Name your absolute favorite books! Your favorites. The ones that you still think of

[Corie]

Name your absolute favorite books! Your favorites. The ones that you still think about.

[erosenst]

It's been a long time since I've read it - and it's not something I would have read if it wasn't my book club's pick - but The Mists of Avalon (https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1JCQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1). Our book club met for 5+ years and it was the only one everyone loved. Captivating story telling and really well written.

[AnnieW625]

Love Story by Erich Segal

Memoirs of A Geisha by Arthur Golden

The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson

Fine Things by Danielle Steel

Letters from Nam by Danielle Steel

Dangerous to Know by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Fancy Pants by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik

Degree of Guilt by Richard North Patterson

Eyes of a Child by Richard North Patterson

I have read every book on this list at least twice. I think I have probably read Love Story ten times since I was 16.


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[PunkyBoo]

My all time favorite is A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I just reread it as an adult (I probably read it 2-3 times as a bookworm kid) and still love it.
I recently reread Catcher in the Rye because i had such fond memories of reading it as a teen and frankly as an adult I didn't like it at all.
I may update later with more.


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[Liziz]

Mrs. Mike, by Nancy and Benedict Freidman (I haven't read this in years, and when a friend read it much more recently she did not like it -- it's very old and probably didn't age well? But it's one of the earliest books I remember falling in love with)

Beartown, by Fredrick Backman (actually, I loved the sequel, Us Against You, even more -- but don't read it until you've read Beartown!)

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jan Krakauer

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (another book I read -- actually, listened to -- as a kid -- but I STILL think about how good it was! This makes me think I should re-read it!)

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

[cvanbrunt]

Rebecca
The Good Earth
Possessing the Secret of Joy

[nfceagles]

The Road

The Martian

The Great Alone

Education


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[hbridge]

Good Omens

All the Light We Cannot See

Anne of Green Gables

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

[billysmommy]

It's been a long time since I've read it - and it's not something I would have read if it wasn't my book club's pick - but The Mists of Avalon (https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1JCQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1). Our book club met for 5+ years and it was the only one everyone loved. Captivating story telling and really well written.

I love Mists of Avalon! I’ve probably re-read it at least 5-6 times.

Gone with the Wind is another that I could read over and over.

Rebecca by Daphne deMaurier

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

The Black Stallion

[mom2binsd]

I have read and reread the triology by Celeste DeBlasis, Wild Swan/Swan's Chance/A Season Of Swans - it begins in Napoleonic England, and moves to the US, includes a lot of early horse racing in the US, the Civil War and amazing characters, an element of sex/romance but within the development of the characters (not just gratuitous). Everyone who I have recommended it to has also said it's one of their favorites.

[LBW]

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (another book I read -- actually, listened to -- as a kid -- but I STILL think about how good it was! This makes me think I should re-read it!)


Have you read the sequels to The Thief? If not you should! One of my all time favorite series.

[bisous]

Have you read the sequels to The Thief? If not you should! One of my all time favorite series.

I also was surprised to see this but it’s definitely one of my favorite books/series! Nobody I know IRL has read it!

[LBW]

Oh, so many!

Hamnet

All of the Tolkien books. I used to reread The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings every year.

Winnie the Pooh

The Harry Potter series

Meghan Whalen Turner’s Thief series

Kirsten Cashore’s Graceling series

John Green’s Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines, Turtles All the Way Down, and the Anthropocene Reviewed

The Westing Game

Hugh Howey’s Silo series

Station Eleven

Say Nothing

Boys in the Boat

Krakauer’s Into Thin Air & Into the Wild

I could go on but I’ll stop for now.

[mm123]

A Fine Balance- Rohinton Mistry

The Poisonwood Bible- Barbara Kingsolver

The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini

Bel Canto- Ann Patchett


There are many more, but those are the ones that pop into my head right away!

[ang79]

My all time favorite is A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I just reread it as an adult (I probably read it 2-3 times as a bookworm kid) and still love it.
I recently reread Catcher in the Rye because i had such fond memories of reading it as a teen and frankly as an adult I didn't like it at all.
I may update later with more.


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My 9th grade daughter is currently reading Catcher in the Rye for her honors English class. I don’t think she very impressed with it.

Anne of Green Gables series and Little Women are comfort classics for me.

As a child I loved the Little House on the Prairie series and I enjoyed it just as much reading it it to my girls.




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[RiverRat]

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennet

I love these books.


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[gatorsmom]

Great thread, Corie!

Gone with the Wind has been in my head for years. I come back to it frequently.

The Harry Potter books are home. When life is going bad, I escape to Hogwarts.

The Laura Ingalls wilder books, particularly Little House in the Big Woods and the one where they moved to the prairie. Maybe because I live in Wisconsin and often wonder how Ma or Pa would handle some of the issues we run into here. But I think of those frequently.

Ones I haven’t read for years but I still think about:
Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
Short Stories by Flannery O’Connor

I’m sure there is more, I’m just drawing a blank. But I will definitely check out some of the books recommended here!

