Favorite books?

[Jillian McGrath]

I havent read a really good fiction book in a while. What are your favorites?

[Meaghan Schaible]

The Foretelling by Alice Hoffman! Great read.

[Krissy PonyBoy Press]

I need to read a goof novel, too. I always read non-fiction as well. A couple of my favorite books that I have read more than once:

The River Why - David James Duncun
Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God - Joe Coomer (good if you are a wanna be archeologist)

Also, young adult fiction is a nice quick read.

[helenomicon]

I'm really into China Mieville (British fantasy author, although he calls it "weird fiction") lately. I just finished The Scar, and Perdido Street Station is one of my favorite books. I've also been re-reading all my H.P. Lovecraft anthologies.

[K.]

Emma Jane Falconer said:

The best book I read last year was the Children's Book by AS Byatt. I'm terrible at explaining book plots, so I'll leave you to google it, but it was on loads of end of year lists of books of the year.

I just finished reading this! It was good, but it felt like I was in the process of reading it forever. Right now I'm reading Impossible Motherhood, a memoir by Irene Vilar.

[Whitering]

Dragon Magic by Andre Norton. That book so inspired me that I did a series of paintings of each of the dragons in the book. I don't know how many times I read it. It belonged to my sister and when she moved away she took all her books with her. I'd love to find another copy of it and maybe make a newer series of paintings of the dragons.
Tailchasers Song. I can't remember the authors name, but it is a wonderful story of the journey of a cat.
A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I love that the main character is named Nobody.

[Emma Jane Falconer]

Knowing about the real people the characters in the Children's Book are based on definitely gave it an extra edge for me, I'd literally just read a biog of E. Nesbit when I was given the book, so my brain was already in that world.

K. said:

Emma Jane Falconer said:

The best book I read last year was the Children's Book by AS Byatt. I'm terrible at explaining book plots, so I'll leave you to google it, but it was on loads of end of year lists of books of the year.

I just finished reading this! It was good, but it felt like I was in the process of reading it forever. Right now I'm reading Impossible Motherhood, a memoir by Irene Vilar.

[K.]

I wish I had that kind of background when I read it! Is there any non-fiction you'd rec that would go hand in hand with The Children's Book?

Emma Jane Falconer said:

Knowing about the real people the characters in the Children's Book are based on definitely gave it an extra edge for me, I'd literally just read a biog of E. Nesbit when I was given the book, so my brain was already in that world.

K. said:

Emma Jane Falconer said:

The best book I read last year was the Children's Book by AS Byatt. I'm terrible at explaining book plots, so I'll leave you to google it, but it was on loads of end of year lists of books of the year.

I just finished reading this! It was good, but it felt like I was in the process of reading it forever. Right now I'm reading Impossible Motherhood, a memoir by Irene Vilar.

[Danny Olda]

I read obsessively so to keep things simple:

Favorite of all time: The Waves - Virginia Woolf
Favorite of the moment: At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom - Amy Hempel

[Bridget Tompkins]

also got to say that the book thief is excellent, but also got to love the catcher in the rye, a thousand splendid suns and i just finished readng middlesex which i really enjoyed.

[twilight gecko]

everything by John Steinbeck..
wraiththu by Storm Constantine..
everything by Patricia Cornwell

[WinterMuse]

I'd recommend anything by Angela Carter! She's my favourite author.

Also 'Story of the Eye' by Bataille, 'The Cement Garden' by Ian McEwan, 'The Unbearable lightness of being' by Milan Kundera, and 'Henry and June' by Anais Nin (or any of her journals)

[Katie]

Ooh, Danny, I've heard Amy Hempel is wonderful. She's on my to-read list. I've been reading a fantastic new collection of essays by Terry Castle. She's published mostly scholarly stuff but these are personal essays - not fiction, but incredibly smart and funny, very readable. A friend gave me a novel for Christmas by Jincy Willett called The Writing Class that I LOVED - it's dark and funny but it's also an honest-to-goodness mystery, very good. I also recently discovered a short story called Gryphon by Charles Baxter that was excellent. It's anthologized in a collection by David Sedaris, and in the audiobook he's the one who reads it.