Day Four
I can't do it. I. just. can't. do. it.
Day four on the list is - your favorite book. How can I possibly choose just one? Four days I've been thinking about this question and I'm still no closer to choosing. I love books, I've been reading forever, it would be easier to choose between friends or choose my favorite child (if I had more than one) than it would be to pick one book out of the...probably one thousand I have read in my lifetime. So instead of straining myself, I'm going to list my favorite book by each of my favorite authors. In fact, I might just throw some books in that I loved by authors who don't rank as a favorite, but still wrote something I would ardently recommend. Here it goes. This list is in order of how the titles come to mind rather than preference.
Clive Barker - Imajica (I read both volumes bound as one so this covers both)
Charles deLint - Onion Girl (no surprise there)
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett - Good Omens
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
Jane Austen - Emma
Sheri Tepper - True Game (something like 12 stories that flow smoothly into one novel)
Kathryn Stockett - The Help (I recommend the unabridged audio version)
Stephen King & Peter Straub - The Talisman
Stephen King - Bag of Bones
Anne Rice - Merrick (Vampires, Witches and Voodoo, O my)
Gregory Maguire - Wicked
Sergei Lukyanenko - Night Watch
Edith Wharton - Age of Innocence
Alice Hoffman - The River King
Jonathan Stroud - The Bartimaeus Trilogy (which I just realized my son took with him when he moved out, pesky kid!)
J.K. Rowling - I'll take the lot, thank you
Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr. Ripley
P.J. Tracy - Monkeewrench
Tess Gerritsen - Gravity
Myke Bartlett - How to Disappear Completely (an as yet unpublished novel available on podiobook)
I'm sure I'll think of others around 3:00 am and feel like a heel for not including them...
like Susanna Clarke - book 3 of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
I'm also going to sneak in another Clive Barker because it was excellent in its own right - Coldheart Canyon.
So there you have it. An incomplete list of books I loved. If you throw in the entire Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher, these would be the books I'd wish for while stranded on a deserted island.