What’s your favorite book?
Maybe there are people for whom this isn’t a loaded question. I’m not sure I’ve met any of them. “Favorite” is a freeze-up word, a demand impossible to meet. Picking just one? Are you serious? But there are 17 books from just last year that are my favorites!
The thing about this question, though, is that it isn’t entirely about the answer. It’s also about what the answer seems to say—the shorthand inherent in talking about books, and who reads what, and what we get out of and return to in the ones we hold closest to our hearts. If someone tells you their favorite book is The Catcher in the Rye, you are likely to draw some conclusions about them. Same goes for someone who names The Princess Bride, or The Lord of the Rings. But what if they say A Tale for the Time Being or Firebreak or The Summer Prince? Does the answer still mean much if you don’t recognize the book?
Even if the book I love the most in all the world at this exact moment is a book I read just last week, if you ask what my favorite book is, I’m going to feel like I ought to name something you might recognize. A book that you’ve heard of, if not actually read. A book that’s stood the test of time, proven itself over years of reading and admiration, established itself as a work that continues to have something to say to readers. An answer that lets you put your assumptions about the book together with your assumptions about me, and do some basic math.
I think this sub-conversation is fascinating.
If you live in bookish spheres, books often take on aspects and colors and shades long before you read them. This can feel like something of a forbidden topic—like we’re supposed to come to all reading and all books fully open-minded, with no preconceived notions or ideas, blank pages ready to receive. We aren’t supposed to be affected by the marketing or the hype or the thing the author said on Twitter last week.
Is it possible to read like that? Sure. It’s pretty magical when it does happen. But can it happen every time? Doubtful. And maybe it’s more useful, more practical and helpful, to accept that the world, the internet, the weather and—most of all—our own interior landscape affect our reading experiences. Reading is deeply subjective. The book that moves me to tears might make you scoff, and I might not be able to get through the dense prose that you find captivating. Neither of us is wrong. Neither of us is right, either.
We make assumptions. We judge books by their covers. Based on the frequency with which that one John Waters quote makes the rounds, we judge people by their books, too. Why ask someone what their favorite book is? Because you want to know something about them, and the answer to that question is revealing.
But it’s very easy to be wrong about what it reveals. And this brings me to something even the internet has yet to ruin for me: the pleasure of being wrong.
I love being pleasantly wrong about people, and I love being pleasantly wrong about books.
I think the reason we’re “supposed” to come to books with an impossibly pure open mind is because there’s so much resistance to the idea of being wrong. But I’ve been wrong about so many books. I thought Confessions of the Fox seemed too dense, so heavy with footnotes, and now I recommend it absolutely anytime anyone on Twitter asks for a recommendation that it even slightly fits. That book wedged itself into my heart and simply can’t be removed. I was absolutely resistant to reading The Golden Compass because everyone who told me to read it said “I never read fantasy, but this is great!” and as a fantasy reader, I didn’t trust people who said they never read fantasy.
The book is great.
It’s a skill, learning to enjoy being wrong. And it’s a joy and an education. The way that a person can seem unfriendly and then it turns out they were just nervous or having a bad day or were just thinking about something else entirely—books can be like that too. I didn’t think I’d like A Song for a New Day because I grew up in music circles and I’m skeptical and picky when it comes to books about bands and music. I didn’t think the book and I would get along.
The book is great.
When one person asks another person their favorite book, the answer is more than just the title of a book. If the answer is a famous book, a classic, one that the asker knows something about, then they’ve learned something about the person who loves it—or they think they have. Books have feelings, senses, atmospheres that hover around them even when we aren’t intimately familiar with the contents. A friend of mine said recently that she loves Lolita, but she’s reluctant to say so in most situations. People may jump to conclusions about what kind of reader loves Lolita. And not everyone’s willing to be wrong.
“Favorite” becomes shorthand for “Who are you when you’re reading?” That shorthand shakes hands with a person’s presumptions about a classic book and becomes a Thing. This kind of person loves The Road. This kind of person loves Middlemarch. This kind of person says The Power Broker, no matter what.
But maybe we’re asking the wrong question. “Favorite” is too all-encompassing. “Favorite” is a word that asks you to self-define, to be a Tolkien person or a Butler person or a Le Guin person. To pick and make a statement. But if there’s anything readers do, it’s keep reading. What if the real thing we’re wrong about is asking “What’s your favorite book?” as if there’s anything to be found in the answer? Favorite is too big, too much, and too tangled up with “best,” even though it ought to be subjective, and “best” really likes to pretend it isn’t. What if we break it down into more manageable bites: What was your favorite book last month? What’s your favorite book this very second? What was your favorite book when you were 16?
My favorite book right now is Michelle Ruiz Keil’s Summer in the City of Roses, which I read during a crushing heatwave in the City of Roses. My favorite book last month was Nghi Vho’s perfect The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Last year, when I felt unable to read fiction, it was Chanel Miller’s crushingly grace-filled Know My Name. For the last few years, it’s been Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road, a YA novel about a girl who runs away to find herself.
If you ask what my favorite book is, and I say Tess, I probably can’t count on the title telling you much at all. I can tell you it’s a YA fantasy and watch your face to see how dismissive you get. I can tell you it’s about a girl whose sister is a very successful half dragon, but that’s not really about Tess. Nothing I say, though, is going to bear the weight of decades, the certainty of establishment. Maybe you’ll make an assumption. Maybe it’ll be wrong. Maybe, if the book falls into your hands, you’ll get to enjoy the process of finding out there’s so much more to it.
And that’s excellent.
What’s your favorite book right now?
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods.
Right now it’s Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan because I accidentally started rereading WoT and once I started I can’t stop until either I get to Lord of Chaos or until they use the term “wolfkin” which is where I get my name from. Far as I can recall it only showed up once but I thought it was a brilliant term so many years ago.
