A masterpiece

A great book...a deep great artist

A wonderful delight

Moby Dick is my favourite novel, bar none. It works on so many levels. It taught me that you can have a top layer of narrative - like the seafaring story - and then below that all those wonderful, rich, symbolic things going on

To convey an adequate idea of a book of such various merits as that which the author of Typee and Omoo has here placed before the reading public, is impossible in the scope of a review. High philosophy, liberal feeling, abstruse metaphysics popularly phrased, soaring speculation, a style as many-coloured as the theme, yet always good, and often admirable; fertile fancy, ingenious construction, playful learning, and an unusual power of enchaining the interest, and rising to the verge of the sublime, without overpassing that narrow boundary which plunges the ambitious penman into the ridiculous; all these are possessed by Herman Melville, and exemplified in these volumes

What a book [Moby-Dick] Melville has written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than his preceding ones. It hardly seemed to me that the review of it, in the Literary World, did justice to its best points

Osama bin Laden's name and face have become so numbingly familiar to Americans as in effect to obliterate any history he and his shadowy followers might have had before they became stock symbols of everything loathsome and hateful to the collective imagination. Inevitably, then, collective passions are being funnelled into a drive for war that uncannily resembles Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick

Meticulous, clever, eloquent. An absorbing and thoughtful tale of good people in hard times

A remarkably feeling, nuanced novel that satisfies the head as well as the heart. This does not read like a retelling of history, but like a draught of real life. With her seemingly small canvas, Dunmore has created a universe

Dunmore's genius lies in her ability to convey the strange Soviet atmosphere of these very Soviet stories using the most subtle of clues

Storytelling on a grand scale

This cleverly constructed novel will have, deservedly, widespread popular appeal, especially, perhaps, with young female readership

A beautifully written book with moments of real sadness, hope, laughter, tragedy and joy, which make you appreciate all the little things you love, as your eyes brim with tears

A beautifully-crafted, heart-breaking look at love and loss

Another must is If I Stay by Gayle Foreman, which deals with deep, universal emotions and unpicks the truth about moving on after unspeakable loss - a fresh and compelling piece of work

A heartbreaking and beautifully written novel that should be a must-read for everyone. I doubt anyone who reads this will get to the end dry-eyed. Stock up the tissues!

If I Stay makes you appreciate what you have, all that you've lost and all that might be

A beautifully written book with moments of real sadness, hope and joy