Tell me your absolute number 1

[mrssunshinexxx]

Favourite book doesn't matter what genre ... 2018 resolution get off my phone and get my head in books again I used to love reading.... thanks in advance

[squoosh]

I too loved Asta's Book. Haven't read it in an age. A Dark Adapted Eye was also superb.

[Kilpitlees]

The Secret History Donna Tartt .... the only book that I have read more than once ....

[Piggywaspushed]

Why don't they put a good Barbara Vine on TV any more? They were always good!

I remember A dark Adapted Eye being on years ago.

[Taffeta]

One only?

It’d have to be Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel

[SorenLorensonsInvisibleFriend]

Favourite book of all time? Easy.

Pollyanna.

[Taffeta]

Having read the Goldfinch Andy really enjoyed it, I was excited to read The Secret History.

I hated it. Just didn’t like any of the characters, didn’t connect with it at all.

My favourite used to be Never Let me Go by Ishiguro but the film ruined it for me.

[EveryoneTalkAboutPopMusic]

Can’t think of an all time favourite so I’m going to suggest starting with A Man Called Ove which I read this year. It will be a very gentle and entertaining way to get back into reading.

I loved a Little Life but don’t read that first!

The Snow Child is a beautiful read too.

[Nicae]

A Suitable Boy, my copy has an introduction that says something like like (its in the other room and I'm waiting for DD2 to nod off) 'if you make time for these characters they will stay with you forever' and it is true. I read it15 or more years ago and it has stayed with me more than any other book.

[MiddlingMum]

Naming just one is impossible.

The Grapes of Wrath
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
A House for Mr Biswas
An Equal Music
Rebecca

[wiltingfast]

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson

The Stand - Stephen King

Emily of New Moon (trilogy) LM Montgomery

The Three Body trilogy - Cixin Liu

Wildly fond of loads of others mentioned too!

[AdaColeman]

Wolf Hall
The Goldfinch
The Magician's Assistant
A Suitable Boy

[carbuncleonapigsposterior]

piggy I agree that Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendall's later books weren't always up to the standard of some of her earlier ones, but as the old saying goes "when she was good, she was very, very good" and imo no one else wrote or writes quite like her. As well as Asta's Book, also loved A Dark Adapted Eye, The Chimney Sweeps Boy, The Minataur, The Blood Doctor and loads more the titles of which elude me at the moment. On the subject of other authors who wrote some good stuff and then when right off. Joanna Trollope springs to mind, her earlier books conjured up family dynamics wonderfully well, particularly Other People's Children, the title alluding to those who split with the partner of their own children only to find themselves living with their new partner's kids. One of her later books that made me realise she'd lost it was Friday Nights, complete drivel.

[bootygirl]

carbon. I totally agree I read Ruth Rendal in my early 20's and loved them but stopped reading them....
Joanna Trollope earlier books were really well written but her last 4 or 5 were hit and miss. Can't remember the title of the one were the husband come s back from a deploym? This was well written as my DH is in the forces and I ve lived it. However her recent one is bad... it's sitting on my bedside locker for months...

[bootygirl]

Sorry should read deployment

[bootygirl]

My top books are
"We ve always lived in a Castle"
"Mr Pettigues last stand"
"Oranges are nt the only fruit"
"The Secret Scripture"
"The Guernsey Literacy and Potatoe Peel Society"
I picked these as I never reread but would reread these...

[TossDaily]

Wolf Hall
Bring Up The Bodies
Fingersmith
Lolita
Olive Kitteridge
An Amateur Marriage
I Capture The Castle
The Haunting of Hill House
Cold Comfort Farm
The Stand
The Goldfinch
Americanah
The Underground Railroad
The Sellout
Music and Silence
The Road
Rebecca
Any PG Wodehouse
Middlemarch


All my total favourites, and if I had to pick a selection to take with me to a desert island, they are what I would take.

[DerelictWreck]

The Harry Quebert Affair - Awesome
The Night Circus - Magical
Anything by Kate Morton for escapism and intrigue

[AiryFairy1991]

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

[Ethereall]

The God of Small Things
The Stand
Fingersmith
The Secret History

[TossDaily]

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

How could I have forgotten that?

[carbuncleonapigsposterior]

I forgot the Shadow of the Wind Another one I really liked it a lot, would definitely figure in my top 20.

[FucksBizz]

1984
Moving
The Boy Made of Blocks
Unsticky
Call the Midwife
Dangerous Crossing

[bookbook]

I very rarely reread, but has to be Pride and Prejudice and The Francis Lymond series by Dorothy Dunnett
Then others I could re read
The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick
Diary of an Ordinary Woman by Margaret Forster
Diary of A Provincial Lady by E M Delafield
44 Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff

[Thehairthebod]

Once I have finished ploughing through Harry Potter I am going to read The Secret History. I am really worried I won't like it or won't get it!

My all time favourite is The Handmaid's Tale.

[Cooroo]

Kuriusoranj - Replay! I've hardly met a soul who knows this book and it is utterly wonderful isn't it? Totally spoiled Time After Time for me because I felt it had been done so well already.

My personal top books are
Emma
Barchester Towers
I Capture the Castle
And just at present, The Ocean at the End of the Lane because despite some flaws it makes me shiver deep inside.