After it’ll probably be Binti because that book was hilariously unexpected in so many ways and then maybe I’ll go back to No Such Thing as a Witch by Ruth Chew. A book I’d love to read again because I remember loving it as a kid.
Great article! I don’t have an absolute “favourite” and always respond with the most recent book that I really liked. Which usually turns into a great conversation about new books and new authors.
Just started in on The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War and I’m really liking it. Otherwise? Man, I’ve got several shelves of books that I’ve reread more than once.
Right now my favorite book is Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots. I was able to convince a coworker of mine to read it and she loved it! Now we both hoping for a sequel.
Just a nod to say that Tess of the Road is an excellent favourite book to currently have and I would join you in enthusiastically recommending. Although I can’t picture whether it’s readable without reading Seraphina first.
My perennial favourite is Feed, the zombie book that’s not actually about zombies, but about society and how we’d rebuild when we’ve won the war, but the enemy is still out there to provide omniprescent fear for the powerful and influential to prey upon. Horribly prescient with its ideas of fear of contagion, lockdowns and staying inside, and security/hygiene theatre to make people feel safe.
I’m sure most of us here laughed at the first line. One book? Really? As you say, define “favorite” when you ask a serious reader this question.
I’ll define it, at this moment, as the most recent book in my favorite series.
MIDNIGHT MOVIE, JL Bryan. “Ellie Jordan Ghost Trapper” paranormal suspense. Book 14. Ghost hunter Ellie and her partner Stacey come to the aid of a young couple who are trying to revive a dangerously haunted drive-in movie theater, but the ghosts are determined to destroy their dream and threaten their little girl. Another awesome novel with Ellie as her usual brave and noble self and Stacey a tad too plucky and geeky for her own good. Lots of danger, a bit of humor, and movie history. It remains my favorite paranormal series. A diet alert: Massive amounts of gourmet pizzas and popcorn are consumed.
When someone asks me my favorite book, I either tell them that my go-to is SFF and sometimes horror or thrillers. Or I might tell them that The Lord of the Rings changed my life when I was 14. Then, if they still seem interested or knowledgable, I might get into what I’m currently reading or what I’ve enjoyed lately, but favorite? That’s like asking me to pick my favorite out of my children or grandchildren. Can’t. Be. Done.
Favorite is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Waiting over a decade for the next book in the series…worth the wait!!
I’ve had the same favorite book since 1989 – The Long Run by Daniel Keyes Moran. Yes, I have occasional crushes, like Murderbot, and I go back to Dune Lmost as often, I’ll reread The Long Run probably twice a year. More if I’ve been feeling down.
I feel like its a mix between “this kind of person” and “this person in this mood/point in their life at this time” who loves a particular book or genre. When the pandemic shutdown happened I immediately reached for A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr. and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. When I have been really stressed out and my brain cannot cope with anything new, I know it’s time to go back to Terry Pratchett’s DiscWorld.
My favourite hasn’t changed for a long time: Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Every time I read it again it reaffirms itself as the overall best book I’ve read.
I have my “books I read when I’m too tired/lazy/burnt out to start a new book” shelf. So it takes awhile to tell if a book’s gonna be a favorite or not. They tend to be a series: Prachett’s Discworld or Red Stout’s Nero Wolfe books or Dickens…… just because
. And short stories, I love a good short story. Zelanzy is one of my favorite authors, and the Amber books are good but its his short stories I reread and reread (and A Night in the Lonesome October because its awesome). Becky Chambers and her Wayfarers books might be going on my shelf. Tade Thompson and his Molly Southborne stories and Nnedi Okorafor and Binti might have also found their way into my reread pile
. And I should go now because I’m in the middle of rereading Dorothy L Sayers, I love Wimsey
I’m with @anglefood, above – Patrick Rothfuss’ “The Name of the Wind/The Wise Man’s Fear” (thinking of “The Kingkiller Chronicles” as one book). Or, y’know, LOTR, that I’ve read close to yearly since the 1960’s.
Never an easy question. Right now I’m going to say ‘Watership Down’.
I can’t pick! Right now I’m busy rereading all of the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, but I still can’t pick one.
Completely agree that an overall favourite is a poor question. But a recent favourite is something actually useful to other readers; but you do have to be talking to another avid reader.
when people ask me for recent books I loved I ask them what kind of book or genre interests them. Then I can select something to fit their needs and taste.
I also agree that sometimes the timing of a book is key. I loved The Handmaidens Tale at 14 as I’d never read anything like it; and there was so little dystopian fiction starring women back then. Whereas today we have Hunger Games, Station Eleven, and so much more. Thus Handmaiden’s Tale is dated today; and I now believe it’s intent was to normalize our existing (not so awesome) society by exaggerating how awful it could be. Whereas Station Eleven is more about reinventing society and what we could be if we lost so many of our current constraints.
When, where, and even how (ebook, print, audio) we read a book can seriously impact our enjoyment of it.
That’s funny…my intrepid spouse and I were just talking about this the other day. I have it easy, in that my #1 all-time without question favorite fiction book is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. There’s been nothing to top it for me since I read it the first time (and every billionth re-read since)…and this was decades ago now. ‘Course…if you ask me what my favorite novel is *after* that…then we’re in the weeds (and there’s the fact that TLU is my favorite novel…but Beagle is not my favorite author…that’s Patricia A. McKillip). Then it becomes a matter of….favorite how? When? Why?
The last book that made me swoon was The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. It got a little lost in its own gorgeousness there (arguably The Night Circus is a much tighter book)…but the imagery was just amazing. And then I loved the hell out of A Memory Called Empire, which was an awesome surprise since space opera and political intrigue are so not normally my thing.
