Let’s Talk Bookish – All-Time Favourite Book

Aria @ Book Nook Bits is the new host for Let’s Talk Bookish! If you aren’t following her yet, good check out her blog and give her a follow!

October 6: What Qualifies as an “All-Time Favorite Book?” (Jillian @ Jillian the Bookish Butterfly)

Prompts: What books would you say are your all-time favorites? Do you have lots of them, or just a few? What makes a book one of your all-time favorites?

Welcome to another week of LTB here at DTRH, everyone! It’s the first Friday of October, and today’s topic is about what qualifies as an “all-time favorite book.” I’m assuming everyone has a favourite, though I think it may be even more common to have multiple favourites. Or no favourites at all because who wants to choose?

I think I have a couple of books that come to mind as all-time favourites. One of my old favourites was Memoirs of a Geisha, for it’s captivating tale and heart-wrenching moments. I haven’t read it again in many years but I still feel its effects of how it made me feel at the time. The most recent one I’ve read that also makes it to this ultimate list is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I honestly enjoyed for very similar reasons and also makes it to my top list for similar reasons in the way it made me feel.

I think for the longest time I just had the one, but not because no books were objectively better afterwards, but rather because of the impact it had on me. I still enjoyed plenty of books from when I only had the one favourite, but none that made me feel as much as the first book did. By pure recency bias, I’d probably say Seven Husbands is my new favourite book, though another book, The Song of Achilles, I would say is a very close second—again, for basically all the same reasons. I guess there may only be a narrow set of plot lines that can really tug at my heartstrings, but I think that’s a discussion for another day.

For me, I think a book can be considered my all-time favourite for a bunch of reasons. I have to have enjoyed basically all aspects of the book, and it really had to have a big impact on me emotionally, the magnitude of which is unsurpassed by other books. Another interesting side effect is that if it’s my favourite, I would not want to read it again, almost to preserve that first time impression and to maintain that memory and impact. I have plenty other 5-star rated books that I would read again, although I suppose in general, I don’t have the time or motivation to re-read books except for book clubs or some other particular reason.

Do you all have all-time favourite books? Do you read and re-read them? Maybe I’m just weird for keeping to that one time first impression. Let me know in the comments below!