“So, what’s your favourite book?” It’s an easy conversation starter. It can stimulate some great literary discussions. But what if you don’t have a favourite book? How do you choose a favourite, out of the millions of books there are in the world? My sister and I were going through our Goodreads and looking at our ‘favourites’ shelves, and it made me wonder: what makes a book qualify as my favourite? Can I read it once and it be considered my favourite already, or does it have to be a book I’ve reread many times? What if I read a book and think ‘instant favourite’, and then promptly forget about it for the next year?
Maybe it’s a little like picking a favourite child, or even a favourite literary character – you just can’t do it. There are too many options (too many GOOD options, at that), and you don’t want to offend one book by picking another as your favourite.
But on the other hand, maybe it’s something we all do, deep down. When you’re seven, you always know your favourite colour and favourite animal and favourite food. So why don’t we keep doing that, even when we’re grown up? There will always be something in me that gravitates more to one book than another. I can finish one book and give it 4 out of 5 stars and say that I enjoyed it, but that doesn’t mean it means the same thing to me as a book I’ve been reading and rereading since I discovered it a few years ago, or a beloved book from childhood, or that one novel I studied for months in English class that totally consumed me and I can’t forget. I think favourites form over time – it’s not like you close the last chapter of a book that you’ve read for the first time and say “Wow! That’s my new favourite book!” It’s more like a process. Over a lifetime of reading, you look back and remember a few certain books that really stand out to you as masterpieces. It’s the books you can’t forget, the ones you hold other books up to in comparison, the ones you read over and over again and never get sick of, the ones you see in the bookstore and think, “Yes, I need a second (or third) edition of that!”
It's okay to pick favourites. It’s also okay not to pick favourites. But enjoy the process. If one book reaches through the fog of busyness and required reading and fatigue and says, “Me! Pick me! Don’t forget me!” – listen to it.
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