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For the purposes of this discussion, a "favorite" book is one that I pick up again and again, generally just to wallow in it. This may not reflect the actual quality of the book--love rarely does. In somewhat chronological order:

 

• The Hobbit. It's funny--I read the entire LOTR trilogy by the pool the summer I was twelve, and when I reread it the summer before the first movie came out, I realized that I remembered none of it accurately. The Two Towers, particularly, had become weirdly garbled in my memory, and seemed to involve a lot of marching armies through forests. Look, I don't know. But when I was very young and still reading Golden Books, I was obsessed (a word you'll hear a lot on this page) with the cartoon tie-in audio tape/book of The Hobbit, which I made my mother check out over and over again from the library. And then, when I was old enough to read the real thing, that was the one book of the four in my boxed set that I returned to again and again.

 

• A velvety red hardback illustrated storybook-type deal of Disney movie adaptations. Like, novelization type things of the cartoons--it'd have Peter Pan, but not the Barrie version. I loved the Sleeping Beauty illustrations (film stills? illustrations? I'm not sure), as well as the Snow White and Cinderella ones. I actually remember having this book when I was three or four, and I couldn't even read the book yet, so I made up stories about what Sleeping Beauty was doing in the pictures.

 

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: this IS the first book in the Narnia series. I got it when I was eight, as a thank-you gift for being the flower girl at my favorite aunt's wedding--a hardback illustrated by Michael Hague. I'm also very fond of The Magician's Nephew and The Horse and His Boy.

 

• The Cat Who Came for Christmas. I'm not sure why I loved this one so much as a kid (grade school), but I do remember seeing it reviewed on the Today show on Christmas Eve's day that year, and noting sadly that it was too late to ask for it as a present. The fact that I got it the next day convinced me for a long time that Santa was real.

 

• A Little Princess, when I was in grade school. I particularly liked the parts when Sara was in the attic and the "magic" started happening.

 

• Little Women, grade school; I grew up identifying very strongly with Jo, as a writer. I also really like Eight Cousins, as well as the sequel, Rose in Bloom, which I didn't even know existed until many years later--I think I finally read an e-text online.

 

• Anne of Green Gables. Actually, it was my ritual every summer to read all my Anne books and all my Narnia books. Green Gables wasn't actually my favorite--I really liked Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne of the Island, and Anne of Ingleside (for some reason, I really liked reading about her kids' games of pretend). I'm not sure why, but I don't seem to have been as fond of the books where she and Gilbert weren't a sure thing yet. You know, I haven't read these books in at least ten, maybe fifteen years now; I wonder how my perspective would change if I reread them.

 

• The Unlikely Ones, Mary Brown. I don't think many people know this book; the paperback cover is atrocious, but when my mother bought it for me from a book club (when I was eight!), it was a hardback with a lovely, mysterious jacket. Probably a major influence on me, in terms of writing fantasy.

 

• A collection of Edgar Allan Poe stories (Tales of Horror and Suspense, maybe?) in my early adolescence. Again, given to me as a gift. I loved the illustrations, which I realized with surprise as an adult were Arthur Rackhams. I loved the Ligeia illustration in particular.

 

• A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Madeleine L'Engle: I don't know why I liked this better than A Wind in the Door and A Wrinkle in Time--I got all three together, and they had wonderfully weird, artistic covers--but I always did.

 

• A Ring of Endless Light, Madeleine L'Engle: I don't know for sure which summer I read this, but I will always associate it with sunny late afternoons and "Red Red Wine" on the radio.

 

• Jane Eyre, when I was in middle school. Anything involving Jane and Rochester and I was there.

 

• Dracula, when I was eleven to thirteen--it was years before I could read it all the way through, just because some of the journal entries are so dense, but I was obsessed for several years with an edition illustrated by Greg Hildebrandt at the library. I finally got the same edition as a Christmas gift some ten years later.

 

• What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist -- The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England, Daniel Pool. I forget exactly why my mother got this for me (another book from her club), but it either fed or outright began my teenage obsession with the Victorian era, which was in full swing, in great part thanks to this book, by the time I was thirteen. I've since heard that it's not free of mistakes, and since it's a relatively short book that crams both the Regency and the Victorian era into one guide, some of Pool's generalizations are either too vague or outright misleading. Nonetheless, it sparked my interest, and it gave me enough vocabulary of the era to go researching on my own.

 

• The Classic Illustrated Sherlock Holmes (short stories); I was also obsessed with those in middle school.

 

• Madame Bovary. Am I seriously the only person who loved this in high school, required reading be damned?

 

• Howards End, late middle school/high school. Another all-time favorite, and the source of my senior quote.

 

• Lolita, late high school or freshman year of college, I can't remember. I've always loved the first half, but not so much the second. There's something about the way Nabokov evokes this summer of bobbysoxer temptation that I love. For several years this was what I put down as my absolute favorite.

 

• Robin Hood, by I forget exactly who, but it's another edition illustrated by Hildebrandt that I picked up for $10. A very "classic tales" version.

 

• The Life of Elizabeth I, Alison Weir. I love the chapters about Elizabeth's coronation and Elizabethan life (the clothes, the great houses, the food) in general.

 

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, sometime in college. I think this has always been my favorite because of the time-travel sequence. It's not that I'm all that fond of time travel in fiction; I just love the way it's done and the way everything comes back around.

 

• A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket--I can't even really choose any one of the books, although I particularly loved the one about the carnival. As I always tell people, the first three books are good, but just when you start getting concerned that they're a wee bit overformulaic, the fourth book shakes everything up. Of course, I don't like the fourth book much (for other reasons), but by the fifth book, things really start to cook. This may not sound like a ringing endorsement for a thirteen-book series, but let's face it: they're kids' books. You can read each one in less than two hours; you can put up with three pretty good books and one clunker before you get to the good stuff. And it's all worth it for the last book--I spent years wondering how Daniel Handler was going to pull off this unhappy ending he'd been promising us while still making it a satisfying ending, and The End took the series to a completely new level, one I'd never suspected it would be capable of. One complaint: The Beatrice Letters, while nifty in execution, pissed me off by somewhat starting the whole cycle of wandering orphan(s) all over again.

 

• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, my twenties (post-college?). I love, love, love the scent descriptions, and it has one of the most perfect endings, in my opinion--the kind where normally the author could have written himself into a corner, but instead, Suskind takes the story he's started to its (extreme) logical conclusion.

 

• Stardust, Neil Gaiman. I love Neil, but this is the one that has always stuck with me.

 

• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It's funny--I read the comics (the collected first series, and the second series mid-run at that point) the summer the movie came out, and I was just enchanted by it. On a second read, it seemed kind of thin and contrived--I mean, more so than you'd even expect. But the world of the comic, I love it, and I still reread them from time to time. Definitely prefer the first series to the second, although I love the weird non-relationship Hyde and Mina have. Hell, I just love Mina, period.

 

• The Phantom of the Opera. Another book I didn't read until just before the movie came out; I prefer the classic, kind of clunky and overly literal translation from the French to the smoother, more modern one, because the earlier one manages to capture a certain lyricalness in its literalness. Absolute favorite part: the chapter where Christine tells Raoul what happened during her stay in the Phantom's lair. There's just something so Gothic and thrilling and pitiful about it.

 

• Marie Antoinette, Antonia Fraser. I love reading about young Marie Antoinette, that huge cumbersome journey she had to make to get to France, and how she struggled amidst all that luxury to fit in, that whole "gilded cage" kind of thing.

 

See also

• Books
• Favorites