For many years, my favorite novel has been _The Long Ships_ by Frans G. Bengtsson, in its English Translation by Michael Meyer. I love it for the plot, for the characters, for the very dry humor, for the style of the translation—which feels very much like the old norse sagas do in translation—and for the place and time where I first read it.
Michael Chabon wrote an essay on why he loves the book—googling his name and the book title will turn up a short version in The Paris Review, and a longer version serves as introduction in the most recent edition that I purchased. Reading the essay was one of those startling experiences where it seemed he was writing exactly my feelings. Chabon’s first copy even came from the same airport bookshop where I purchased mine as a teenager.
I LOVE that you mentioned A Tale for the Time Being. That is, often, a book that I note as my favourite only to get blank stares.
I just finished Ana Historic by Daphne Marlatt and almost wanted to re-read it right away.
What I say is my “favourite” when asked is usually a combination of *a* favourite book combined with what I think a person will enjoy, or something they may not have read, but what I’d like to arm-twist them into reading based on my assertation of it as “my favourite book”
For more than half my life I would have answered that question immediately with Gone With the Wind. But it really didn’t stand the test of time, did it? I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to read it again.
Today I might say Jane Eyre. It’s my comfort read. Or The Haunting of Hill House, which still has the power to scare me. Or Watership Down, whose characters I love. Recent favorite? Piranesi.
Very interesting article!
It is fascinating to see how differently individual “book people” talk or think about books and reading.
I do have a clear favorite – J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It has been my favorite since it taught me to love reading over a decade and a half ago.
But after that, I couldn’t pick. I do have favorite series, favorite authors, etc., but there are many different works I love in different kind of ways, and I couldn’t choose any of those.
For instance, I have favorite fantasy series (the Stormlight Archives, the Riddlemaster Trilogy, the Licanius trilogy, the Chronicles of Narnia), favorite mystery authors (Arthur Conan Doyle, Rex Stout, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, etc.), favorite poets and poems, etc.etc. etc. I can’t really rank any of them.
I’m usually hesitant to mention my favorite because of how people will cast judgement against me. If it’s a classic, maybe it’s not the right one. If it’s an indie book, I’ll have to explain why I like it instead of something mainstream. Fascinating how such a simple question can carry so, even too much, weight. My favorite book last month was Pulp by Robin Talley, One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston this very second, and Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert when I was 16.
If I had to pick *just* one… Pratchett’s Men-At-Arms. Read it often enough it fell apart, which is a pretty good metric.
I don’t re read books. Ever. But my answer to this question, ever since I read it, will always be Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.
Im always looking to my next read and I love reading new things but if I found out I was dying I would have to go back to Gormenghast. It’s epic, wordy, hysterically funny, dark and tragic all at once. It really means a lot.
Great article and I’m enjoying reading the faves of others in the comments.
There’s the easy answer and there’s the complicated answer.
The easy answer is, uh, easy. Ever since I read David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus when Ballantine reprinted it in 1968, there has never been much doubt in my mind that it’s my all-time favorite novel. I don’t reread much because the TBR pile is too hellacious, but I have reread that, and more than any other novel. I have multiple editions, to try to keep the earlier ones as pristine as possible. Other novels threatened its position, but in the end I’ve always stuck with the Lindsay.
The complicated answer has to do with short story collections. My favorite is NESFA’s The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, but that’s not really fair because I read and loved most of the stories in it decades ago, either in Galaxy or If magazine, or in earlier incomplete collections, or in the Ace paperback Quest of Three Worlds. I’ve never reread it from cover to cover, but it is literally always right next to me and I will often reread particular stories. I think I must have reread Scanners Live in Vain or Under Old Earth 40 times.
I compare things in my head constantly. Every time I read a new book, if I think that it’s a favorite, I measure it against my memory of reading other favorites. Often it’s more limited. My favorite Thomas Pynchon was Gravity’s Rainbow until I read Against the Day in 2006, when that zoomed to 1st place. My favorite book of the 21st Century was Light by M. John Harrison. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice threatened to dislodge it, but I thought about it for a bit and decided to stick with Light. But I like the Ancillary trilogy as a whole slightly more than I do the Kefahuchi trilogy, of which Light is the 1st book. These things always bubble around, like they’re in Brownian motion.
I’m boring, I’m afraid. It’s been Lord of the Rings since I was nine, which was a few decades ago now. Fantasy is probably my favourite genre (SF is great too, but well), and the problem is that at this point it’s very workable to write VERY GOOD fantasy, but the space for GREAT fantasy has been kind of filled up. Everything people write now has to kind of take into account what’s already been written. On top of that, you’ve got publishers and such constraining the conditions of writing.
Tolkien had the luxury of operating in a space which was not really defined, and doing so as a long term project, and doing so with a lot of intellectual ambition. He could go big without it being derivative of anything, or needing to make it ironic. He was able to take the time to carefully craft his use of language, and had that deep erudition as a base for doing so; critics should IMO probably pay more attention to Tolkien’s prose style. Tolkien used these advantages to make something just incredibly bloody good. It would be amazingly hard even for someone as inherently talented as Tolkien to write something better today.
And of course on a personal level, LotR shaped my life. It was what really got me into fantasy, but at the time there hardly was any. For at least fifteen years after I read it, it was possible to read all of the more-or-less significant fantasy being published. At the beginning, it was more like scouring the bookstores to try to find the few scraps. Most of what you did find were either shameless Tolkien imitation (some of it quite good nonetheless) or shameless Conan imitation (which were fun but hardly challenges to Tolkien). Even if I found a fantasy book/series arguably as good as LotR today, it wouldn’t have been the book intertwined with my thinking since youth.
So I can talk about books I read recently that were good, that I liked, that I’m pleased to have read, that impressed me greatly. But I can’t talk about something new I read being my “favourite”. There is only one and I don’t see how that would change.
