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...

Oh The Secret Garden. Magical.

Haruki Murakami - anything by him
Tiny Sunbirds far away
Half of a yellow sun
Miss smillas feeling for snow

I love Half Of A Yellow Sun too. Beautiful writing.

I also love reading Graeme Green, The End Of The Affair is my favourite.

Of Mice and Men

Toms Midnight Garden is a beautiful, magical book.

Any poetry by Musaemura Zimunya - try collections like Kingfisher, Jikinya and other poems.

My most beautiful book is The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Beautiful, tragic, deeply evocative. Made me go back and read Jane Eyre again with fresh eyes.

If you want a happy, beautiful book then I recommend The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. It's almost dreamlike in how lovely it is.

The Book Theif.

My first comment when I finished it was actually ''That was the most beautiful book I've ever read.'

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett

A Suitable Boy -Vikram Seth

The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan Eng

The Great Gatsby for its decadence - Scott Fitxgerald
Persuasion for unrequited love and regret - Jane Austen
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 for evoking teenage angst perfectly - Sue Townsend
Owl Babies for motherhood - Martin Waddell

Shameless place marking so I can take notes.

I am seconding a thousand splendid suns, five people you meet in heaven and the goldfinch.

Also adding the unlikely pilgrimage of Harold fry. Gentle but life affirming. A wonderful read.

I didn't love 'a Thousand Splendid suns' as much as I did the writer's first book, 'Kite runner'.

100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Breathtakingly beautiful prose

Am I the only one who found A Thousand Splendid Suns a rather unpleasant read? Didn't find much beauty in it at all.

I agree that Sue Townsend writes absolutely beautifully. Such a shame she didn't do more "serious" novels.

Lots on here that i love - George Eliot, Angela Carter, Milan Kundera, Isabel Allende. Would add Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill - absolutely beautiful book without a single word wasted. Also The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Expurery - definitely not just for children.

Ann Holm - I am David

Simple and very very powerful

I would like to add support for these ones, which have already been mentioned:
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
The Great Gatsby -
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby

But would also add:
Kim - Rudyard Kipling
The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko Ogawa
Embers - Sandor Marai

I've just ordered The Summer Book after recommendations on here, it is only £1.79 on the Kindle if anyone's interested.

Clawdy for me, the beauty of A Thousand Splendid Suns is in the way the characters go through so much, experience so much ugliness and inhumanity, yet keep their own innate goodness (their ability to love and trust, their own humanity) intact.
I also like the feminist angle.

YY to on the Black Hill. I love all of Bruce chatwins work.

skolastica when the dog is shot in I am David, snivel. A wonderful book.

The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver-so descriptive, I've read and re read it. Rebecca by DDM-it's like watching a film reading it, in particular the part where she walks through the rhododendron garden, you can almost smell them