Recommend your favourite book of all time

[PigInADuvet]

Please share your book joy... You can only pick one though!

Title:
Author:
Genre:
Overview (no spoilers!):
Why you love it:

My go to comfort blanket

Title: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Author: Douglas Adams
Genre: Comedy/Sci Fi
Overview: Arthur Dent wakes up one morning to find the council wish to demolish his house to make way for a bypass. That same morning he discovers that his best friend is an alien and that Earth has also been scheduled for demolition. The book follows his adventures across the Universe.
Why: It’s just so damn clever, funny and eminently quotable

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Oops, sorry

So set in India about 4 characters who end up in the most unforseen situations

I love it because I was left in disbelief until the end. You would never expect such an ending

@App13 I love "A Fine Balance"

Mine would be "The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton

Set in colonial New Zealand, focusing on a cast of weird and wonderful characters and the links between them. The story is centred on a mystery of how a woman came to be alone on a road at night but it's about so much more than that.

I love it because it's massive, the characters are well-developed and it's beautifully written. Ideal to read over long winter nights.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. No description will do it justice.

My contribution!

Fairy Tale - Stephen King
Horror/dark fantasy
A teenager unexpectedly befriends a reclusive old man and his dog, taking him on a journey to another world where he leads a fight between good and evil.

As a dog lover, the writing around the relationships between dog and human characters is impeccable. I've never cried at a book before (I'm fairly stoney hearted!) but this one got me 🥹

Seconding Donna Tartt

Title: The Silver Dark Sea
Author: Susan Fletcher
Genre: Contemporary/Celtic myth.
Overview: A mystery man is washed up (alive) on a Scottish Beach close to where an Islander had been lost.
Why I love it: It's beautifully written. The remote island setting, the relationships of the islanders, the story interwoven with mythical Scottish tales... It's just magical.

Title: A month in the country
Author: JL Carr
Genre: historical fiction (I guess?!)
Overview (no spoilers!): A WWI veteran goes to restore a painting in a church in the country
Why you love it: the most beautiful book I’ve ever read. So short (almost a short story), but packs so much in. I think about the protagonist a lot. I may be in love with him

Title: Out of Africa
Author: Karen Blixen
Genre: Travel/ Autbiographical
Overview: A Danish aristocrat follows her husband to colonial Kenya to start a new life as a farmer. While there she falls in love with the country and a famous big-game hunter. It’s the story of a small community of aristocrats living in the “Happy Valley”.

Title: The Quincunx
Author: Charles Palliser
Genre: Fiction
Overview: A young boy grows up in a small village in the nineteenth century with his mother. He is aware that there is a dark secret, but how dark, and how far the conspiracy against his family is, he has yet to discover. But he will! Originally published as a pastiche of the nineteenth century sensation novels, the story of John Huffam and his attempts to regain his inheritance is utterly gripping. The perfect book for a quiet Christmas.

Title: Bleak House
Author: Charles Dickens
Genre: Classic/mystery/family saga - you name it!
Overview (no spoilers!): The story of the Jarndyce family and the progress of a lawsuit about a disputed inheritance through the labyrinthine processes of chancery . Secrets, lies, murder and, nefarious plots ensue.
Why you love it: It's beautifully written with London as a main character, the opening description of the London fog is justly famous. It's sinister, mysterious and hilarious, packed to the gunnels with memorable characters. It's incredible.

A wonderful book, great choice.

I have tooooo many and they all vary

at the moment…it’s probably

Fourth Wing
Rebecca Yarros
Fiction
About a girl and her dragon/s!
I love the suspense, I love the writing, I love the story line and it has that good kind of smut too. The new book is out in January and I just can’t wait!

Oh I love this one too! So nice to see this one mentioned.

mine is
Title: Lord of the Rings
Author: JRR Tolkein
Genre: Fantasy
Overview (no spoilers!): Group of Hobbits and their friends go off to save their world from evil.
Why you love it: This. Ales it not because it’s my favourite book or because it’s beautiful/genius. It isn’t. It is just that it has saved me both as a child and adult from being in a world that is awful and i had no control over. It helped me escape. And I am eternally grateful for it.

I love this thread and the simple format. Thanks OP! Mine is

Title: Night Shall Overtake Us
Author: Kate Saunders
Genre: Historical
Overview (no spoilers!): Begins with a group of friends at boarding school in the early 1900s and follows them through the years of the suffragettes and WW1, and their loves and losses.
Why you love it: You come to know and care deeply about them all. I think of those characters in the 2 minute silence on remembrance day, that's how real they are.

Another vote for A Fine Balance. I’m so envious of people who have yet to read it for the first time.

Title: Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Fiction
Overview (no spoilers!): She has too much Pride, he has too much Prejudice
Why you love it: a book of its time that still holds true - families, relationships, love, romance, drama... The first line is one of my favourite opening lines of all time... "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife".

How hard is it to pick just one argh!
So I'm cheating a little bit but I did read as one book.

Title: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Detective Fiction
Overview (no spoilers!): Sherlock Holmes and his trusted friend Watson solve peculiar crimes.
Why you love it: It's wonderfully written, atmospheric, gothic and descriptive. It's exciting yet feels like home. There's a reason he's the world's most famous fictional detective, but the books give you so much more than you could possibly imagine from just watching adaptations.

This

Title: The Camerons
Author: Robert Crichton
Genre: Domestic Fiction

Stories of a woman from a mining village with a fierce need to better herself. The hard choices and sacrifices she makes over her life resonate, no matter the place or time.

Thank you for the recommendations so far!

I've just bought 3 of them... I'm trying to exercise some self control and limit myself to 10 book purchases a month and already bought 7, so thats my full quota until 1st Dec 😆