The Book Post: The Favourite

For the longest time, if anyone asked me what my favourite book was, the answer I had given was Yann Martel's Life of Pi. The story of an Indian boy (the epnoymous Pi) whose ship capsizes enroute to Canada to start a new life with his family, Life of Pi was no regular castaway tale. It can't be, not when one of Pi's liferaft companions is a full grown Bengal tiger. The book was special to me for a few reasons. It was funny, humurous and one of the few thoughtful and life affirming books I had read. What is writing? What is life? Why is art important? This book was the stuff of books and one of the few which I had re-read with pleasure time and again and I still urge people who haven't read it to go and give it a try.

But lately, I find that I do not immediately think of this book except as a fond memory. What is my favourite book? This is a tough one. I have many books that I love but none which I can say moved me above the others. I have moved on since I declared Life of Pi to be my favourite book. I am probably not much wiser or sadder than I was two years ago, when I was asked in an MOE interview what my favourite book was and I gave an admittedly unflattering answer because I was so stunned that they were asking weird things like this. But two years is a long time and even if it is only a little, I've moved on from then, taste wise.

I can however think of a few authors whose work(s) have given me that special feeling. Diana Wynne Jones. Eoin Colfer. Susanna Clarke. Neil Gaiman. Phillip Pullman. Yann Martel. Daniel Keyes. Eva Ibbotson. Margaret Atwood. Jane Austen. Oscar Wilde. T.S. Eliot. Edgar Allan Poe. J.R.R. Tolkien. J.K. Rowling. Enid Blyton. Isabel Allende. Georgette Heyer. Joanne Harris. The list goes on. And on. Not of all these can profess to being very literary. They can however, all profess to be books that people have enjoyed and possibly even loved and cherished by someone out there. If there is something I entered my major believing and will go out of it thinking, it is that books are meant to inspire and move its audience in all spectrums of emotion and thought.

So what is my favourite book? This is a difficult question with no forthcoming answer. In all honesty, there won't probably ever be just one again. There are too many good things out there for me to just like one.

Note: Martel has not published for a while and in lieu of this post, I did a google to find out what he has been up to and to my delight, it seems that he'll have a new work, Beatrice and Virgil out next year (which is another reason why 2010 will be a good year in terms of books and movies for me)