What is your favourite novel, and why?

The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. I read it as a teenager but need to reread it. I keep waiting for Netflix to pick it up and make it into one of their mega budget series. The BBC tried it once but cgi and such are so much better now.

More recent favourites include:

The Time Travellers Wife - much better than the films
Her Fearful Symmetry - same author as above
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - still can't decide what it is really about but it has stuck with me
Most of Anita Shreve's books
Jenny Eclair (the comedian) has also written some decent books.

I read a lot of popular fiction e.g. Lisa Jewell and similar but they all tend to blur into one after a while.

I don't read many classics but I have bought a few Daphne du Maurier. I have started The House on the Strand a few times now.

TerriBull
So to answer the question of "why" it's that, books that stay with you long after finishing , feeling so immersed and lost in them that you never want the book to end and then feeling bereft when inevitably it does and knowing possibly it will be a long time before finding anything as good again. I always have a book on the go some will be great, many forgettable but that extra special quality only comes along infrequently there's a kind of deep satisfaction when it hits you at some stage into it knowing this is going to be a special one and afterwards you want to tell others about it.

Exactly this. You have put it perfectly.

As a child I loved Heidi, the Katy books, Little Women and Black Beauty.

The first adult book I read when I was about 13 (it was Mum's copy) was Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, and I have loved it ever since.

Since then ... well, so many books and so little time.

Pensionpat
Really?
Well they don’t know what they’re missing.
The first one I read was ‘A widow for one year’
followed by all the others.
Oh, Riverwalk, join the club.

The Handmaid's Tale. Read most of it sitting on a radiator in the school library and have been an Atwood groupie ever since. My never-to-be PhD was going to be on another of her novels, Surfacing.

Sara1954

TerriBull
Lots of my favourites in there, and a couple I haven’t read, but will add to my list.

Sarah I think we often like the same type of novel, such as The Stopped Heart, that was definitely one of my best read's of last year, although I wasn't keen on Owen Meany one of your favourites but that's the nature of books they are very subjective. I know a lot of people didn't like The Goldfinch it was a bit Marmite but I did love it.

A favourite is “Silence of the Girls” by Pat Barker, a novel which deals with the aftermath of the battle of Troy and what happened to the female captives as they awaited their fate in the Greek camp. It’s a very powerful, heartbreaking story.
I also love Madeline Miller’s “Circe”. Madeline Miller is an extraordinarily skilful storyteller who draws you immediately into the narrative.

I too loved A Prayer For Owen Meany.

I can hear that high-pitched voice - so very cleverly written!

Sara you are the person I’ve “met” who has read any John Irving. Kindred spirits!

It's like trying to name your favourite grandchild! I love so many of those already mentioned but for now I'm going with Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.

Yes, impossible, as it depends on mood, I've read so much, but if it has to be one, its The Secret Garden.

Pensionpat
I love John Irving as well, Owen Meany is a really clever book, but I’ve enjoyed them all.

TerriBull
Lots of my favourites in there, and a couple I haven’t read, but will add to my list.

My favourite author is John Irving. The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules have both been made into pretty decent films, although his books are so complex that a film makes a poor second. But the book that stands out is A prayer for Owen Meany. I re-read it regularly. It is so satisfying. All the ends are sewn up, and all questions answered. The theme of the book is Love, Loss and faith, with a mixture of tragedy and comedy.

The Ring of Bright Water Trilogy by Gavin Maxwell and film and song of the same. Elizabeth Goudge books. I love anything to do with nature, wildness and atmospheric descriptions so I am transported to that spot.

Really, really hard, but if I were to choose an absolute number 1 I think I'd opt for Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Conner but all of these would be hot on the heels of that for me and in no particular order, Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides, The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace Margaret Atwood, The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver, The Crimson Petal and The White - Michel Faber, Life after Life - Kate Atkinson, The Quincunx - Charles Palliser, Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt, The Goldfinch - Donna Tart, The Heart's Invisible Furies - John Boyne, Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Asta's Book, Barbara Vine, The American Boy Andrew Taylor. I'probably read these in the past 20 years or so but to go back further, I can remember my mother passing me a tome of hers when I was aged around 15 moaning about being bored, that tome was Gone with the Wind. I remember feeling pretty bereft when I finished it. In my 20s, maybe when I wasn't reading quite as much, on holiday I read The Thorn Birds and that also stayed with me long after I'd finished it.

So to answer the question of "why" it's that, books that stay with you long after finishing , feeling so immersed and lost in them that you never want the book to end and then feeling bereft when inevitably it does and knowing possibly it will be a long time before finding anything as good again. I always have a book on the go some will be great, many forgettable but that extra special quality only comes along infrequently there's a kind of deep satisfaction when it hits you at some stage into it knowing this is going to be a special one and afterwards you want to tell others about it.

Favourite childhood book The Water Babies Charles Kingsley.

I'll kick myself if I've forgotten anything.

Black Beauty as a child, but my all-time favourite is Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. No other book has ever spoken to me in the way it did. I could relate to it in so many ways.

I too loved "Wind in the Willows" - I remember it being read to us when I was in primary school.
As an adult there are so many. I love "Mariana" by Monica Dickens - "A Town Like Alice" by Nevil Shute - most of Rosamunde Pilcher's books, especially "The Shell Seekers" - "Coming Home" and "Winter Solstice" and most books by Elizabeth Elgin.

As a child I loved *Wind in the Willows’ - still do.

I read the sequel dotpocka, but still not really how I envisaged it!

duo of !

Another vote for the golden triof Little Women as a girl, and A Thousand Splendid Suns as a woman. I would add a mention for a book which was made into a film - The Caine Mutiny. It's a fascinating study of people in war and of (maybe?) manipulation.

Oh dear, where to start?
Little Women, I Capture the Castle, My Family and Other Animals, To Kill a Mockingbird, Never Let me go - Ishiguro, most recently, “Lessons in Chemistry”. The Time Traveller’s Wife! Most of Margaret Atwood, ditto William Boyd, Paul Torbay…
I could go on. The books that make me think without being preachy…

I don't read much fiction and I'm hopeless at modern novels, but I think my all time favourite is Jane Austen's Persuasion. Her portrayal of Anne Elliot's emotional reactions to the reappearance of her former lover and having to endure close proximity when no-one knows their past history is absolutely perfect. Happy ending too.

MaizieD Me too, on novels in general and Persuasion in particular.

Have your read the alternative ending, that JA rejected? You can find it here www.mollands.net/etexts/persuasion/prscancel.html. It pulses with a sexual tension, lacking in the final version. I think I prefer it.

More generally, when I do read novels they tend to be 19th century. In recent years I have discovered the author Mrs Oliphant. Her novel Hester is about the power and ability of women, in the first half of the 19th century, with a woman who rescues the family bank when her cousin ruins it and her relationship 20 years later with her cousins 14 year old daughter and over the next 10 years.

I read it again and again over about a year. I cannot understand why it has never made it to television.

I don’t think I have ever reread a book but Jane Eyre or Rebecca would be mine I think.