Sara at 18: I’m with you: The Last Unicorn is my favorite book of all time, no question. I first read it in 1968 and I have totally lost count how many times I’ve read it since then. There was a time I could have quoted whole paragraphs from memory.
I also have a second favorite: Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. Lots of folks have forgotten that one by now, but it’s still delightful, and I still love it.
After that, though, it’s katie bar the door! Anything goes!
It was The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye for so long, but The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison has bumped it down to second. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Kline is close, but there is something about the Emperor that calls me back to read it over and over again. I consider it a book without flaw.
@13 & @22 Gaudy Night is my usual answer to the “favorite book” question, even if I’m not sure what my actual favorite is. On any given day there’s likely a Sayers on my nightstand.
I am older than your usual respondent, 77, and my choice is influenced accordingly. All time favorite would be A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., followed closely by Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys. The first should be fairly easy to obtain even today but the second will probably need to be ordered via Amazon. Both are landmark classics.
Many favorites and now mostly historical romance books. However when I was young I read mostly non-fiction except for any novel by Ira Levin. Most of Mr. Levin’s books were very popular movies except for my favorite “This Perfect Day” a scifi that is now coming true. Also this book is a best kept secret and glad it never became commercialized into a movie!!!
My first favorite book was JANE EYRE. My second favorite book was THE FEMALE MAN. My next favorite book was A COLLEGE OF MAGICS. As I grew, I had a new favorite book every 5-7 years that helped me on my journey. They still comfort and surprise me. Now I love the MURDERBOT series, among too many others to count. So grateful for authors who illuminate the heroine’s journey!
In many ways, this is a fun conversation. I have favorite books for different situations. My all-time favorite book is Anne of Green Gables. But, if I was only able to have one book, I couldn’t choose Anne; it would have to be Lord of the Rings. I also like the comment where one reader mentions a favorite book (TLU) but emphasizes their favorite author is someone other than Beagle. My third-favorite book is Little, Big… but I really don’t care much for the rest of John Crowley’s work. He’s an uncomfortable kind of person. My favorite author is A.S. Byatt.
I am a re-reader. I return to books to re-visit beloved places, re-kindle relationships with characters who have their own spaces in my heart, and, for comfort. If I return to a book over and over, it’s a favorite. I can’t think of very many recent books I would return to, but Piranesi is one. (I love all three of Susanna Clarke’s masterpieces.)
There are also a couple books that come to mind that I know I will want (need?) to return to, sooner or later, when they seem the right prescription for the time: The Half-Buried Giant and Madeleine is Sleeping.
Little Women.
The person who mentions GWTW as a previous favorite reminds me of why, in some ways, this conversation can be tricky. I look over my list of favorites/comfort reads, and, well, it definitely says something.
Also, Dan and Gormenghast. I don’t think I could read that one again but I have a copy of The Frivolous Cake pinned to the wall in my office. I loved the birds, the cats, and the gardener polishing the apples on the trees. Definitely a milestone in my reading career.
I get into a similar argument a lot when people ask me what my favorite book or movie is. For the record, if I had to pick one book to rule them all, I would pick Austenland by Shannon Hale. (My current favorite is Anxious People by Fredrik Backman.) But when I tell people that my favorite book is Austenland or that my favorite movie is You’ve Got Mail, a common response is: “That’s what you think the best book/movie is?” But that’s not what I said; I said they were my favorite. I’ve read plenty of books that I believe have – speaking technically – a higher quality of writing. But my favorite is the one that I related to the most. That I can reread over and over again and never get tired of. That makes me laugh out loud. That I enjoy the experience of reading. That is my definition of “favorite.” But many people I talk to equate “favorite” with “best,” and to me, they’ve always been very different things. Crime and Punishment is an excellently-written novel, but reading it can be intense, emotional, and heartbreaking. And while the experience is cathartic, it’s also not precisely enjoyable, so while I respect it for its ability to evoke powerful reactions, I would never think to consider it a “favorite.”
Of course I have met people who are the exact opposite of me: they enjoy those intense feelings and rollercoaster book rides. They prefer, and intentionally seek out, those kinds of books. So maybe that’s the issue – everyone’s definition of “favorite” is different so we all have a hard time meeting in the middle.
favorite books, WOT is mine favorite Epic books 1-5 and the last three especially. Anything by Brandon Sanderson is a favorite.
Two books I read and reread in my younger days until they fell apart were Catch-22 and The Godfather. I haven’t replaced either so it has been years since I’ve read them. Of course The Lord of the Rings. I used to love the Foundation series too but not anymore.
Now my favorites change with whatever I have been reading. But I would have to say the books that influenced me the most were all books I read in the 60’s – A Wrinkle in Time, The Lord of the Rings, and Catch-22.
This isn’t hard for me or other fans of this book: Boy’s Life by the great
@RobertMcCammon
Robert McCammon
but second place there is no way I could name just one.
Every July 4th I reread this book and I never fail to learn something new either about society or life, or people in general.
I was surprised to find out how many other people say the same about this book on his Twitter feed and on his website.
It was published in 1991 but thus far it is still readily available for purchase.
Ila in Maine
My favorite book right now is Charles L. Adler’s Wizards Aliens and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction (2019). The title says it all for me!
God emperor of Dune. I can hear you all saying Whaaat? I love all the Dune books, well mostly all. But GEoD is so thought provoking and melancholic. Also, Pride and Prejudice for the language, silliness of Mrs Bennett and the sheer beautiful writing. And Songmaster by Orson Scott Card. Exquisite story line, always pulls me straight into the universe he’s created and keeps me there.
Malazan Book of the Fallen.
Re-read every few years.
Current favourite. Nnedi Okorafor Remote Control.
@16 Honur Gaurd . Just finished a re-read myself.
