I want to revive this thread because it's different from simply talking about last books we've read, but instead focuses on everyone's personal favorite books/authors, regardless if they read them recently or a long time ago.
If I had to name only only one favorite book, then my favorite book of all time is "Bröderna Lejonhjärta" by Astrid Lindgren. I encountered it for the first time when I was eight years old, and there's no enumerating how great a role it has played in my development and my life altogether. It shaped me towards becoming who I am today; anyone who has read this book and loved it would understand what I mean.
There are great truths to be found in children's books, if the author him/her/self was caring and in touch with the inner child when writing them. Astrid Lindgren is certainly such writer. It is really an injustice that throughout the West she is more known for her simpler and more basic kids' stories like Pippi Longstocking or Emil or Karlsson, leading people to dismiss her output as juvenile, and not so many people know of her deeper, more haunting books like "Bröderna Lejonhjärta" or "Mio min Mio" or "Ronja Rövardotter" that explore themes that do not have age restrictions... Although her books are for children, they are timeless, and their readers (if exposed to them at a young age) will never outgrow them later in life, and the imagery and characters will stay forever young and on par with the readers' own inner selves. The last two books by Astrid that I mentioned above have likewise contributed towards the development of my inner world. "Ronja" carries a distinctly Scandinavian flavor in its setting and landscape descriptions (as does to some extent "Bröderna Lejonhjärta", although there it's indirect), and these books may well have contributed also to my strong feeling of attraction towards the Nordic countries.
Another author who was influential for me in my young formative years is Tove Jansson, and in particular her book "Kometjakten" (yes that specifically, and not "Kometen Kommer" - I'm referring to the earlier printing of this book when she was young and energetic and random, not the later printing where she took some parts out and edited the others and toned it down in more cynical realistic tones). Her at times whimsical, at times silly, at times breathtaking illustrations in this book have struck me just as much as the book itself (mind you, I was four when this book was read out loud to me for the first time - it was probably my first "big" book ever, an old worn-out copy of it with Mumitroll and the gang running from the comet on the cover - and you know how impressionable the minds of four-year-olds tend to be, and how unabashedly REAL everything seems when viewed through four-year-old eyes, be it the story inside the book or in the pictures! The comet, the quest, the journey - it was the epic of a lifetime!) And yes, it too has warped my imagination forever (and made me take up smoking seventeen years later, but that's another story lol)
Who else loves these?
(c'mon, I wouldn't think these authors need an introduction on this forum
)
Apart from this very short list of books and authors who to me are timeless and perennial, I have an even longer list of my favorite books and authors.
Next on my list is Goethe's "Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers", which I read when I was seventeen without knowing anything about it beforehand, and it had made such a striking impact on me and a lasting impression that I will continue to mention it among my favorite books even though I have developed a healthy dose of common sense criticism and balance when it comes to passions that fill this book to the very brim. Apart from the narrative of this book, which in itself made such an impact that I couldn't sleep half the night after I read it, it also opened my eyes (on conscious level) on that inner state of creative/poetic/innocent sincerity, ability to regard the world with wonder, that the philosophic concept of 'creative genius' is made of, and the uneasy heavy trade-off it comes with, namely the acute awareness of the unsurmountable gap that separates the real from the ideal. Weltschmerz, namely.
There's critics who dismiss Werther as a morbidly introspective egoist, and quite frankly I piss on their heads. The fact remains that this book is counted among the great books of Western literature, and it doesn't add anything to a meaningful discussion if its main character is dissed unconstructively. There's an uneasy and multifaceted psychological condition going on for sure, but this condition is so common and this mental state is so familiar that it makes for an easy identification with the protagonist, and it is this familiarity and this identity that makes the ending so terrifying, the fact that something so simple can escalate to something like that if not kept properly in balance...
Yet just as Goethe wrote in his preface note, this book was indeed my friend when I needed one.