[lizzywednesday]

My 9th grade daughter is currently reading Catcher in the Rye for her honors English class. I don’t think she very impressed with it.
...

I think Catcher in the Rye speaks to a very specific kind of spoiled disaffectedness and commentary on the inherent hypocrisy of growing up, but would feel very dated nowadays. There are better takes on this kind of "cut the bullsh!t" narrative out there in YA today!

I loved it when I read it (independently and because it kept turning up on the ALA's challenge lists), but I really think I'd hate Holden Caulfield now.

[lizzywednesday]

Like, do you want them grouped by genre or what they meant to me at certain times in my life or what?

Childhood favorites that I go back to every now and again are:

Anne of Green Gables series (yes, all 8 books!) by LM Montgomery - when I was a kid, my favorites were Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Windy Poplars, but the last time I read the series, I found I enjoyed Rilla of Ingleside best.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - I still have my childhood, purchased-at-the-book-fair Apple Classics paperback copy of the former; it's what I used to read it aloud to DD a few years ago. (We had a lot of discussions about the racial and class-related attitudes expressed by many of the characters, both as examples of attitudes that were more acceptable long ago and how our own attitudes are changing, we hope for the better.)

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett - I haven't re-read this in years, but re-watched the 1990s adaptation a few years ago because it was on streaming. Excellent casting and the filmmakers made some interesting changes from page to screen.

The Ordinary Princess by MM Kaye - DD also loves this one and it provided a great stepping stone to Gail Carson Levine's retold fairy tales.

Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales (collected by Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm) - I have two editions, one an illustrated B&N Classics edition that is now technically DD's copy, and my childhood copy.

When I was a teenager, I absolutely adored these books:

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy - this is a French Revolution-set adventure story, with some elements that are very similar to A Tale of Two Cities, but more along the lines of a historical romance. I haven't re-read it in years, but, like most of my childhood/teen faves, I still have my book fair copy!

Dracula by Bram Stoker - not only was this my introduction to the epistolary novel style, but it was probably the scariest book I had ever read. It's one of my "touchstone books" - books that I re-read from time to time, but I notice different things because I'm different.

Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley - framed as an epistolary/flashback novel, this 203-year-old seminal science fiction novel explores questions of medical ethics and, weirdly enough, parenthood. I'm overdue for a re-read.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - I was way too young to have fully appreciated the themes, horrors, and interlocking storylines when I first read it, but I loved it all the same. I saw it as an adventure story and I'm overdue for a reread.

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice - well, OK, really the first 3 "Vampire Chronicles" novels (this one, The Vampire Lestat, and The Queen of the Damned) were my jam because they felt so off-limits, which was a heady sensation for 12-year-old me. I also thought I was hot-snot for reading them in school - I attended parochial K-8, so these small acts of personal rebellion meant more to me than any risk of "getting in trouble." (I did not, for the record, get in trouble for reading them. None of my teachers cared.)

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley - this was such an important book to me and I've returned to it from time to time, but after learning about some of the abuse she & her husband put their children through, I can't return to it with the same joy I approached it with before I knew. Even so, I acknowledge that the book was very important to me during a difficult period in my life, and I don't regret reading it.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - I fell in love with the audiocassette of HIGHLIGHTS from the Broadway cast album, but having a parent who is absolutely, paralyzingly, terrified of NYC meant that I was never going to make it in to actually see the show ... so I figured reading the book would be the next best thing. It's a good read! (And I think the musical does a pretty good job of adapting the novel, which is no easy feat!)

In my 20s and 30s, I've returned to the Harry Potter novels over and over. They were an important element in my post-9/11 emotional recovery, and working a midnight release party for the final book was A LOT of fun. I have returned to them from time to time as well.

More recently, I find I've got to be in a mood for a particular journey to truly love a book or series.

Current loves include the Locke & Key comics by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez, the Nsibidi Scripts Series by Nnedi Okorafor (first one is Akata Witch), The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab, and NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

When I'm struggling to focus, I pick up short story collections or switch gears to historical romances by Julia Quinn (Bridgerton series) and Eloisa James (pretty much all of hers, but I do rather love her Wildes of Lindow Castle series!)

[bisous]

Many of my favorites have been listed. I'll add another. It is kind of nerdy but I absolutely love The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson and I'm enjoying my way through the rest of the series. I found the audiobook about a year ago through Libby and I think it saved me during a period of a lot of emotional toil. It is high fantasy and has kind of a martial feel to it. Almost 100% of the people that I know that love this book are men, which is interesting, since my tastes are traditionally feminine in almost all ways except for books apparently! I love books about courage and honor.

[fauve01]

Gosh, so so many. A book i always recommend when someone asks for a book rec is These is My Words by Turner. Others that stuck with me are The Pillars of the Earth, The Forgotten Garden, Anne of Green Gables, THe Poisonwood Bible, the Widow's War by Gunning, the Kite Runner. Outlander for sure (book one amazing, book two just ok IMO, back on track for the rest of the series)! One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I really loved the Witching Hour when i read it back when it came out. NO idea how I'd like it today. Also loved Gone with the WInd, but no desire to read it again.

a few years ago i read Flight of the Sparrow and LOVED it; it's really stuck with me. i recommend that one a lot. it's different and based on a real person.

