For me, it was Watership Down, by Richard Adams. My sister recommended it.
I’m pretty standoffish about reading recommendations, which means people mostly don’t try to give them to me. I find my favorite books by pure happenstance, thank you very much.
Except that **ivylass **told me to read Outlander, and damn. Good book.
In junior high school, a friend gave me Robert Heinlein’s Glory Road for a birthday present. Introduced me to one of my favorite authors.
Lonesome Dove, recommended by my sister.
My then-boyfriend, now-husband recommended Lord of the Rings to me. I was about twenty then and I promptly read the whole thing cover-to-cover, as I have continued to do about once every five years since then.
The Aubrey-Maturin series was recommended to me by a guy at work. I love the series to death, but I grew to hate the guy who recommended it. I pretend to him that it didn’t do anything for me, so he won’t try to talk to me about it.
A fifth-grade classmate told me about The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Thanks, Caroline!
More recently, a colleague gave me the first book in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series. Have not kept up with them since the first few, as they segued into a quasi-separate graphic-novel series, but they’re very interesting books.
I should maybe get back into Rivers of London as I patiently wait for the next installments of Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike and John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers series. Sigh. “Just a minute, Mr. Postman…”
Callahan’s Cross Time Saloon series by Spider Robinson and Myth Inc.series by Robert Aspirin courtesy of my best female friend in high school. I inhaled these books, in a good way!
I can’t remember who actually recommended this to me or if I got it in a “books to read before you die” list. In the off-chance it was from a person, it’s this.
If I didn’t get that recommendation from a person, then it’s a book I read just last month. A YA series called “Six of Crows.” I read it for Book Club and I was hooked on it like I never thought I would be.
My girlfriend recommended these books to me - and I married her!
Had an English class in high school where we just read books, wrote a report on them, met with the teacher individually for a conference and did a project on one (I made a nuclear power plant from a pantyhose egg with a light inside to simulate a meltdown). Stephen King’s salem’s Lot went through our class like wildfire–everybody recommended it to everybody else.
Time And Again by Jack Finney, many years ago.
My mom gave me “The Cliff Walk” by Don Snyder when I was in a rough place in life. It really helped me through.
A friend recommended “the Monkey Wrench Gamg” which led me to the rest of Ed Abbey’s books.
And in answer to the OP’s actual question, a co-worker recommended Shards of Honor (by Lois McMaster Bujold) to me in 1994 - and Bujold is still a favorite.
A girlfriend (at the time) recommended A Confederacy of Dunces. She had a sick, twisted world-view which I very much enjoyed, so I figured I’d enjoy the book, too. I did.
In college a friend recommended the writings of Jorge Luis Borges to me, saying that I was probably strange enough to understand them. It’s been a lifelong pleasure.
My friend Donna suggested Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. My first attempt to read the book didn’t take, but a year or so later I tried again and just loved it.
The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore. I’d never read Moore before, so this was my introduction to him. I found something I had to read aloud to my wife on every other page. Now we’ve both read every Moore book published*, and I’ve read the stuff on his internet site.
*except Noir, which was just released yesterday. But we’ll get it soon and devour it.
My wife and my son both recommended that I read Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead.
Well, they were right.
I was about to graduate high school, and my college major was about to be Architecture. A friend recommended The Fountainhead, saying my views on architecture were compatible with those in the book. She was right.
The Once and Future King