What is your favourite book???

[Els2020]

I pretty much read anything but I'm looking for book recommendations.

Tell me what your favourite books are/ have been. The more 'out there' the better!

Tully - Paulina Simons. The Power of One - Bruce Courtrnay

Not repeating what has already been said...

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
Beartown, Frederick Backman
Sherlock Holmes (all of them)
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

Some great books above. I would add

The Master and Margarita
It Happened in Boston?
Nervous Conditions
any Kurt Vonnegut books

Ah - Any Human Heart - I was trying to remember this one.

I like your list a lot

I recommend the one I've just read, The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng. It's set in Penang, which is very atmospherically described, and features W. Somerset Maugham as a character. One theme is the difference between public and private morality and how we do not know what is going on in someone else's life behind closed doors.

So many have already been mentioned, but my current favourite is Meredith Alone by Claire Alexander. Brilliant.

Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch is brilliant. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize years ago, should have won it!

A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver.
The Cazalet Chronicles - Elizabeth Jane Howard.
Black Diamonds - Catherine Bailey.
The Valley -'Richard Benson.

The Foundling by Georgette Heyer. I have lost count of how many times I have read it, and I laugh every time.
Injured Innocents by O Yardley. It's a novel-length fanzine. Some of her stuff is on AO3, but I don't think this is.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson

Demon Copperhead
Great Gatsby
Persuasion
Pride & Prejudice
Villette
Jane Eyre
Kite Runner
The Goldfinch
The Comedians
The Quiet American
The End Of The Affair
I Capture The Castle
When Will There Be Good News
Life after Life
A God in Ruins
House of Spirits

Wuthering Heights

The Prophet

100 years of solitude

Four letters of love

Bleak House

The English Patient

Anna Karenina

The Short Stories of Anton Chekov

Love In The Time Of Cholera

A Sensible Life

Brideshead Revisited

The Canterbury Tales

Dubliners

Out Of Africa

The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield

The Count Of Monte Cristo

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

Fire and Hemlock by Dianna Wynne Jones.

I've been re-reading it every year or so since I was about 10 years old and I get something new out of it every time. It has so many other literary references woven into it that I'm forever discovering something new and a new way to interpret bits I already thought I fully understood.

The Pianist by Władysław Szpilman (outstanding)
The Light in Hidden Places (outstanding)
Quo Vadis (outstanding)
The Lord of the Rings
The Bronze Horseman trilogy
Anna Karenina
Gone with the Wind
The Lovely Bones
It Stephen King
The Stand Stephen King
Pride and Prejudice
Life of Pi
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Great Alone

The Secret History
A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Blue Castle

Tough question!

Two of my favourites are The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and The Reading list by Sara Nisha Adam’s.

Tsarina (Ellen Alpsten)
klara and the sun (kazuo Ishiguro)

A book that stuck with me for a long time after I finished reading it, and I sat and read it in 2 sittings was perfect people by Peter James .

Ralph's Party by Lisa Jewell. I love all her books but that one gives me such cosy nostalgia for the 90s. It takes me back to a certain place in time.

How to choose just one?! Impossible.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
The Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido

...just a few favourites💜

The Night Circus

but also the short stories of William Trevor

The Camomile Lawn - Mary Wesley
Woman In White - Wilkie Collins
David Copperfield
Taipan or Shogun - James Clavell
Augustus - Alan Massie
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Penmarric
Feet of Clay - Terry P
Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov I prefer the Robot books to the Foundation.

What an incredibly difficult question. Really enjoyed Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath, Threemen in a boat by Jerome K Jerome but more modern stuff , would have to be one like Terry Pratchetts Witches Abroad

I agree!