Sometime last week a friend mentioned she was going to pick up a copy of the new book by the the author of her favorite book. She was pretty sure of this favorite book because the memory cells in my brain perked up at the title and recognized it as one she has previously named as her favorite book. Of course in the conversation she had to ask what is my favorite book. Umm.

For as many books as I’ve read I couldn’t come up with a favorite then. I said I’d have to think about that. I’m still thinking about that. Can I single out a favorite or are books like children? All are my favorites. My own of course. Which is easy because I have only one. Children, that is. Err, child, that is. I really have given this some thought. Every time I think of one book that I like more than another, another comes to mind that I like more than that one.

I thought some more. Some books have a personal connection. I love Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods maybe because I’ve been on the Appalachian Trail. Not all if it though so maybe that’s why I like it because I can see the parts I’ve part and the parts I haven’t. Yet it doesn’t resonate with me as much as his Neither Here Nor There and I’ve never been to Europe. Any parts of it. I just finished Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With my Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant … and Save His Life by Daniel Asa Rose, a topic clearly near my heart (but lower and more toward the back and sides) and thought it was the most enjoyable memoir I ever read until I thought about Neil Simon’s Rewrites, and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, and Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, and Ernest Hemingway’s  A Move able Feast, and … you get the idea.

Then I said to myself I don’t know why I’m going nonfiction. Maybe because I just finished Larry’s Kidney I had life on my mind (in more ways than one), but I’m more apt to read fiction than anything else. That’s such a broad category. Not a category really. More a phylum. Maybe even a kingdom. And that shifted my thinking so fast I almost got mental whiplash. I’m not a liberal arts guy, I’m a scientist! Shouldn’t my favorite book be scientific? Can a scientific book even be read like a book or aren’t they all just references. I checked out my bookcase and found indeed lots of references. And among them a slim volume, Laughter: The Drug of Choice by Nicholas Hoesl, given and inscribed to me by the author. I hadn’t thought of that book in years and although seeing on the shelf didn’t jog many memories of the content it did of sitting with the author and trading manic medical memories. Does that make a favorite book, a personal copy being a very personal copy?

I thought of another slim volume, recently directly received from and inscribed by the author, The Woman in the Window by W D Fyfe. If that name is familiar you may have read his blog. You should also read his book. It’s a wonderful collection of short stories, none that end like you thought they would. And that set me off in another direction. Modern fiction.

Truth be told my most enjoyable reading comes from modern fiction. Not “literature.” Mystery, murder, intrigue, spying. My favorites authors are people like Sue Grafton, Lawrence Block, Lawrence Sanders, and Jonathan Kellerman who write books that never ended like you first (and sometimes second and third) thought they would. Could I find my favorite book amount those? Or do I go back a generation and consider a book famous for not ending as even the author thought, The Big Sleep? True. While working on the screenplay for the movie version, William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett couldn’t figure who murdered a particular character. They phoned Raymond Chandler, who said the answer was right there in his book. Later he returned their call to say he couldn’t figure out who killed that character either. Now there’s a whodunit!

Speaking of Faulkner, the Nobel, Pulitzer, and National Book Awards winner who I better know for his screenplays than his novels although his short story “A Rose for Emily” is a favorite. But is it the favorite?

Since we’re into more classics what about some of the classical classics? I have actually read the Divine Comedy (probably taking longer than Dante took to write it) and Don Quixote (definitely taking longer than Cervantes took to write it). I am glad I did but I wouldn’t go back and reread them. Still… Closer to our time I also can put Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in my “have read and enjoyed” list although I more enjoyed Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I suppose even in the 19th century my tastes run more to adventure. How adventurous does a favorite book have to be?

What about the works too long to be a short story but too short to be a novel. When I was working these were often my go to readers. A full shelf is devoted to the novella from Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Grisham’s Playing for Pizza. So is there a favorite among these? I really just don’t know.

What about the books I didn’t read but we’re read to me before I even knew that if enough words are put together in a particular order, they can hold such a power over me as to make me wonder some day what particular set of them might be my favorite. I’m sure I once counted Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt as my favorite book, way back before I could count. Should it not be at least a favorite now?

I just don’t think I can come up with a favorite book. If I did I’d just be in danger of having it replaced by a new favorite whenever I read, reread, or remember something at a newer given time. I think instead my favorite book might be whatever one I’m reading now. Or maybe the one I just finished. Or better still, the next one up.