Favourite Roald Dahl book

Honestly, I loved all of them. I can't recall how many times I read The Witches; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Great Glass Elevator; Matilda; The BFG; The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me... He was hands down my favorite author growing up. I even have the cookbook, which is all kinds of awesome.

James and the Giant Peach was my first and still holds a special place in my heart. I read all his stuff as a kid. Adored them.

When I grew up I moved on to his writing for adults. My Uncle Oswald is utterly filthy and just about as un-PC as you can get. Of the short stories, 'Lamb to the Slaughter' is perfectly twisted and evil and I love it.

The BFG or Matilda. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was pretty good too.
Definitely NOT The Witches. Pretty sure that one gave me nightmares.

dolores haze said:

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When I grew up I moved on to his writing for adults. My Uncle Oswald is utterly filthy and just about as un-PC as you can get. Of the short stories, 'Lamb to the Slaughter' is perfectly twisted and evil and I love it.

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I just finished reading My Uncle Oswald and Switch Bitch, and I LOVED them both. If you pick them up, remember, PC hadn't been invented yet.

I laughed when my son's fourth grade summer reading list included "anything" by Roald Dahl. Geeze. Not everything!

LJD said:

The BFG or Matilda. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was pretty good too.
Definitely NOT The Witches. Pretty sure that one gave me nightmares.

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They made a pretty good film out of that one with Angelica Houston as the head witch. Not as creepy as the book, and not as well known as some of the other films made from his books, but well worth watching.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TrjLNpfDTi0

Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Funny story, I liked his writing as a child but didn't read much of his books because the illustrations were so painful to my sense of aesthetics.

Okay, maybe that's more pathetic than funny, but still.

I always reeeeeeeaaaaally wanted a peach when I read James and the Giant Peach. I think I actually read it more than once despite the illustrations. That's good writing, hahaha.

Not necessarily his best book, but I have a real fondness for Danny the Champion of the World. The relationship between the boy and father was sweet, and reading it to my own son was a particularly resonant experience for me.

Danny the Champion of the World was my favorite as well - but I loved them all!

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (not a novel, but a short story collection). Definitely a fave!

The Twits. Something about a nasty old couple getting their comeuppance at the hands of monkies really spoke to me as a little kid.

Matilda. As a very bright child it was very hard to find books about very bright children. Now it's the fashion to have above-average leads who almost never actually live up to their supposed genius, but when I was a kid the fashion was for kids to struggle in school. Matilda was one of the kids I could relate to best.

For me it is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But it's worth noting that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (including all of its various adaptations) is one of my top favorite stories ever written, period. So I might be slightly biased.

I also remember being entranced by "The Great Automatic Grammatizator" the first time I read it, and I still find the final line haunting.

The BFG! But, The Twits was hilarious!

The BFG, but also loved George's Marvellous Medicine and The Twits. I remember in school we were all asked to bring in a book for the teacher to read to the class, and I was stupid excited to bring my copy of The Twits in. I was sat there behind my desk buzzing past myself to see everyone getting immersed in the story

Boy, his memoir. I loved the story about how he put a dead mouse into a jar of sweets, because the woman who owned the sweet-shop was nasty to him and his friends. The next day, the shop was closed and the woman was nowhere to be seen. He was terrified that he'd scared the woman to death and he was now a murderer.

It has to be James and the Giant Peach for me. Or Willy Wonka, or BFG. I'll have to pick three instead of just one.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Talking of illustrations, my favourite is in Charlie. The kids go into a room to see the square chocolates that look round. And there's a little drawing of cubes of chocolate looking out the sides of their eyes. I've always remembered that.

The Twits, decidedly. I was the kind of kid that took my father's Animal Kingdom Encyclopedia to his room and just read through and looked at the pictures of my favorites. Having monkeys in the book was just a surefire way to get me. The Giraffe, The Pelly, And Me was also amazing, for most of the same reasons.

The one I remember best from my childhood is Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator, but I recently read The BFG with my son and discovered that it's even better when read aloud.

George's Marvellous Medicine is my favourite. It was also the first book of Dahl's I read as a child.

Either the BFG (so excited it's finally becoming a movie) or the Fantastic Mr. Fox

My first and most lasting impression of Roald Dahl came from 'James and The Giant Peach'. Incredibly odd book; very whimsical.