What is the most beautiful book you have ever read?

[umbrellabird]

I've had a tough year and just want to surround myself in good things...

Milan Kundera - the unbearable lightness of being. It's the most incredible off beat love story.

Douglas coupland's generation x - the last chapter reduces me to floods of happy cathartic tears.

Anything by orhan pamuk and kazuo Ishiguro.

I am now, following this thread, going to give the god of small things another try!

Oh yes, Le Grand Meaulnes! All that lovely French countryside, and such beautiful words. I wouldn't be able to watch a film of it, I'd be too busy crying over Yvonne de Galais. At risk of sounding ridiculously poncy, it is best in the original though [embarrassed]

The Go Between. So evocative of lost summer and lost childhood.

One from childhood, but Black Beauty is a unique book, and it placed itself so perfectly in my mind that I only have to hear those two words together and I can feel the green spine and smell the new pages of the first copy I read.

Agree remus; I think Lolita is one of the most beautiful books ever written, and the beauty of the telling stands out even stronger against the wrongness of the tale.

Oh and Swann's Way. Passages of that come back to me surprisingly frequently, and not just when I've been eating madeleines. Gorgeous writing.

Oh goodness, yes, The Go between and Black beauty are lovely.

The basket of flowers by Christoff Von something?
I read it as a child about 8 or 9 and I remember crying a lot as the story was so touching. It entered around the persecution of a poor man and his daughter but I think it had a good ending. Never met anyone who's ever read it or heard of it though.

And if we're getting retro, Little Women and What Katy Did.

I'd like to add

Atonement
I Capture the Castle
The Power and the Glory
Pride and Prejudice.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Lauhpghed and cried all the way through. The imagery is divine.

Can I recommend a non-fiction? I love A Place of my Own by Michael Pollan. He's a beautifully restful and precise writer. The book is about him deciding to build a writing hut, and it moves back and forward between the description of designing and building the hut, and the author's research into architecture and the cultural meanings of buildings.

Silas Marner by George Elliot is also a beautiful read.

Yes Captain Corelli, Little Women, and all of those tumbletumble

Also Wind in the Willows. The descriptions of the river and the Piper at The Gates of Dawn sequence.

Oh I recently read Wind in the Willows to DS2(8). I asked him if he wanted me to skip the more descriptive bits. He absolutely insisted on having every word. It was magical.

I have never met anyone else who has read The god of small things! It is always on my recommended list for others
Would also second Captain Corelli...

I agree on the Phillip Pullmans - I love the language and descriptions, though the Amber Spyglass is my favourite in some ways.

But for sheer beauty, I can never beat the Green Knowe books by Lucy Boston.

Would like to add The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Read it over the summer & am still thinking about it. She writes about loss beautifully

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. It's pure poetry.

Joan I love that George Herbert poem. Weirdly I think Madonna filched a bit of it for one of her pop efforts

I also like a nice bit of poetry when it all gets a bit much. I have a few of those poems for very day of the year anthologies which are great for when you don't know if you want George Herbert or Ogden Nash.

Also love a children's book reread - the Railway Children, Wind in the Willows, Black Beauty all fab.

I'm so looking forward to just that when mine are older tinklylittlelaugh.

Written on the body by Jeanette Winterson.

Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro.

Yes to God of Small Things, Remains of the Day, His Dark Materials, Wind in the Willows and many more.

Also I thought The Snow Child and The Tiger's Wife were both very beautiful books. Never Let Me Go also.

Dh suggested the secret garden.

Agree with voyage of the dawn treader all the Narnia books are amazing but my favourite remains the horse and his boy

I nominate russel Hoban the mouse and his child. Another older childrens book but perfect and very poignant. It's my desert island essential

Reading lovely books to my children is one of my great pleasures. DS and I have just finished Finn Family Moomintroll; I have 4 kids and have read it countless times. Tove Jansson is absolutely matchless in capturing the very essence of motherhood. I get all choked up at regular intervals because it is just so lovely.

The diving bell & the butterfly by jean dominique bauby.
Beautiful & memorable