My Favourite Book(s)

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 13:06:44 GMT

By any reasonable measure, The Lord of the Rings is my all-time favourite book. I can talk about it for hours, know details about even the most minor characters, have a whole website about trivia from it, and generally love it to bits. I even run around under a name inspired by it!

Except... I haven't actually read the book in quite some time, and actually don't know where my copy is. And a lot of that trivia - including the name - actually comes from the Silmarillion instead. So maybe the Silm is my favourite book? I own three copies of it, after all, plus the entire History of Middle-earth which acts as a 'making of' for the Silm.

But it's actually been even longer since I've read the Silm cover to cover. My most-reread books these days are David Weber's Honorverse, of which my favourite is probably the very first entry, On Basilisk Station. So is that my favourite book?

Certainly not - it's not even my favourite sci-fi book! That honour would probably go to something in the Star Wars: X-Wing series, specifically the ones by Aaron Allston. Those are excellent books, and...

... and yet if asked who my favourite Star Wars author was, I'd probably go for Timothy Zahn instead of Allston. Sorry, Aaron, but Thrawn is more interesting than Zsinj any day.

But if you asked for my favourite author, and ruled out Tolkien, I'd opt for Terry Pratchett. My favourite Discworld book is probably still Thief of Time, though it's been long enough since I read through the series that what I get out of them might have shifted. I've even been reading from Discworld to the kids (The Amazing Maurice is going down very well), and stopped our run through The Hobbit to do so. Is this my favourite book?

I don't think it can be. If you look at my fanfic, it's always been heavily focussed on LotR - and surely the book I engage with most must take the crown.

Except by that measure, the 'book' I've written the most fanfic of is far and away the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, which isn't even a printed book! That surely can't count? And anyway, it's mostly fanfic itself, of... The Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, so that's why I always tremble in fear when my children start asking 'What's your favourite...?'.

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Huinesoron

My Favourite Book(s)