
Henry James Turn of the Screw
Tolkien LOTR
Heart of Darkness and everything else by Conrad (love him)
Everything by George Eliot
Norwegian Wood Murakami
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Jane Eyre
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
Slaughterhouse 5 by Vonnegut
Stoker's Dracula
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
Hero of Our Time by Lermontov
Anything by M R James (though these are short stories, not novels)
Midnight's Children by Rushdie
Beloved by Morrison
E M Forster Passage to India
The Trial by Kafka
Short stories of Gogol
Money by Martin Amis
Poppy Z Brite His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Marquez

I'm sure there are more but I can't remember them right now.

Cloud atlas by David Mitchel

I like Jodie picoult

@JustNotFunAnymore
Marlena by julie bunting
The party - Robyn Harding
Both of Celeste Ng's books
The colour purple
The last Mrs Parrish - Liv Constantine
The virgin Suicides
The bell jar
The gifted school - Bruce Holsinger
Michelle Campbell's books

It seems easier to recommend my favourite writers:

Alice Munro
Susan Howatch
and Henning Mankell - Wallander series

Phantom by Susan Kay is one I have read over and over since I was a girl. I loved the new Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood, it was gripping.

Also The girlfriend by i think Michelle? Francis
Lie with me - Sabine Durrant
The perfect child - Lucinda Berry
Tigers in red weather - liza Klaussmann
The poison tree - Erin Kelly
Her perfect life - Sam Hepburn

I'm not sure it's the best (depends how you are ranking them), but the one that's stuck in my memory is We Need to talk about Kevin.

I've never been able to fully understand which of the two characters I should empathise with. My conclusion is that's is neither, and that their particular characteristics were just a v v bad mix.

And Platform 7 had quite an impact on me

Rebecca
Cross-stitch - Diana Gabaldon
Snowflower and the Secret Fan
The Great Gatsby
Wuthering Heights
Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon
Never Look Back - Lesley Pearce

The Shack
5 people you meet in heaven

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Rachel's Holiday

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I read it whilst going through a really tough time and it just spoke to me, I’ll always have a space on the bookshelf for it!

Anything by Atwood, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan.

Currently reading (almost finished) and it's sublime: Shuggie Bain , this year's Booker winner. Truly, truly wonderful.

I have books I reread every so often. Some of them remind me of certain times of my life, some I just love.
Jane Eyre
Memoirs of a Geisha
Rachel's Holiday
Anybody Out There?
1984
Handmaids Tale
The Bell Jar
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
Good Morning, Midnight (and Wide Sargasso Sea too) - Jean Rhys
The Go-Between - L P Hartley

For non-fiction I loved Night by Ellie Wiesel. It is about his experience in Concentration Camps during the Holocaust and it is shocking and visceral but also incredibly moving.

I forgot One Hundred Years of Solitude. I always avoided Magical Realism but it was exquisite and I didn’t want it to end

Twenty times a lady by Karyn Bosnak..
Love from both sides by Nick Spalding..... Read either of these if you want to laugh until you are crying and your sides ache..and lets face it - thats what we all need right now!

The Elegance of A Hedgehog

The Five
The Thousand Ships
All my Friends are Superheros
Three Men in a Boat
Anything my Raymond Carver

@PurpleFlower1983

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, all of his books are great to be fair. Atonement by Ian McEwan Behind The Scenes At The Museum by Kate Atkinson is wonderful.

Classics wise, I love Wuthering Heights but it’s nothing for everyone. Great Expectations is superb, as is Jane Eyre.

Agree with The Remains of the Day and everything else by Kazuo. Any time I read his books (which I read over and over again) I’m just in awe and blown away by his writing and the depth of the characters he manages to create. They stay with you long after you have put away the book.