What is the best book you have ever read?

I also loved 'The Worst Journey In the World' by Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

'Of Mice And Men' is about as good as a book is possible to be I think - I would go so far as to say it is almost perfect, apart from the silly bit with the giant rabbit.

Jane Austen of course - though I can never decide which one I like best!

Isabel Allende's 'Paula' is sublime.

Love 'Lord Of The Flies' and 'Lolita' too.

To Kill A Mockingbird and Forever Amber

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Again, I can't bear to watch the film as I know it would ruin things for me though

Another vote for Cloud Atlas here. So clever and creative, and had me gripped.

Also Brave New World- Aldous Huxley, my teenage favourite which really got me thinking about life.

Oh I finished Never Let Me Go.

I don't think I can read another book again for a while now, as I need to process it.

Incredible. Not sure I'll want to see the film though.

Gone with the wind

American Boy = Andrew taylor

Lord of the flies

Wuthering Heights

Shadow of the Wind

Anything by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner. I read that book and it takes my breath away every time.

The Salterton, Deptford and Cornish trilogies by Robertson Davies are wonderful books.

Love lots already mentioned. Also these:

Gone with the wind - Margaret Mitchell

Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh.

Sorry Light I feel a bit of a cow for pointing it out now - given your diligence and detail.

I remember falling in love with Raymond Carver (any)

But right now am enjoying The Bonfire of the Vanities immensely.

sorry, typo with the Hons & Rebels - cut and pasted in the wrong place

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford - surely? (Pedant alert)

Talking of which I re-read Love in a Cold Climate every couple of years - I love it so much just for the emotional detachment, the very very funny lines and the characters.

Old friends are also:
Lolita
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
Madame Bovary - Flaubert
Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
Jane Eyre

So really I like misplaced lust, sex scandal and crime with a side of vivid language and imagery and a large helping of humour.

I am sure my favourite books are not the 'best' ones IYSWIM. I don't have very highbrow tastes and I also struggle with anything written recently apart from Anne Tyler. I'm a mid-century girl.

for ease, i collated the list so far -

The Woman In White / Wilkie Collins
David Copperfield / Charles Dickens
Brooklyn / Colm Toibin
Hons and Rebels / Barbara Comyns
Too many mothers / Roberta Taylor
The Unconsoled / Kazuo Ishiguro
The Wasp Factory / Iain Banks
The Grapes of Wrath / John Steinbeck
Cloud Atlas / David Mitchell
A Small Island / Andrea Levy
The Blind Assassin /Margaret Atwood
My Antonia / Willa Cather
Hawkesmoor / Peter Ackroyd
Restoration / Rose Tremain
Therese Raquin / Emile Zola
Possession / AS Byatt
Complete works of William Shakespeare
Beloved / Toni Morrison

