Question of the Week
posted by StoryBroads
on
Sunday, January 14, 2007
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What is your favorite book ever? And yes, we know it's nearly impossible for a Book Lover to choose just one! But give it a try, and tell us why that book sings to you.
Patricia Potter
Tara Taylor Quinn
Maggie Shayne
Anne Stuart
Suzanne Forster
Lynn Kerstan
8 Comments :
Picking one is nearly impossible, but there were two that popped immediately into my mind. The first is the biography of Amelia Earhart. I was obsessed with her as a child, and read her story over and over again. I don't know why it appealed so much. But for the first 30 odd years of my life I also found myself unable to fly. It wasn't a "fear of flying" thing, it was just a gut feeling that I really shouldn't. One day it vanished and I've been flying and loving it ever since. I'm even toying with the idea of taking lessons.
The other favorite book ever was RAMSES THE DAMNED or THE MUMMY, (one book, that's the actual title) by Anne Rice. The opening scenes reminded me of a classic old Mummy movies from a Saturday afternoon edition of Monster Movie Matinee, which I adored as a kid. And the rest of the story was a classic love story, the kind I adore most, where the monster gets the girl. YAY!
So those are my two, one childhood favorite, and one adult favorite.
And that's not even counting Dr. Suess's TERRIBLE TONGUE TWISTERS, which is right up there near the top.
Maggie (who cheated and named three!)
Mine are not nearly as much fun as Maggie's but as she said, it's almost impossible to pick just one. You like books for different reasons. But having to choose, I would pick three very different books (okay, okay, I'm cheating). The first is GONE WITH THE WIND. Fell in love with it as a child and again as a adult writer. The characterization is marvelous, better than the film. It's the only book I've read five times. The second would be the RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH,perhaps because I was reading it when I was undergoing operations on my leg, and it completely absorbed me through the pain. Robert Shirer was a great storyteller as well as historian. Doctors got a big kick seeing me haul the tome along everywhere I went, even to the operating room. You could pry it away only from my cold dead hands, or unconscious ones. The third is LONESOME DOVE, because I so love the west, and again the characterization is dazzling.
Thorn Birds just knocked me flat when I read it. I did not want to stop long enough to eat, drink or sleep. I don't think any other book has affected me quite like that one.
One that came close was, however, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen.
I also love anything by the late Jacqueline Briskin, but my favorite was probably Paloverde.
Suz
You guys are cheating! One means one!
Unless it means six. I'll double the current ante and choose a series--Dorothy Dunnett's THE LYMOND CHRONICLES. No one who knows me (including my cat, Lymond de Sevigny) will be surprised. These books, set in the middle 1500s, showcase everything I most love in fiction: swashbuckling adventure; a skillful, witty, tormented hero; conflict up the wazoo; a rich historical canvas; a heart-tugging love story; brilliant writing . . . much, much more.
When Jo Beverley and Alicia Rasley encouraged me to read Dunnett, I couldn't bring myself to undertake a long series of long books. But when I finally, begrudgingly, read a few pages of THE GAME OF KINGS, I was inextricably hooked. Since then, I've reread the LC several times and am currently listening (again) to the audio version. And scene after scene, I keep having the same soul-deep response: Wow. Wow. Wow. What a daring writer! I can't believe she did that! Happily, Dunnett wrote another long series, THE HOUSE OF NICCOLO, and I love those eight books as well.
Oh. A soft amen to Pat for choosing the superb LONESOME DOVE.
So many great books. So little time.
LynnK
P.S. If I have to name just one book, it is the last in the LC series--CHECKMATE.
Hmmm...this is a tough one... I think that one book that created new worlds for me was 1001 Arabian Nights. I was just six years old when I read it, but it never left my imagination. I had the huge hardcover book with all the wonderful illustrations. To this day, i still cherish that book. Yes, it is still in my bookcase...along with several thousand other books. *L*
Maithe
We're really only allowed to pick one? Not fair. When our lives are so intertwined with books you can't choose just one.
I'd choose MISTRESS OF MELLYN because when I was ten years old (approximately) it made me realize what I wanted to do. Write gothics. 48 years later that's what I do (in one form or another).
There's MARA, DAUGHTER OF THE NILE which helped me survive childhood.
VENETIA, by most favorite Georgette Heyer, or NINE COACHES WAITING by Mary Stewart (in truth, anything by the two of them).
There's the best book I read in the last ten years, SUNSHINE by Robin McKinley. I loved it so much I just sat in my chair and hugged it for half an hour after I finished it.
But when people ask, I usually say MY LORD MONLEIGH by Jan Cox Speas. It's an old historical, long out of print, and it's just something that hits me on an entirely visceral level. Love love love it.
Krissie
My favorite is not a book, but a long poem, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
I have several favorite authors I keep coming back to, the oldest being when I read Dark Fields by T.J. Macgregor. I have read novel she haw written since.
Catherine Coulter's FBI series is a favorite series and of course I can't forget one of my all time favorite authors is Suzanne.
Ray
Okay, I'm with the camp that can't pick one, since I've been reading since I was three years old (I'm now 44, so figure out how many I've read...). I'd have to with a toss up between Thorn Birds, which I read as a teen-ager and when I had a crush on a family friend who was older than my father; and Anna Karinina. I would have never suspected I'd like Russian novels, as they are especially complicated, but after taking a college class in it, I found I loved them. I have to keep a list of the characters in the front, though, or I get lost! robyn in Iowa
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