ONE book? Let alone in only one genre. I can’t even tell you *only one* favorite SFF author.
@36: so very this. I know McKillip and Cherryh have done more ambitious and almost certainly better books than The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Merchanter’s Luck, but those are two I kept going back to until I’d practically memorized them, and I will surely pick them up again some day as my memory weakens; each made a place for itself in my mind while opening up room for other works.
Since then there are books I’ve been blown away by but haven’t reread (e.g. Declare by Tim Powers), books that blew me away once but weren’t so impressive on a second read (not Suck Fairy, just the reveals seeming a bit more obvious), and books that were still great the 2nd time (e.g. A Memory of Empire). I’ve also gone back several times to Stevermer’s A College of Magic; maybe my particular button is people coping, but if that were all I wouldn’t keep thumbing through Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider.
I’ve been puzzling over what I should mean by favorite book. The book I loved the most when I first read it? The book that I would love the most if I read it now, or the last time I read it? By the first metric it’s probably LoTR, which I read in my early teens and used to reread every year. It’s probably been over 20 years since I’ve read it now (I’m 65) and I don’t really yearn to reread it again.
The books I reread most currently are The Goblin Emperor and Grayson’s Commonwealth books and a superhero series called Wearing the Cape that I don’t pretend is great but it for some reason I keep coming back to it. I think Bujold is currently my favorite author maybe Komar might be my favorite book right now.
Such a difficult question. CJ Cherryh’s Currently has been my favorite for years. So many ideas and such a complex universe. The Lord of the Rings would be a close second. Of books read more recently, Quarter Share by Lowell, The Goblin Emperor by Addison, and Klune’s brilliant vision in The House in the Cerulean Sea.
Let’s get the unpleasant part out of the way as quickly as possible.
You wrote: “Even if the book I love the most in all the world at this exact moment is a book I read just last week, if you ask what my favorite book is, I’m going to feel like I ought to name something you might recognize. A book that you’ve heard of, if not actually read.”
No. Can’t agree with that. Am I selfish, or am I too honest? I’m not going to tailor my answer to the person asking. If they ask me for my favorite book, then I’m going to give them an honest answer – whether they know the book or have never heard of it. Frankly, I’d like any other person do the same: be honest with me rather than cater their answer to what they think I’ll like or want to hear.
That said, on to the meat of the question.
What’s my favorite book?
That one is virtually impossible to answer because it implied (at least to me) that it’s the one book I’d like to take to the proverbial island – the one book I like more than any other book.
The problem is that reading, much like listening to music, requires diversity (at least for regular readers). The thought of having only ONE book to read for the rest of my life (on that island) is just as miserable as having to listen to one single song for the rest of my life. (Well, not quite as miserable as one book is generally a lot more diverse than just on song but you get the picture.)
If someone put a gun to my head and told me “You must choose one thing to read!” I’d be tempted to go for a cheat like saying “the Perry Rhodan series!” because not only is German my native language but most importantly it consists of over 3,000 novella sized heftromane and countless peripheral material (including a 850-volume spin-off novella series called “Atlan”) which would provide lots of unique and interesting reading or years to come!
As I said, it’s kind of a cheat.
Picking one (normal) book would be horrible even if the book in question were the best book written in the history of books.
I don’t want to read the same book for the rest of my life (assuming that my life is going to go on for at least a couple of more decades!) just as I wouldn’t want to listen to the same some for the rest of my life.
I could say with confidence that speculative fiction is my favorite genre (a minor cheat in its own right to those who know what speculate fiction encompasses) but one single book? Quite impossible.
There are books that I like much more than others – but luckily, there’s more than one of these as well.
I am tempted to think (and this may sound a bit mean) that the question about one’s “favorite book” is easiest to answer for those who read very little and have few books to choose from.
I have many favorites, but only a few fall into the category of ones I want OTHERS to love. I have bought the following several times and given them to friends:
Good Omens (you know who)
Sandman Slim (Richard Kadrey)
The Atrocity Archives (Charles Stross)
Master of the Five Magics (Lyndon Hardy)
Honorable mentions (gave them away 2 times each):
God’s Demon (Wayne Barlowe)
Wool (Hugh Howey)
This is an interesting one for me. For a long time, I didn’t have a definite favourite book – I had read and loved so many in different ways, for different reasons, at different stages of my life, that there was not one that stuck out above the crowd.
Then I read Look To Windward.
One of the Culture novels, by the truly unique, beloved, and dead Iain M Banks, it described my perfect society, the place I’d rather be than anywhere. It asked all the most important questions about life. It understands.
So now, this book is my favourite. Now, and probably forever.
As many have said, there are books that you are absolutely stunned by at the moment that you read them, but don’t plan to reread…and then there are the books that you know you will reread and have reread, and in that category right now firmly are Dan Simmons Hyperion, Naomi Novick’s Spinning Silver, River Solomon’s The Deep, and the short stories in N. K. Jemisin’s How Long ‘Til Black future month?
Really good essay, Molly. After a lifetime of reading, I have too many “favorites” to count. A few that come to mind: Slaughterhouse Five, Lord Jim, a rotating cast of Brautigan (In Watermelon Sugar, A Confederate General From Big Sur, Trout Fishing In America – whichever one I read most recently), Ringworld, The Sparrow, A Dream in Polar Fog, Seabiscuit, Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies, Look to Windward. All the Pretty Horses. Independent People. I’m forgetting a ton of them, generally the more recent!
I’m sure I do some sort of internal selection when deciding what to answer when I’m asked that question. Same thing with music. What serious reader can have one favorite book, and what serious music fan can have one favorite album?
My favorite book right now is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. When people ask for my favorite (full stop), I normally say the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik.