Mrs Dalloway / Virginia Woolf
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Greengage Summer / rumer godden
Daddylonglegs / Jean Webster
I capture the castle / Dodie Smith
The Stars my destination / Alfred Bester
The Secret History / Donna Tartt
Cat's Eye / Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Rings / JRR Tolkein
Bleak House / Charles Dickens
Exodus / Leon Uris
Holocaust / ??
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay / Michael Chabon
Hunting Midnight / Richard Zimmler
To kill a mockingbird / Harper Lee
The Quincunx / Charles Palliser
Gormenghast Triology / Mervyn Peake
The Snow Leopard / Peter Matthieson
Revolutionary Road / Richard Yates
The Book Thief / Markus Zusak
The Industry of Souls / Martin Booth
The History of Love / Nicole Krauss
The God of small things / Arundhati Roy
Never Let Me Go / Kazuo Ishiguro
Middlemarch / George Eliot
Parade's End / Ford Madox Ford
Song of Soloman / Toni Morisson.
The Edible Woman / Margaret Atwood
Cold Comfort Farm / Stella Gibbons
Ghostwritten / David Mitchell
Birdsong / Sebastian Faulkes
A Very Long Engagement / Sebastien Japrisot
All Quiet on the Western Front / Eric Maria Remarch
English Passengers / Matthew Kneale
The Debt to Pleasure / John Lanchester
Behind the Scenes at the Museum / Kate Atkinson
The Worst Journey in the World / Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Life of Pi / Yann Martel
The Secret History / Donna Tartt
The Unbearable Lightness of Being / Milan Kundera
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Douglas Adams
Perfume / Patrick Suskind
The Handmaid's Tale / Margaret Atwood
Brideshead Revisited / Evelyn Waugh
The Cleft / Doris Lessing
Anna Karenina / Leo Tolstoy
The Bronze Horseman trilogy /Paullina Simons
The Great Gatsby / F Scott Fitzgerald
A suitable boy - Vikram Seth
Emma - Jane Austen
The Kite Runner / Khaled Hosseini
Their Eyes Were Watching God / Zorah Neale Hurston
Fall On Your Knees and As The Crow Flies / Anne Marie MacDonald
Lucky Jim / Kingsley Amis
The Man In The High Castle / Philip K Dick
Wolf Hall / Hilary Mantel
Gibbons Decline And Fall / Sheri S Tepper
Unreliable Memoirs / Clive James
Lolita / Vladimir Nabokov
Line of Beauty / Alan Hollinghurst
Wild Swans / Jung Chang
Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook
The Life and Opinion of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman / Laurence Sterne
The scarlet letter / Nathaniel Hawthorne
Scarlet & Black / Stendhal
Master and Margarita / Mikhail Bulgakov
An Evil Cradling / Brian Keenan
Midnight's children / Salman Rushdie
The red badge of courage / Stephen Crane
The Nun / Diderot
The Dispossessed / Ursula le Guin
His Dark Materials triology / Philip Pullman
Three Men in a Boat / Jerome K Jerome
The Lovely Bones / Alice Sebold
The Hours / Michael Cunningham
Purple Hibiscus / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Gilead / Marilynne Robinson
The Idiot / Dosteovsky
Tess of the D'Urbervilles / Thomas Hardy
Tender is the Night / F Scott Fitzgerald
A Perfect Spy / John Le Carre.
Earth's Children series / Jean Auel
The Womens' Room / Marylin French
Avalon & Katherine / Anya Seton
A Thousand Splendid Suns / Khaled Hosseini
A Prayer For Owen Meany / John Irving
Most of Bill Bill Bryson
Oranges are not the only fruit / Jeanette Winterson
Brick Lane / Monica Ali
The Bone People / Keri Hulme
The Lymond Chronicles / Dorothy Dunnett
Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War (Women & Peace) / Helen Smith
Still Missing / Chevy Stevens
The Sheltering Sky / Paul Bowles
Brazzaville Beach / William Boyd

Oh yes, forgot about The Book Thief, another wonderful story that def let me see WW2 from the ordinary germans perspective

Lots of these - Midnights Children, Suitable Boy, Behind the Scenes..., Possession, The Women's Room.

Can I chuck in The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles and Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd?

The lovely bones, 5 people you meet in heaven, my best friends girl, stephen king or dean koontz for the thriller value... The LOR trilogy, i am a twilight-a-holic too and loved the host by stephenie meyer.

I have just finished reading The Book Thief and LOVED it!!

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens was fantastic read aswell!!

There are loads more too...

I always answer Perfume by Patrick Suskind on the regular "what book did you hate" or "what book could you not be bothered to finish" bookie threads we have.

It seems to polarise people, that one.

Perfume. Patrick Suskind. Haven't seen the film. I know it would disappoint me.

www.amazon.co.uk/Not-So-Quiet-Stepdaughters-Women/dp/093531282X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296687361&sr=8-1

Found it jajas

I think it is possibly my favourite book ever.

The Book Thief by Markus Zuszak

I'm a compulsive reader - haven't put my Kindle down since I got it for Christmas. Almost impossible to choose just one - but if I really had to say - The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. Cheating a bit - there are 6 books in the series.

The Bone People - Keri Hulme

Very hard to pick just one, but if I had to then this would be it. When I finished it, I went back to the beginning and read the whole thing again, straight away.

Oh, and I like Phillip Roth.