Another great favorite of mine is Goethe's "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre" (Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister). This book, simply, IS life itself... the journey and process of ever deepening self-discovery and self-awareness. Each and every character in it is so alive and so fleshed out that they don't even have to "do" anything in particular, they could just sit and talk for a long time and it feels like I'm right there sharing in their discussions, they're that real and that interesting. With such deep characterizations, even the merest mundane details of life described within its pages become meaningful and vibrant. And the reader is taken on a journey of self-discovery on par with the main character. It was sad when this book ended, like having to say goodbye to my friends. It's one of the very, very, very few books that made me feel this way when I was done reading them.
I have a very particular weakness (strength! ;D ) for literature and poetry of the German Romanticism. I have read and loved many authors within this movement, from Novalis ("Heinrich von Ofterdingen" is so visceral and transcendent that it may be better left unfinished, as it was) to Hoffmann ("The Sandman" is the most terrifying description of madness I have ever encountered in literature...) to Chamisso ("Peter Schlemils Wunderliche Geschichte") to Jean Paul (holy shit but is he absurd and awesome!!) to Ludwig Tieck (his prose is so enchanting, no other word for it).
A very singular mention must be made for Heinrich Heine (though he wasn't part of this movement) and for Joseph von Eichendorff (who was). These two are my favorite poets ever. It's a wonder what they have wrought with their words, and how each transforms the laborious heavy-handed German monolith of a language into such a beautiful melodious stream that I'll be damned if some of their poems hadn't made me cry.
Heine's prose essays confirm his talent and giftedness as a writer, as well as his clear-headedness in regard to the thick tangle of a mess that Germany found itself in around mid-19th century with revolutions springing right and left; I've never seen such sincere and fervent defense of culture and humanity, and I've never seen such great sense of irony so aptly and markedly applied this side of Mark Twain.
Eichendorff's "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts" (Memoirs of a Good-For-Nothing) was the very first book which I've read entirely in German, and it's dear to my heart for its wide-eyed sense of wonder and beauty in regarding the world, and for its wistful nostalgia in regarding the natural landscapes - all described in an uncomplicated yet masterful language, and is immediately convincing because Eichendorff was in touch with these qualities himself.
If you haven't guessed, I'm a big fan of German literature ;D Heinrich von Kleist also deserves separate mention - there's such an electrifying sense of immediacy and sheer
presence in his plays and stories that I could have easily supposed that they were written in 1950s amid British avantgarde, not the first decade of 1800s when they really were... Kleist is unclassifiable where the genres and literary movements are concerned. Biographically, he was pretty much a real-life Werther sans the whole love angle, whose inner crisis and torment was on a purely ideological/philosophical turf.
Of literature from the very distant past, Skaldic poetry owns me each and every time. So much so that I chose to write my thesis on it... Its kennings and interlocutions, its rigid structures and its mythological consciousness - it's all much more than merely literature, it's a ritual and a witness of a time when everything was seen as - and indeed was - much larger than life, and much more wondrous and potent.
Of the old epics, Das Nibelungenlied had a great impact on me - I have the great poetic translation by William Nanson-Lettsom, published in 1904, in the same metre and style as the original.
The Poetic Edda in the translation of Lee M. Hollander was also very meaningful. I will take no other translation as a substitute for this... he breathes such life into the verse as to become invisible, and the meaning and power of the original text seems to speak for itself.
Beowulf in Seamus Heaney's translation has this same result on me... Granted, Heaney paraphrased sometimes, but he is a poet in his own right and has a great command and feel of the language, and the effect he achieves is much more majestic and breathtaking than all those literal meandering translations out there.
While I'm mentioning favorite translations, let me also put The Illiad here, translated by Robert Fagles. I simply couldn't believe how gripping it was. And how close to home it struck, even though composed millenia ago.
Among more modern authors, let me name Nabokov (esp. "Bend Sinister" and "Invitation to a Beheading" - I don't even care what he writes about, it's
how he writes!), and Bulgakov ("Master and Margarita", of course! - timeless, just timeless...). Also Jorge Luis Borges and his mind-bending and imagination-warping short stories and essays.
By no means an exhaustive list of my favorites (it would go on and on), but I'd rather make one longer post that's more inclusive all in one place. Plus I didn't just wanna drop names ;D