If I had to pick a single book, it would probably be The Goblin Emperor, with Martha Wells’s Wheel of the Infinite as a close second. But The Last Unicorn should fit in there somewhere…
Otherwise, it tends to be series. Bujold’s Penric & Desdemona (I like all of Bujold, but I like those best). Wells’s Raksura, and Murderbot. I’m also deeply fond of M.C.A. Hogarth’s interlocking series in the Peltedverse: Dreamhealers beginning with Mindtouch, Her Instruments beginning with Earthrise, Prince’s Game beginning with Even the Wingless, and the several books that have come out since those series braided together. Also Peter Wimsey.
And if we step away from fiction, I have some favorite religion/spirituality books, but I tend to raise those only with people I know share my taste in that regard.
This week, it’s Witness for the Dead.
i can narrow down to genre (fantasy) and maybe author… Or top five…? Maybe. But book?! No here’s my top 100…
i tend to default back to Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey. But this year has been such a wild ride of books! It’s dastardly hard to pick just one so here’s three that i’ve read this year that i’ve adored!
Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
The Eyes of Tamburah by Maria V. Snyder (One of the authors that would go on that list above!)
The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
Thanks for your thoughtful post, Molly. And thanks to all who have commented.
My favorite books have definitely changed over time. Current favorites include the Linesman books by SK Dunstall, the Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, the Others series by Anne Bishop, and the Claimings series by Lyn Gala.
I have, and have had, a lot of Favourite Books, but they’re favourites in different ways.
These are the books that I read again and again and again, or the books that I read just once, because once was enough (in a good way).
The books such that I have to collect everything the author wrote.
The one I read over and over again when I was a teenager/young adult.
The one I need to re-read every X years. (X=1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10 for various different books)
The one I chain-read three times when I first got it; after that I think it’s going on the two-year or the three-year list.
The one I read only once (see above).
The one that was like a body punch (in a good way).
The one that I buy every time I come across a copy in a second-hand bookstore so that I have extra copies to give away because you need to read it. Everybody needs to read it.
The one that if some random remark reminds me of the relevant passage in the book, I will leap up and search my bookshelves and the conversation can’t continue until I’ve found it and made you listen to it.
The one that changed the way I saw the world.
The one that made me both laugh and cry in different parts of the same book.
The one that I felt empty afterwards to think that it was fiction and I would never know what happened to the characters beyond the end of the book.
The one I that was more real to me while I was reading it than my real life.
@55 Yes! Brightly Burning is one of my favorites too!
Yeah, one of. Definitely can’t pick just one. I think of it like a threshold. “What’s your favorite book?” is meaningless to me because there are so many that have soared past the “favorite” threshold to become books that I sometimes reread, quote, purchase, give to friends, think about for days after reading, obsessively search out more by the author, etc, depending on the book. There are so many different reasons to love a book, and, like people, books can evoke so many different reactions at different times of our lives, that “favorite” is far too general of a term to be very meaningful for me.
Some people have one clear favorite, some book that resonates with them more than any other and always has since they read it. Not me. Books resonate differently at different times of my life, and each new discovery can be a new favorite for a while. I may go back to LotR or Wheel of Time or Dresden Files or Valdemar or Pern or Apprentice Adept periodically (you could say those are my favorite series, in the “reread occasionally” sense), but I delight in finding new favorites the same way I delight in making new friends.
You can meet books the same way you meet people – with a recommendation from someone else you know. Sometimes you don’t get along with someone the first time you meet them, but later you click. Or you just never enjoy their company and avoid them and their family whenever you can. Or you like one sibling in a family but not the rest of them.
Fortunately, books don’t die. (They might go out of print, though.) Once you have a book, you can continue to enjoy its company as long as you like.
Hello all.
What a great discussion. From 4th grade until about my late 30s, I would have said The Lord of the Rings was my favorite book.
But about 15 years ago I came to realize that Gene Wolfe’s Urth Cycle had actually risen above the Professor’s greatness in my mind, simply because of how often in my life I found myself ruminating on the story of Severian and Thecla and Jonas and the Alzabo and Patera Silk and Auk and Chenille and Maytera Marble and Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint and Oreb and Hyacinth and Horn and Silkhorn and Mucor and Pig and Krait and Jahlee and on and on and on. I can’t get their story out of my head, and I am in no way tired of them living there. Gene Wolfe has enriched my life in ways I can’t even begin to describe.
That being said, the most recent book I’ve read that I push on people whom I love is Kate DiCamillo’s Three Amigos trilogy, but especially the middle book — Louisiana’s Way Home — which can totally be read as a stand-alone story. It would be shelved in the children’s section of a bookstore or library (not YA), but my love for it knows no bounds. It simultaneously makes me laugh out loud, and despair for humanity, and in the end it completely lifts me up. I’ve read it half a dozen times since it came out and will no doubt read it again. Y’all should too. Seriously.
@1, I’m on Shadow Rising right now, saw someone reading Lord of Chaos on the subway though a day or two ago, weird coincidence.
I have fairly stable favourites, they can change but not often, and they’re all books that are important to me ideologically/thematically, personally, emotionally, when they connect with me for those reasons they become my favourites. Favourites I had as a child and teen I’ve pretty much outgrown, even the well-written all-ages ones, those are the ones that I’ve read so much that I feel like I can quote chapter and verse from them. Whether I can actually do that is questionable but that feeling of being too familiar is a block. I feel like I engage differently with familiar books than with first-read books. The Way of Kings (my favourite from adult years and also current favourite) is just recently becoming slightly too familiar, I’m not feeling like I can quote from it yet but I’ve had more trouble getting into it for the pre-Rythm of War reread but it could be that that was a planned rereading rather than picking it up on whim, I usually get into books better when I follow my mood.
This is a evil comment thread. So many more books to read.
