The first book that I remember was Maniac McGee by Jerry Spinelli. The storyline spoke to me and showed me a world outside my own. I own that book to this day.
My favorite book is The Talisman by Peter Straub and Stephen King. The plot is what captures me. A young boy trying to find his way in two separate worlds. And it’s all to save his mother. It’s such a heroic story and imaginative too.
I also have to mention The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. It’s such a tragic story. “There’s a story… a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree… and never rests until it’s found one. And then it sings… more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles. “