[solsister]

Oh geez, soooo many books. I'll list a few, but I know I will miss a lot, and won't add ones that have been added already.
My apologies for so many, but I LOVE BOOKS!

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
The Secret History
The Tender Bar
The End of the Alphabet
Evening - Susan Minot
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Juliet
The 13th Tale
The Great Gatsby
The Da Vinci Code
Shadow of the Wind etc
Possession
The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. (Josephine Bonaparte Sandra Gulland Trilogy)
PS I Love You
You
Into the Wild/Into Thin Air/ Beneath the Banner of Heaven
Birdsong
The Martian
The Historian
She's Come Undone
Molokai
The Shark Dialogues
The Descendants
Where the Crawdads Sing
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
The Nightingale
Beneath a Scarlet Sky
Sarah's Key (gutwrenching/beautiful)
The Book Thief
Unbroken
(I love many of the tragic historical novels, so I'll stop now, lol)
A few that I read this summer that stuck with me-
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.
Two Girls Down and The Janes
American Dirt
Harlem Shuffle
Daisy Jone and the Six

[gobadgers]

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, and the three subsequent novels.

I love so many books that have been mentioned already. I've never heard of the The Thief and just put it on hold at the library. And I've owned a physical copy of Mists of Avalon for at least 20 years and never read it. Time to crack it open!

[basil]

Many of the ones already listed, but I’ll add “a separate peace” by John knowles. I had quotes from that book on my wall for years.

[LBW]

Many of my favorites have been listed. I'll add another. It is kind of nerdy but I absolutely love The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson and I'm enjoying my way through the rest of the series. I found the audiobook about a year ago through Libby and I think it saved me during a period of a lot of emotional toil. It is high fantasy and has kind of a martial feel to it. Almost 100% of the people that I know that love this book are men, which is interesting, since my tastes are traditionally feminine in almost all ways except for books apparently! I love books about courage and honor.

We obviously have similar taste bc I love that series, too. (Though didn’t enjoy the latest as much.) I also really really like the Mistborn series and his other books.

[California]

Thank you for starting this thread! Looking forward to discovering new favorites.

Classics that I come back to again and again:
Pride and Prejudice
Anne of Green Gables
LOTR series
Howl's Moving Castle
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Ones that make me laugh:
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
A Man Called Ove

My kid needs me so will have to work more on this later!

[lizzywednesday]

Oh geez, soooo many books. I'll list a few, but I know I will miss a lot, and won't add ones that have been added already.
My apologies for so many, but I LOVE BOOKS!

Me, too.




...
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.
...
Harlem Shuffle
Daisy Jone and the Six

These are all on my TBR list; I have to re-prioritize and request them in paper because the eBooks take FOR-EVER to come up.

[truly scrumptious]

Have you read the sequels to The Thief? If not you should! One of my all time favorite series.


OMG love love LOVE this series. I re-read it frequently for a mood lift.

[melwe]

I love many of the same listed above but I will add

Kindred by Octavia Butler - I just recently read this, even though it is an older novel. It reads like a fresh, more modern novel and has inspired me to read more of her work.

And Then There Were None - I read a lot of Agatha Christie as a teen (after I graduated from Nancy Drew), and this is my favorite.

A Thousand Splendid Suns - By the same author as The Kite Runner (which I love also), but I just liked this one better.

The House in the Cerulean Sea - One of my new favorites that just was so heartwearming, uplifting, and a beautiful story of acceptance.

[lizzywednesday]

...

Kindred by Octavia Butler - I just recently read this, even though it is an older novel. It reads like a fresh, more modern novel and has inspired me to read more of her work....

Kindred scared the living heck out of me, which is a good sign that I need to read more Octavia Butler. I'd read some of her essays before, but never her fiction.

[dogmom]

The Narnia books, all of them.
Wrinkle in Time series.
Burger’s Daughter & None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer
American Gods Neil Gaiman
Neuromancer by William Gibson, but the entire Sprawl series is good.
The Dubliner’s by James Joyce, particularly The Dead
Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, but truth be told many, many of his books
Wind Up Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Red Tent
The Scarlet Letter, can’t stand any of the 19th c novels, but I love this one. I must be touched.
To Ride Pale Horse
The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, by Joan Didion

Comic Book series I love:
Frank Miller’s Daredevil run
Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run
Sandman, by Neil Gaiman

[lizzywednesday]

...
Comic Book series I love:
Frank Miller’s Daredevil run
Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run
Sandman, by Neil Gaiman

I could have a whole 'nother list of comics I love deeply, including the George Perez run on Wonder Woman, Sandman, and Locke & Key, as well as Hush (Batman) and Red Son (Superman - Elseworlds, which reminded me very strongly of Silver Age "Imaginary Story" one-offs)

[legaleagle]

Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin (non fiction essays about cooking - it's a funny warm hug)
Persuasion (Jane Austen), to a lesser extent the other Austens

I'm not a big re-reader (as an adult at least) but these I read probably once a year.