What's your favorite book?

[sweetharleygirl]

I have lots of favorites and I read all kinds of books, but still I guess I'd have to say Gone With the Wind is my all time favorite.

[hot4jwg]

That would be "Silas Marner"

[Andrea]

I have three. For fantasy, I'd pick "Luthiel's Song" by Robert Fanney. For lit, I like "Gone with the Wind." And for pure whimsy I'd pick "Pride and Prejudice."

[macro01]

I might sounds corny but I really like reading
"Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren. I just
can't sleep without it. It's my all time favorite!

[andr70]

Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
Leaves floating on the trout streams
And above the hills
The high blue windless skies
Now he will be a part of them forever

Ernest Hemingway - Idaho - 1939

All books of Ernest Hemingway are the best!

[timber]

You may all hate this but my favorite book is any book in the Harry Potter series. I wish it never ended.

[timber]

Oh, and Pride and Predjudice.

[Rach1981]

Now for something a little out of the ordinary - Oh the Places You Will Go - it is a Dr Suess book and I dont think I can explain you will just have to read it and definitly a must have in the childrens collection. A good topic for adults and children alike!

Apart from that I love my classics like Pride and Prejudice but also fell in love with The Bronze Horseman!

[Mrs.T]

Time travelers wife, animal farm, of mice and men. Just to name a few.

[selfer]

Two faves that came out around the same time:
"Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers; and
"Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Both are fictionalized autobiographies, hilarious in parts, touching in others. There are some scenes that get painted in your in "Everything is Illuminated" that I don't think ever go away. It's also probably the funniest book I've ever read (far better than David Sedaris). Although I guess you kind of have to like crass humor to get into it.

[tinyViolin]

Wow, that's a hard question.

I agree that, like some of the other posters here, I can't really name a specific book so much as a style.

I tend to go for unique writing. Like Toko Tawada~she is utterly weird, but amazing. Virginia Woolf also is a writer that I adore, although I see how her writing could make others go "wtf just happened?" haha

A lot of the books that I read as a child have affected me the most, though, either because I was more imaginative then (likely) or because they were my first experiences with chapter books, intense stories, etc.

[tinyViolin]

It has to be The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. I think Milan Kundera has such insight, and pours his heart into every book he writes.

I have a number of books by Kundera but have never "taken the plunge", so to speak. Worth getting into?

Oh, I agree it is worth it.

He seems so casual about it; reading his work is just like sitting down with him at a cafe somewhere and listening to him talk. It's only until after I've sped through his books that I catch myself thinking about this or that part and pick it up again to re-read.

[Woodland Nymph]

I've literally been thinking about this for over an hour...

I'll go with...

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice.

Don't ever make me pick just one again!

[K M Britt]

I have favorite authors, and several favorite book series. But there is not a particular book that I like to re-read over and over again.

[ann]

So many favorites but...

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

my favorite mystery - the Aurelio Zen series by Michael Dibdin

and lastly Cloud Street by Tim Winton - thank you "Sleepy Dumpling" for listing it - a terrific first novel.