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The best books you've ever read.


FiveAus

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I love hearing about what other people read, and one of my questions to friends is often "What's the best book you've ever read?" So what are yours? I seem to add to the list every year and it gets longer but that's not a bad thing. Here is mine...favourite first then the rest in no particular order:


Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett

Power of One, Bryce Courtenay

Four Fires, Bryce Courtenay

Room, Emma Donaghue

The Dream Daughter, Diane Chamberlain

Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey

Honeybee, Craig Silvey

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Dear Child, Romy Hausmann

Small Great Things, Jodi Picoult

Coming Home, Rosamund Pilcher

The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah

Me Before You, Jo Jo Moyes

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Goodness - mine keep changing depending on what I have read lately and what my memory holds.


Man Shy by Frank Dalby Davidson - I loved it, found it again years later and still enjoyed, send to my FIL in the US (he and I have common ground in books) and he said it raised a few eyebrows when he was reading it in the Drs waiting room! BTW it is about a cow.


I loved the Duncton Wood series. And Trustee From the Toolroom and On the Beach definitely helped shape a younger me.


Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The Womens Room. Flight Behaviour and The Lacuna (Barbara Kingsolver). Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

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I love books and rarely find one I don't like (that's an easier list, hated like water for chocolate and didn't like the secret river - changing the convention and making italics speech put me right off)


I love fiona macintosh's fantasy books, Brent weeks first trilogy was also pretty amazing, though very dark. The book thief is actually a favorite from books I've read as a teacher, I also enjoyed the lieutenant. Kirsten Britain's green rider books are great too and, what's her name... Kate Elliott? I'll have to check that, but i've really enjoyed a couple of her trilogies. Anyway, anyone that loves fantasy they'll find good company in my library 😂

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I love reading and like the PP said above rarely find one I dislike. The book that has had the most profound effect would be The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I read this in my early 20's and it has still stuck with me almost 20 years on.

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Thinking more I tend to read what I call 'airport books' as in mass produced novels really (that is not meant as a criticism of them) so none stand out really, I tend to have crime series such as Val Mcdermid, Ian Rankin than I like a lot but I can't pick one and say it is my favourite as such

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I read (and listen to audiobooks) all the time, so I get through a LOT of books. My favourites are the ones that have stayed with me, or that I had a particular feeling about after I finished it (Honeybee, as I only finished that last week. But as soon as I did, I knew it was going on my favourites list).

Mine all tend to be popular fiction but that's what I mostly read. However, I do read biographies and some non-fiction but they don't usually entertain me as much as fiction.

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Hills Mum Bec

Absolutely love reading but don't seem to get as much time as I would like to read lately. Favourite books are:


Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens

American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins

The Chain - Adrian McKinty

Tomorrow When the War Began (the whole series) - John Marsden

My Last Continent - Raymond Midge

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman

A Dog's Journey & A Dog's Purpose - Cameron W Bruce

The Passage Trilogy - Justin Cronin

End of Forever Trilogy - Paullina Simons

The Clifton Chronicles - Jeffrey Archer

Anything by Karin Slaughter or Liane Moriarty

Any of the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child


I'm sure there is more but this is all I can think of at the moment.

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Absolute favourite of all time? Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte.


Other than that I find it hard to pick, I read so much. I do have lists of books I hate lol. Interestingly a couple of books picked by pp's are on my did not love list (Pillars of the Earth, Eleanor Oliphant...). I seem to gravitate so some kind of surrealism in my loved reads, real lives stories are a frustrating snoozefest.

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ClaudiaCosette

My favourites are the ones that have stayed with me, or that I had a particular feeling about after I finished it

 

Yes, I am the same. I do enjoy a good book, mostly non-fiction. One book that sticks out for me is "Another Day in the Death of America" by Gary Younge, and one I read quite a few years ago but that I still remember is 'Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition" by Scott Cookman. Oh, and another one that has stayed with me is "The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women" by Kate Moore.


