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...

The Jeanette Winterson mentions reminded me of Lighthousekeeping. I'm no a huge fan of hers, but the writing in this is stunning.

Jim Crace writes beautifully, too.

not a huge fan!

Completely agree with Evelyn Waugh and Katherine Mansfield's short stories. Oscar Wilde's short stories (especially The Nightingale and the Rose, The Selfish Giant and the Happy Prince) are also exquisitely heartbreaking.

I always find 'By Grand Central Station I sat Down and Wept' exceptionally beautiful but maybe I just fall in love with the title every time. :) The Brothers Karamazov, some Doris Lessing and Jane Austen.

I agree you should include poetry E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Philip Larkin.

And as others have said so much children's literature. Obviously The Velveteen Rabbit but also authors like Shirley Hughes. Annie Rose is My Little Sister has me choking every time I read to my children. I guess beauty is always a reflection of your own life.

The inheritance of loss.. this reminds me it's due yet another rereading!

I read Annie Rose is my Little Sister to my ds just after his sister was born. I nearly didn't get through the ending. Also Dogger. I also had never enjoyed The Owl and the Pussycat until I read it to an enthusiastic child.

Robert Louis Stephenson's poetry for children.

Poetry, can't beat Keats for beauty, To Autumn.

Sylvia Plath 'Morning Song' and 'You're' for motherhood.

Katherine Mansfield, some of those really stay with you, it was mentioned on another thread recently but 'The Doll's House' especially.

Agree Murakami.

Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott. Everything by Anne Tyler but Saint Maybe and Ladder of Years would be two of my favourites. All the Anne of Green Gables books. Union Street by Pat Barker. Unless by Carol Shields. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham. Brideshead Revisited and A Handful of Dust. I also agree with Possession, The God of Small Things and Of Mice and Men.

Anything by Isabel Allende or Salman Rushdie ( yes really)

This thread is making me want to re-read lots of my books.

I also love the Poisonwood Bible and Flight Behaviour and the Lacuna by Barbara Kinsolver- such beautiful writing.

Also, the Ghost Road trilogy by Pat Barker (and Union street, as mentioned by pp).

Girl with a pearl earring. Anything by Tracey Chevalier actually.

Oh I loved The inheritance of loss!

The island Victoria Hislop - sad, beautiful have reread a couple of times, have enjoyed all her books so far

Another vote for Wolf Hall. It's just so perfect, as a piece of literature. Plus yes, there is something about the way she writes Thomas Cromwell.

I found On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks beautiful, but it is sad beautiful, not happy. It has the most beautiful line I've ever read: a hunger for his presence that his presence could not sate

I liked the Rosie Project - not necessarily a 'beautiful' book, but light hearted, heart warming and funny.

Or maybe The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
another vote for The Five People You Meet in Heaven

and I must read Like Water for Chocolate again...

BolshyBookworm - YY to Poisonwood Bible and Flight Behaviour - two of all time my favourite books and I think Flight Behaviour is one I will go back to again and again, that's definitely a beautiful book.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. The sort of book you have to keep stopping to reread stunning passages, quiet and beautiful.

I came on here to say Tanith Lee as well ,LaQueen. I've just read Louisa The Poisoner - short, sharp, slightly nasty, but absolutely perfect! My favourite TL book is probably Heart-Beast and I love her short stories.

Most of the books I've really loved have a fairytale theme. Thomas The Rhymer by Ellen Kushner is wonderful and may have my vote for the most beautiful book ever written! Patricia McKillip's Winter Rose is lovely, as is Sharon Shinn's The Shape Changer's Wife. Keeping the wife theme, I thouroughly recommend The Fox Wife by Kij Johnson. If you're okay with a sad book, Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is gorgeous but devastating (and she's also written a short story called Sister Dark on similar themes, which is worth looking out for). For something happier, Terry Pratchett's Men At Arms, Lords And Ladies or Maskerade, or less happy but more thoughtful, TP's Monstrous Regiment. Sunshine by Robin McKinley, Beauty, Grass and Gibbon's Decline And Fall by Sheri Tepper are also superb.

Another vote for Gilead. Utterly beautiful.

Marilynne Robinson just published Lila - narrator is the wife in Gilead - in the US. I don't think it is published yet in UK. It is equally beautiful.

Driving over Lemons by Chris Stewart is a beautiful travel memoir that stays with you.

The Enchanted April - Elizabeth von Arnim

Oh, I LOVE Elizabeth von Arnim.
Tbh I think her more satirical ones are better than the romantic ones but I love how she can write about very soppy things without getting over-lyrical and without wasting words.
This has been an interesting thread because it seems a lot of my least favourite books are other people's favourites - without naming names, a lot of the books on here are things I find hideously over-written. Which just goes to show how varied personal taste can be.

I love the way Pat Conroy writes, Beach Music and The Prince of Tides are beautiful and poetic.

I also read a Paulo Coelho book years ago, which I think was The Alchemist; I remember loving it and buying it for gifts a few times yet I can't now recall what it was about or even if it was that particular book - I have read others by him and was put off in one of his books where the character "meets the author, Paulo Coelho..." - really odd!

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett is my go-to book for smiling through tears. It is a child's book that you never grow out of. I know of no better evocation of childhood, friendship, bereavement, sorrow, nature, painful green shoots of hope and the enduring power of love that outlasts death. It is perfect.

A Thousand Splendid Suns here.