Iain M Banks. I saw “Look to Windward” which was the first Banks book i read. I like “Use of Weapons”.
Can’t say I have a favorite, although I love many of the books mentioned. If pressed, LotR I think.
My current favourite is Old Man’s War (Easy to read scifi, great series) by John Scalzi.
Followed closely by Foxglove Summer (Beautiful written Urban Fiction in very modern times, the whole series is awesome) by Ben Aaronovich.
This based on the amount of times ive re read these books.
“Favourite book” I would have to define by saying it would have to be one that I have read several times (a fair number) and then one I would take to reread if stranded on a desert island with only that book forever. Possibilities: The Left Hand of Darkness (read so many times it fell apart and bought another copy); Dune (almost as bad, although I still have the original copy, better binding); Stranger In a Strange Land & The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and maybe a couple of other Heinleins. Dickson’s Tactics of Mistake; Farmer’s Maker of Universes; One of the Dragonflight series (possibly Dragon Singer.) … the list goes on. If I’m allowed to have a closely linked series the Julian May comes into consideration (so long as I can have both the Pliocene series and the related Galactic Milieu series); several of the Modessit series; And I refuse to go anywhere without Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
I’ve managed to eliminate all of Asimov, Clarke, Niven, and many others, although I like many of their books, and LOTR (read a couple of times, don’t need to read again. Ask me about favourite authors, and the reply is different. I can’t choose a single book by Sherri Tepper, but I would be bereft if my library didn’t have most of her works. Same for Le Guin.
There is no answer to this question. If I’m going to a desert Island, I can probably discard about 70% of my library, but that will still leave me with over 1000 F&SF books to take.
Not genre, but my favourite is “To kill a mockingbird”, although the book that had most sentences that made me pause and think ‘I wish I’d written that’ was “A tale of two cities”. E Nesbit also had a very clear, concise, economical writing style that I find a joy to read.
Great reframing of a tricky question! This will save me from having to say “I don’t have a favorite” or make something arbitrary feeling up.
Right now, my favorite is a tie between the Kingkiller Chronicles and the Jo Walton reread of the series on this site. Really great reading experience, and helped me manage some hard times during the pandemic
Merona @57 Thanks for this thoughtful list of ways a book can impact me. It has me thinking of the various books that fit some of these categories.
At the moment (well, over the last couple of years) I’ve been slightly obsessed by Good Omens, to the extent of cosplaying and writing fan fiction, so that probably comes up head and shoulders over any other favourite book.
But also Dorothy Sayers – I can always revisit Lord Peter happily.
And also Discworld, and Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant series.
More obscurely, I read Moonraker’s Bride by Madeleine Brent and The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart at an impressionable age, and still enjoy re-reading them now, both of them romantic mysteries.
For me, “favourite” means, “Which book(s) could I reread dozens of times without getting tired of them? Which would I be unhappiest if I could never read again? Which ones profoundly jive with my emotions and worldview?”
And for me, it’s been narrowed to roughly three for quite a while: Tolkien’s legendarium (The Silmarillion, the Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings), Les Miserables, and Jane Eyre. Those are the ones that I’ll read until my copy wears out, and then pick up another copy because I need to have them
Easy. Darksword Trilogy Book 1
This book launched my decades of reading sci-fi/fantasy.
It was practically Syndromes (The Incredibles) world goal where everyone was special, so no-one was. Until someone was truly not special, making them so.
This is a really good reminder that the answer to what is your favorite __________ (book/movie/tv show/Simpsons episode/Metallica album) is not the be all end all of someone’s existence, and that question should be a gateway, not a destination. I’m awfully quick to judge someone when the answer isn’t, well, more or less the exact same as my answer. Here’s to understanding and learning and being open.
Current favorite: A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon.
All time favorite has to be a Wheel of Time book and difficult to choose but I will go with Fires of Heaven.
When I was raising a family it was Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I once listened to a radio broadcast of it into the wee hours of the morning and it lasted three hours
In my youth it was Chessman of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I loved all his sci-Fi books but this one captured my imagination. I even made my own chessboard which is not a standard chessboard.
Favourite book is a tough one. I would have to say that if I was to be stuck on a desert island with only one book, I’d want the Silmarillion. That’s kind of like saying it’s my favourite.
But then there’s This Is How You Lose the Time War, which is breezy and complex and fun and one of the rare books that I finished and immediately went back to page 1 to reread. And there’s Rivers of London, which absolutely precisely targets me and what I like (dry humour, London, a strong sense of verisimilitude, and characters who are interesting while also coming across like real human beings). And there’s the Long Price Quartet, which has an almost unique way of telling a long and complex and morally ambiguous story and which shows changes to the characters and to the world over a span of decades, and which probably did more to influence what I thought a fantasy could be than any other work I’ve read.
And so on. How can I pick just one?
Hmmm…well if I translate ‘my favorite book(s)’ to mean which books have I re-read the most then that list would include:
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Canon
Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine
Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 A Space Odyssey
J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
And does having 24 different translations into English of the Tao Te Ching count?
This is indeed a loaded question! And a great article as well. Oh, there’re so many!
Oh, for children, and young adults, at the moment, I would say Dragonwatch, based off of Fablehaven (Celebrant should be pronounced with a hard “C”, not an “S”, a ‘selebrant’ is one who celebrates). If I must go with all-time, then the Prydain series, especially The High King and its starter The Book of Three.
For horror, I would need to bend the rules. I would choose Jaws, but not the dime novel. The film adaptation is the exception to ‘the book is always better’. Or perhaps Cujo, though I’ve yet to read the story and not just see it. If you demanded print, then The Lawnmower Man. Were that short story disqualified, then given the time at which I read it, 1984. Again, rule-breaking. That story scared me utterly. (Both did).