I read less fiction, usually mysteries or thrillers. One I enjoyed was "The Light Between Oceans" by M.L. Stedman, and I always like Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books.

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The Stand by Stephen King is one of my all time favourites. But you've got to be in the mood for it as it's very long.


When I try and branch out from my narrow preferences, I don't often like it.

But I did read A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and I loved it. It's quite harrowing, but it kept me engaged and totally engrossed in the characters lives.

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The Stand by Stephen King is one of my all time favourites. But you've got to be in the mood for it as it's very long.

 

I read The Stand when I was 16 or 17. It stuck with me for two reasons. The first was I started reading it when I put myself to bed to rest with the makings of a cold. Yep, that's right, I have a mild fever, runny nose, and sore throat, and went to bed with Captain Trips. The second was a a conversation between two of the characters. (Possible spoilers) Just after Red comes across Glen they are talking, and Glen says something about how "this is just the world cleansing it self", along the lines of mass reducing the population to heal and explains how it's happened many times on a cycle of X to Y years before using examples like the Spanish flu and the bubonic plague. By this stage I was well into recovering from my cold, but it just really stuck with me. What took up probably 1/2 a page affected me more than the other 1100 odd pages.


Books I have read more than once include It by Stephan King, Tim by Colleen McCullough, A Twist in the Tale by Jeffery Archer and Forever Enchanted by Maggie Shayne.

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The Stand by Stephen King is one of my all time favourites. But you've got to be in the mood for it as it's very long.

 

I read The Stand when I was 16 or 17. It stuck with me for two reasons. The first was I started reading it when I put myself to bed to rest with the makings of a cold. Yep, that's right, I have a mild fever, runny nose, and sore throat, and went to bed with Captain Trips.

 

Lol oh dear. You probably had nightmares after that!

I actually pulled it out to read in about Feb/March, and then realised... omg, the timing is REALLY not right! Lol. So I put it back and grabbed Firestarter instead.

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Interview with the Vampire. And Dune.


And for some reason, So much to tell you, that I read for school, sticks with me to this day

 

I totally agree on so much to tell you, i was unsure whether to put books i read as a child/teenager as I am not sure how I would feel now but I still think of that book

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So much to tell you was such a good book. I also always think about They might hear you by Robin Klein.

As an adult, There where the pepper grows by Bem le Hunte

A lifetime of impossible days by Tabitha Bird

Boy swallows universe by Trent Dalton

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I also always think about They might hear you by Robin Klein.

 

 

Ooh! That was *so* good, and I'd forgotten about it. Time for a re-read, I think.


Otherwise:


Anything by Agatha Christie

Anything by Ursula Le Guin (Earthsea in particular though)

More recently, anything by Karin Slaughter

Wife, by Bharati Mukherjee (I read that at an impressionable age!)

Tanith Lee's Drinking Sapphire Wine

Hitchhiker's, of course

They are actually terrible, but I devoured the Dragonlance series in my early teens and they were so. good. And also terrible.


My favourite book of all time is Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow. I drag it out every year or two for a re-read. I'm actually overdue at the moment, because DD2 knocked my copy into the cats' water bowl and it could not be salvaged :(

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I loved robin klein especially and a book called half way across the galaxy and turn left, I loved pippi longstocking, and John Marsden books


I would have loved the outsiders but being made to study it in highschool turned me off it


I loved harp in the south and come in spinner and five times dizzy

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Lol oh dear. You probably had nightmares after that!

I actually pulled it out to read in about Feb/March, and then realised... omg, the timing is REALLY not right! Lol. So I put it back and grabbed Firestarter instead.

 

Oh, I was dying. I thought about writing a will and everything (slightly melodramatic teen there). To make matters worse, it was Summer and the temperature was high 30's and humid. Thing is, I started that book knowing the plot as I'd seen 3/4 of the mini series. Over 20 years later, those feeling resurface every time my throat hurts or my nose runs..


And I always make sure I have at least 2 different books available to read at all times so I'm not forced to read inappropriate material when not well.

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