The World According to Garp question

Funny..I have a love/hate relationship with The World According to Garp. I LOVED it up until the accident, and then every page was painful, almost to the point of hating it.

One of my favorites; Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

The book that nearly caused me to search out the author and kill him; It by Stephen King. This was an amazing book right up until the end and the end sucked worse than anything bad that was ever written. Space turtles and giant spiders? Really?

Favourite is Paul Bowle’s The Sheltering Sky – just can’t be bettered. Least favourite is Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Stopped reading as soon as I realised how much it ripped off Grass’s amazing The Tin Drum.

Favorite: Strange the Dreamer (made my imaginations go places)

Worst: Caraval ( my poor imagination was stomped for the first time ever)

Hate the most, INFAMOUS GATSBY. A poorly conceived, plotwise and writing excellent, but discordant novel that doesn´t add up.

The Scarlet Letter is among my favorites, Garp is not but I did like it and Irving is among my favorite authors.

For this year
Favorites:
Nonfiction, Oxygen by Nick Lane
Fiction, Game of Thrones series
Philosophy, The Enchiridion of Epictetus by Epictetus

Least Favorites:
Nonfiction, To Raise Up a Child by Michael Pearl
Philosophy, Glenn Beck's Common Sense
Complete waste of time, Defeat Cancer by Robert Rowen

Love. The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) By Ellen Raskin. I have read it maybe 20 or more times since I happened upon it in my 6th grade library back in 1979! After that comes LETTERS by John Barth, its construction and sheer audacity marvel me still (although i gloss over the tedious Burlingame/Cook chapters)
Hate. The Scarlett Letter comes to mind first, but then Stephen King's Dreamcatcher

Easy! Favorite book ever: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Worst book ever: Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

My favorite book is Kafka On The Shore. The diversity, the places and the characters in this book are so originally described. Murakami's writing style suits me best.

There is one book I stopped reading after I read the first page: 'Het Fluwelen Labyrinth' (The Velvet Labyrinth). I didn't like the names of the main characters. I think, all they do is distract you from what the character is doing or saying.

I couldn't say which is my favorite book. I have a few favorite authors, John Irving, Margaret Atwood, Christopher Moore. Of these authors, I will read anything they put out. I don't love them all, but they are worth my time to read them. If I don't like a book, I put it down and don't pick it back up. One of the only books that I have read thru that I didn't like, was Interview with a Vampire.

My favorite book as a youth was the 1st novel I ever read, "Gone With The Wind". As a kid I needed people to think I was "smart". That translated in reading such a large book, weird. Now I could care less as can be seen in my reading selections.

My favorite book of this past year is "The Last Lecture". Never in so many years did a book hit home for me. It was interesting how the author laid out his life and went about applying it to others to learn.

I knew the author wrote the book during the last year of his life but I still wept for him when he passed away. What a truly refreshing look on life and learning.

Favorite: East of Eden by Steinbeck
Least Favorite: Too many to name, but a few that come to mind are Madame Bovary, Time Traveler's Wife, and I Am Not Myself These Days.

It is hard to say which book I love more than all others, but the book I have read over and over again is Richard Bach's "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah". I reread that and Bach's "Johnathon Livingston Seagull" at least once a year.

I also have a hard time saying what book I hate the most. When I do not like a book, I stop reading, and could not say "I hate it" because I did not read it.

I do know I hated being forced to read Shakespeare back in high school, and like Alison, I never got very far in "War and Peace" ~ I have tried to read it several times and do not understand why it is considered such a great book.

Love the most - Now It's Time To Say Goodbye

Hate the most - The Great Gatsby

It's hard to pick the one I love the most because there are so many, but it might have to be I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb. Definitely my most hated book (and movie) is the English Patient. It's like the Seinfeld episode where Elaine was the only one who would admit she didn't like it.

The book I can read again and again and love the most is 'Cider with Rosie'.
The book I hate the most is 'War and Peace'. I could never get past the first three chapters. There were so many names in the first couple of chapters and by the third chapter, I couldn't remember who was who.