Ah, classics! The Count of Monte Cristo, though the ending was definitely not a modern perspective. Just before my sibling passed, I was proud to accomplish The Lord of the Flies, the seminal tale about the descent into barbarism. I must here declare my abiding reverence for Armstrong Sperry’s Call It Courage, a great tale of a young man facing his greatest fear. Ah! The Old Man and The Sea! How could I forget? I doubt not that there are others. But just within the last two years, I finally completed the masterpiece that is Moby Dick.
There are so many authors, of so many types, Lewis, Asimov, et al, et cetera, and each has grown mine heart a bit. Science fiction: Laumer, Saberhagen, Larry Niven especially have deep appeal. Yet because of emotional turmoil, I went through a period of “readers block” where I could not invest in anything new. It was Ender’s Game that shattered that forever.
Yet if I were forced to one author only, then that would have to be The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings, which also bends the rules, perhaps. And, if we were restricted to one book, and one alone, then there can be but One Alone: The Bible.
@6 I’m surprised to find another Ellie Jordan fan in the wilds of the internet! One of my thoughts reading the article was that maybe the first book in the series was my favorite because, without it, I wouldn’t have read any of the others. Glad you enjoyed Midnight Movie! I’m still on Trailwalker.
I’ve just realized I do have a favorite Gaunt’s Ghosts book, it’s military sf set in the Warhammer 40k universe, ‘Only In Death’ is a Ghosts meet haunted house story in which the regiment is sent to defend a Lovecraftianly ancient, possibly alien built, fortified mansion house full of, well, ghosts.
Defying Doomsday right now, an absolutely stunning tour de force of post apocalyptic fiction that centers people with disabilities. An apocalypse where everything that isn’t perceived slowly vanishes, and our protagonist is good at perceiving everything except for his own body. Another story from the universe of On The Edge Of Gone, which contains my new favorite quote regarding disability: “How is it equal if it hurts some and not others?”. The ward of a mental hospital holding together with tea parties and scavenged meds. The girl locked in space by her own pituitary gigantism, translating a new language for the aliens arrived over war-torn Earth. I’m on the 13th of 15 stories, but so far every story is good, a very rare achievement for an anthology even by the best. It makes me feel alive, enlightened, tough, and adaptable.
@56 Hurrah! Another Lyn Gala fan
I have favorite series: Liaden by Lee & Miller & Bujold’s Vorkosigan series and have re-read both in the last twelve months for comfort. I have favorites within both series but both are so special because you know the characters and their history.
Favorite series I haven’t read in a while: Wen Spencer’s Ukiah Oregon quartet. And I really should check if she’s published another Tinker book.
Favorite new series this year is definitely Murderbot. Favorite book in the last month is Elizabeth Bear’s Synarche novel ‘Ancestral Night’. She’s not one of my go-to authors but this one really worked for me – themes about politics and utopia and what it means to choose your identity. I keep thinking about it weeks after I finished it.
My favorite book of all time is IMAJICA, by Clive Barker!
My favorite “book” is the Wheel of Time, I have lost count of how many times I’ve read it, and I listened to the last 5 or 6 on audiobook once. It is my happy place, even the slog in the middle. Also my favorite book is “Flowers for Algernon” because it scares the crap out of me and makes me cry. And my favorite book is “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August” because I find it creeping into my thoughts even now years later. Finally my favorite book is “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” because it makes my heart light and happy. My answers will probably change tomorrow.
Where to start? Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle, which fits into my Three (and Four etc.) Musketeers space, along with Count of Monte Cristo. (though I also love her Grunts). Discworld, though my shining gem there is Night Watch. Good Omens is a gem of a different kind, but I can still recite bits and love the Amazon series. I have to wait years before rereading Lord of the Rings, because I’ve memorized so much! I read the Skylark series as a kid, and still wanted to run off and be a pirate with Blackie Duquesne. I’ve memorized Heinlein too much to reread it (and prefer not to go near Sail Beyond the Sunset). I love the snark of the Laundry books, and the high-minded sentimentality of the Clorinda series (at least the first 12 anyway). Mary Jo Putney’s Rose in Winter made me cry, Laura Kinsale’s Lessons in French made me laugh (along with Michelle Martin’s The Mad Miss Mathley and Barbara Metzger’s An Affair of Interest. Ok, I’m a sucker for bad puns).
I inhaled Rachel Caine’s The Great Library at warp speed. Damn the cancer that killed her.
And of course, Bujold, Milesverse, Chalion, Penric and the holiness of Hickory Lake. Bujold has a gift for the spiritual and finds it in the middle of ordinary matter.
But nobody’s mentioned Cordwainer Smith! How did that happen? Many of his works are poetry in short story form.
All over the place:
Diane Duane: Deep Wizardry; William Gibson: The Peripheral; Lonely Werewolf Girl; Martin Millar; Burning Bright; Melissa Scott (Night Sky MIne hasn’t been released as an ebook yet). Minor Mage; Ursula Vernon. But classics too – been listening to Andy Serkis reading The Hobbit and have enjoyed and have appreciated it more than I have in years; I think he’s doing LoTR. 10 years ago I couldn’t abide Bujold and now have really enjoyed the Penric series.
I’d be tempted to nominate Ursula LeGuin’s Always Coming Home.
I actually have one specific answer to the question “What’s Your Favorite Book?” but it doesn’t usually mean much to whoever asks me the question. Not only because it’s a title that the average person (even the average book lover) hasn’t heard of, but because it’s the THIRD book in a little-known series (and yes, the series is the answer to “What’s Your Favorite Book Series?”). My favorite book is unequivocally The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. Has been since the moment I first finished it over a decade ago, and the 20-odd times I’ve read it since. There are loads of other titles that I can list off as my favorites, but if ever I’m asked to provide a single title it’s got to be The King of Attolia.