Favourite Book

[TRINITY]

This is inspired by coldfusions 5 favourite songs. Next to music I love to curl up with a book. Whats your all time favourite and why. Mine has to be Don Quioxte (Spell master) keep your dreams alive. Feed me...who's next?

[LeMarchand]

It's difficult to pick just one, but I'll go for Skallagrigg by William Horwood (please ignore the BBC adaptation which cut out most of the novel). I keep trying to get people to read this, but it's a hard sell. Here goes anyway... there are two parallel stories, in one - starting many years ago - we follow Arthur, a Cerebral Palsy sufferer with severe difficulties who is institutionalised, but keeps the hopes of the other "inmates" alive by telling them about the "Skallagrigg" who watches over and looks after people like them. The main story follows Esther in the present day (or it was when the book was written). She also has CP, but retains some motor control. Inside her crippled body lies a fine mind, but it looks as if no-one will ever discover that, because all they see is her useless shell... The book made me look at sufferers of CP and Downs in a completely new light (the author's daughter has CP), and is one of a handful of books that have moved me to tears. The book isn't all doom and gloom, however! Check out the reviews at Amazon - 18 5-Star reviews out of 18! Give it a go!

[sft42]

Stephen King - The Stand.....good story of apocolyptic times well told.

[bernardo]

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" by Jaw Jaw L. Incidentally, I dislike it when people write the title as "1984". My second favourite is "Animal Farm" by Jorj Orwell. I have counted the words in "Animal Farm" five times, and got to 29993, 30174, 30178, 30180 and 30198. I like them because of their political content, and because they are very readable (unlike most of the other books with which we were force-fed at school). I tend to be very much a reference-book person rather than a novel person.

[woofgang]

yes,skallagrigg is amazing, very upbeat, I thought, and not widely enough known. Other than that, Lord of the Rings, Wind in the Willows. I don't think its possible to have one favourite book, for me it depends on my mood and the time of year. Anything at all by Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, except he doesn't write fast enough, I'm ciurrently reading garden books by Beverley Nichols

[woofgang]

PS, congrats to LeMarchand for giving a really good synopsis that doesn't reveal the ending!

[TRINITY]

Love the sound of lemarchand's book even the title sounds promising so thats definitely next on my list. I'm also a big fan of the beatnik writers such as kerouac etc.. Lord of the Rings trilogy is fan dabby dozy fairytale city my presciousssss..... I must admitt I aint really read any Stephen King novels so thats a mbe. More I've only got 1 so far I need more I tell u

[darth vader]

Watership Down, or anything by Pratchett

[anthomson]

I didn't really want to pick a recent book but I really enjoyed "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. A very unusual (but believable) story about a boy sharing a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. It is story telling at its best, each page is riviting and the story as a whole makes some interesting observations about belief and why we need it. Well worth a read.

[LeMarchand]

Thanks for the kind comments, woofgang! I'll give it another go: one of my favourite authors is George R.R. Martin. Most of his books fall into the "fantasy" category, which I realise isn't everyone's cup of tea. The most lauded are "Fevre Dream", which is primarily set on a paddle steamer of the same name. The captain dreams of having the fastest boat on the Missippippi, and can't believe his luck when a mysterious stranger finances the construction of the "Fevre Dream". Unfortunately, the stranger has ulterior motives and, as is common in GRRM books, things don't work out as planned. Like most of his novels, this has a bittersweet flavour. Recently he has embarked on a multi-volume fantasy epic "The Song of Ice and Fire"(up to 3 books so far, 4 in paperback in this country - where the third book was split into two). I'm not usually a fan of this sort of writing, as it's all to often formulaic ("We need the Sword of Power to stop the Evil Overlord, let's go get it". "Damn, first we need the All-Seeing Orb, but the Monks of Kryth'iin will only give it to us if we get them the Armour of Faatholaas" blah, blah, blah). The SoI&F reads more like a medieval epic, with characters who make the Borgias look like the Womens' Institute, and only a smattering of magic. Don't get too attached to any of the characters, though - Martin seems to kill off his leads at an alarming rate!

[froggequene]

I have several but if I had to pick it would be An Instance of Fingerpost by Iain Pears. It tells the same story from 4 different perspectives, each story is told from a particular perspective but only the 4th narrator has all the facts and tells the story as it should be told.