My favourite book of all time! I can't count how many times I've read this since my grandparents gave me a copy when I was a little girl, and I picked it off the shelf again tonight, not planning on reading the whole thing though again but ending up doing so anyway. I just love everything about it... but mostly, I love Mary, who is an unrepentant horror for most of the book, an absolutely monstrously self-centred brat who uses her powers for good when she stumbles across an isolated relation who's even more horrible than she is, but can be bullied into better behaviour because even Mary can't put up with the spoilt sourness of her own mirror image. I love that the book never glosses over both how awful and how pathetic she is - she knows it, everyone around her knows it, and once she gets to Misselthwaite there's no catering to her awfulness one way or the other, she's just ignored and left to her own rather pathetic resources until, against all inclination, she's forced into taking an interest in life. Just fantastic.