[Quiet Man Cometh]

I prefer first person perspective most of the time but it sours really fast when it's not done well. The favourites of my own writing are those I chose to write in first person.

The difficult thing about it I think, is to keep the narrative natural. Few people are going to introduce themself and then describe themselves in detail. It makes it trickier to get descriptions across sometimes and involves a lot of sidestepping things that might otherwise be straightforward in third person. My favourite first person books, which are also some of my favourite books: are Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus; All Quiet on the Western Front; Doctor Glas (which also has an unreliable narrator); and Oryx and Crake, for something written after World War II (much of my perferred books were written pre-1950. Might explain why I seem to have some out-dated writing habits at times).

I like third person too, but most especially when the narrator sounds like a character themself. War and Peace for instance, in which the narrator speaks of the things that occurr among the characters and what's happening in their perspectives, as well as musing on larger, historical events pertinent to those events, interspersed with philosophical musings on the nature of history, war, and life in general.