from karen, williamstown, usa

I'm not sure I can answer the question about which book I'd recommend for each of the authors you list - it's a great list, which makes it all the more difficult - but I can add a few more authors to the list. How about:
E.H. Young (whose books are so extraordinarily insightful and haunting that I can never fathom why they are so little known)
Virginia Woolf
Barry Unsworth
Dorothy Dunnett

I think the purpose of this post is to try to make contact with people who either have read the same great books and can tell you what they liked and why, or who have other great books they can tell you about and then you can read them.

Reading this post reminds me that it has been too long since I read Sue Hubbell's books;perhaps I'll start A Year of Bees tonight....

I was also thinking of “I Heart Authors”. In the last entry good books were mentioned for the following of my favourite authors:

Sue Hubbell
Anne Lamott
Margaret Atwood
Bruce Chatwin
Jane Austin

There are still numerous authors who I just adore, but their books aren’t necessarily included in my favourite book lists. Not because there books don’t belong there. There are authors whom I love as a whole, for all their works, and not for one specific book they’ve written.

Actually, there are authors where I don’t remember which book was The Book, which convinced me to read everything and anything they’ve written. So my question is of you readers of this blog entry… If you were to recommend any one book of each of the following authors, which would it (they) be:

Ellen Gilchrist
Jane Gardam
Annie Dillard
Anne Tyler
Elisabeth Bowen
Barbara Ehrenreich
Michael Ignatieff
Bruno Bettelheim

Please just place your suggestions in the comment window.

Marie, one of authors in a blog (Crockatt & Powell Booksellers) I read regularly, wrote an entry titled, I Heart Books. The list of her favourite books was not based on notable literary merit rather it was complied of books close to her heart. The best types of books, don’t you think?

Here is Marie’s, from the Crockatt & Powell Bookseller shop in London, list:

Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
Once More With Feeling - Victoria Coren and Charlie Skelton
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Frog In Winter - Max Velthuijs

My list is as follows:

The Book of Ebenezer LePage, G.B. Edwards
The Curve of Time, M. Wylie Blanchet
A Country Year, Sue Hubbell
bird by bird, Anne Lamott
In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin
Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje
Kindergarten, Peter Rushforth

If would be interesting if you could send in some of your favourites…

Karen sent me the book, "Everyday Zen", by Charlotte Joko Beck.

I read the book about about six or seven years ago, during a time of great confusion, complicated by chronic insomnia. I don't remember being as entralled with the book as I am on this reading. It just goes to show how your mental, emotional, and physical state can often determine your opinion of a book.