What was the best book anyone ever bought you as a present?

Trainspotting The Beach On the Road ALI: through the eyes of the world Usually, if I know a book will be good, I buy it myself: the above are exceptions.

I've never received a book as a present. Now I wish you'd never posted the topic....geez, I'm a sorry sort. Oh, now I remember...when I was a youngster, my parents gave me a book which purported to explain sexuality to an adolescent. I was confused for years after reading that, in fact only last month.... :))) (ok, that last part was a joke, but they really did give me that book.) Sorry if it sounds like I'm trivializing your topic, I'm not...I really wish someone would give me a book someday.

I know I've banged on about it before but this Christmas my dislexic little brother bought me Bel Canto (Anne Patchitt sp?) and it was fantastic. My mother bought me How to give up Alcohol in one month which was less well received! Happy Book Day.

Paulo Coelho - The Alchemist Fiona Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm The Complete Works of William Shakespeare An Atlas. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary (bought for me when 8 years old, still use now) Delia Smith's Complete Cookery course

I won a copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which is still one of my favourite books ever, in a Cheshire Schools General Knowledge Quiz when I was 8. As a real surprise 'good read' I was given a copy of Ben Elton's 'High Society' for my 50th and although I still have huge misgivings about his plot direction, characerisation etc I found the arguments within it to be interesting and provocative.

Lady Cotterington's Pressed Fairy Book !

My Uncle Andrew bought me a book of modern poetry when i was 13 (thats not so modern now). It had a poem in it about a radish, pulled from a garden, and how it gets its revenge biting back as the gardener eats it... i absolutely loved it... That book made me realise that poetry could be ordinary, funny, real and snappy. Ive been hooked ever since.

Pooh's little fitness book !

I think I had that same book Liana - it had a tiger on the front, called something like Poems for Over Ten Year Olds? I remember the radish poem really clearly, and there was also a great one about an apple wanting to be eaten. My favourite book as a present was London: A Biography. Was given it over a year ago and there's so much in it, I've hardly started. It would make a great desert island book...

Not sure about best book but I remember as a kid a book having a really strong impact on me - still does. My cousin Pauline gave me a book when I wasn't well. I spent a week in bed reading The White Colt. It's about a deaf/dumb boy who hasn't any friends and his family are odd, no time for him - anyway he gets a white colt to look after. His life changes. He finds a true friend in the colt and be begins to feel he belongs somewhere -aah then he gets a hawk to train and his circle of friends grows - at this point the book changes direction - the bird gets tangled in its tether and dies and something happens to the horse. I so remember how affected I was by that - it all got a bit too emotional for a sick kid and I've never ever been able to finish the book - still got it - amazing isn't. Oh and Mark Lester was on the front cover and I fell in love with him.

I, Claudius and Claudius the God - Robert Graves. Well, it's SORT of one book...

I don't think i've ever been given a book that really blew me away yet.. people have leant me books that I've loved.. Dazai's No Longer Human and Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.. still waiting for that. Someone gave me a book of poetry when I was a kid but I've forgotten the bloody name.. I read it over and over and over.. it also had a cat on the front (a cat on a wall.. a big house in the background).. that's what made me think of it. A thin volume ..penguin, I think.. written by someone with a very mundane sounding name like ferguson or carpenter. English bloke I reckon. Anyone into Nils Olaf Franzen's Agaton Sax books?.. they were great!