Best book you’ve ever read...

[Beautyschooldropin]

Wanting ideas for summer reading really. What’s the best book you’ve ever read? Do you have a book that you go back to and read again and again? Do you listen to audiobooks? Would you recommend them?
TIA!!!📚

Shuggie bain,couldn't put it down

@Defeatedbylife

Shuggie bain,couldn't put it down

I’ve just started this recently.

@WhoNeedsaManOfTheWorld Bought The Poisonwood Bible yesterday in Daunt Books after one of the booksellers recommended it to me as amazing and totally addictive!

I've only recently got into reading as a hobby so I've not read widely enough to say the best book ever. Though I have loved Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend) and All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

I couldn't choose one best book. For long family sagas, I loved Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.
One of the only books I've re-read more than once is We need to talk about Kevin, by Lionel Shriver.
Never Let Me Go, brilliant and devastating.
I am Pilgrim: Gripping to the Max!

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser.

.

The best book I read last year was Girl by Edna O'brien. Not the most cheerful subject but the author has such an incredibly skilled, light touch that it's not the agonyfest others might have made of it.

My cousin Rachel
The Mayor of Casterbridge

@AgentProvocateur

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, but it’s a terribly sad book.

This is my all-time favourite too. Brilliant and devastating.

I also loved A Suitable Boy, which seems to have polarised opinions on here.

@YellowMonday

My favourites include,

Atonement
Middlemarch
Jane Eyre
Cave of the Clan Bear (Earth's Child series)
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Alchemist
Year of Wonders
The Thorn Birds
The Blind Assassin
Wolf Hall
Life of Pi
The Sea

My most respected non-fiction works are Helen Garner's Joe Cinque's Consolation and This House of Grief. Both texts significantly challenged me and left a lasting impact. I adore Garner's body of work.

Couldn't agree more re Helen Garner - a wonderful writer.

Bonjour tristesse by Francois Sagan is a great book to read in the summertime. I really like Zoli by collum Mc cann and The Collector by John Fowles.

@DramaAlpaca

My favourite book ever is Katherine by Anya Seton. I re-read it every few years. Great literature it isn't but for some reason it touches my heart.

One of my favourites too! I love all her books, Avalon is another good one!

Another vote here for Katherine by Anya Seton. I re read Green Darkness by her recently and really didn't like it. I think it was written in early 1970s and had the attitudes towards women of that time.

I think my all time favourite is A Tree grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. It's wonderfully written, set in 1912 and you really feel transported back to that era. Life was so hard. Some of the liberal subject matter surprised me as it was written in 1942.

@colouringindoors I bought The Enchanted April at the weekend and will start it later!

We were liars by E Lockhart
Fractured by Dani Atkins

Both because they took me by surprise. The endings to both have really stuck with me.

My Cousin Rachel
The Pursuit of Love
Rachel’s Holiday and,
Mothering Sunday

Are probably my favourites of all time.

Best recent read is Hamnet though not such a fan of her other books

The sweet pea books are a funny summer read > female serial killer but in comedy form, you kind of sympathise with her in the end...almost!

Rebecca
The Pat Barker trilogy
The bonfire of the vanities
Anything by Anne Tyler but especially Breathing Lessons
The Road (Cormac McCarthy) - in fact all of the border trilogy

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - astonishing book

Rebecca
East of Eden
The Bell Jar
The Sea, The Sea
The Owl Service
The Poisonwood Bible
Birdsong
Memoirs of a Geisha
No More Meadows

yoshiblue oh wow! Really hope you enjoy it 😊

Love the du Maurier love but if I was picking a holiday read I would go for Frenchman’s Creek. There is so much joy in this book. I only comfort read Austen but after reading this earlier this year I am definitely coming back to it.

I simply cannot pick my all time favourite, please don't make me try [cries]

But the following have been in my all time top five for years:

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Tehanu - Ursula Le Guin
We Speak No Treason - Rosemary Hawley Jarman
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Lord of the Rings - Tolkien

It was The Book Thief....then I read The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.

Some lovely recommendations and I have a nice long wish list now, thanks 😁
I’d like to add the Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom.