What is the best book you have ever read?

I have to add Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook to my modest list, although I see we are mainly talking about fiction here.

Interesting that there are so many votes for "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" as I have read it recently because so many people recommended Kate Atkinson and that was the first one I found. Now I'm not sure whether I want to bother reading any of her others! I think my all time best must be "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang because it opened my eyes to a whole new world of experience - things that happened within my lifetime that I had no idea about.
Also love Kazuo Ishiguro & must read more of his!

SO hard to pick just one, The Grapes of Wrath, several by Garcia Marquez.

Several!
Lolita.
Line of Beauty. So good that I am never going to write again.
Birdsong.
Anything by Thomas Hardy.

Clive James. Unreliable Memoirs. Funny
and clever with it. "Gabby"

Gibbons Decline And Fall by Sheri S Tepper.

Just the most unusual, original story I've ever read... six middle-aged women save the world... layered, complex, long, but not difficult to read at all, well-drawn characters, and very thought provoking, especially the choice at the end. It's haunted me (in a good way) ever since I read it.

jajas have you read 'not so quiet' ? The authors name escapes me but it was a alias anyway.

The pitch was to write a 'send up' of All Quiet on the Western Front and call the author Erica Remarks. The eventual author was so disgusted by this that she wrote NSQ. Its about women ambulance drivers in WW1. It is magnificant.

Anyway - thought you might like it

Best in terms of really getting inside your head and giving everything a good jiggle: The Man In The High Castle by Philip K Dick

Best story I've read recently: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Yay, Elephants

Another 'favourite' vote for Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

'Best' book, as in the one that has stayed with me longest, is one I read at college - Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zorah Neale Hurston. Unbelievably powerful, painful, beautifully written ... just incredible. But I am slightly wary of going back to it because the experience is so emotional.

And anything by Anne Marie MacDonald - Fall On Your Knees and As The Crow Flies. Also pretty powerful books, quite difficult at times, but unputdownable.

Oh, and Lucky Jim. A book I read at least once a year, and it makes me cry laughing every time.

For me it would be The Kite Runner.

It's such a personal thing. I have lent this book out to friends who haven't been as enthusiastic about it. I've read and loved so many books but you asked for 'the best book' and imo this is it.

The great gatsby - f scott fitzgerald
A suitable boy - vikram seth
Emma - jane austen
lots of marion keyes

I read so much - at least a book a week, unless they are really long ones, so this is tough...
Just finished "Never let me go" - read "When we were orphans" before that so am clearly a big fan of Kazuo Ishiguro.
Over the years I have returned countless times to "I capture the castle" by Dodi Smith, "Anna Karenina" and "The Bronze Horseman" trilogy ("Tatiana and Alexander" and "The Summer Garden") by Paullina Simons.

I am reading Never Let Me Go at the moment. Am enjoying it immensely.

Another vote for Cloud Atlas. But my all time fave is The Cleft by Doris Lessing. I like a book that makes me think a lot afterwards. I think I must also really like books about alternate realities, as my favourite chapter in Cloud Atlas is an Orison of Sonmi.

Any recommendations for other books that have alternate realities or supposed futures?

Another vote for Possession (A S Byatt) here.

I'm reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being for the first time (on someone's recommendation). It's quite powerful.

"Best" ever in terms of well-crafted etc, probably Beloved by Toni Morrison. Yes I read it at college (17ish) and, although I didn't love it at first as it is not exactly an easy read, realised just how bloody brilliant it is about halfway through. The last chapter is just...can't describe.

Favourite book ever is definitely something else though. Behind the Scenes at the Museum probably. Some of my favourite "books" ever are books of short stories though. Ali Smith's collections "The Whole Story and other stories" and "Other Stories and other stories" are both wonderful, although I don't know anyone else who has read/likes them.

Difficult one, but has to be Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh).

So much more to it than the "Oxford toffs" image it has. It is really about the changing nature of English society in the first half of the 20th Century, about love & relationships and about religion/faith.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (hence the name ).
Great Expectations by Dickens.

Cold Comfort Farm

rofl @ 'To hell with Scott'.

Perfume - Patrick Suskind

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Two books I re-read every couple of years.

Also, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, although I've never been in the mood to read it again.

The worst journey in the world by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. It is account of the expedition to antartica on the Terra Nova.

(apparently he was going to call it 'To hell with Scott' which is quite an amusing play with words!)

Best books which aren't 'airport' reads -
The Crow Road by Iain Banks
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

I also love Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (and all her other books, but this is her best IMO), and most Marian Keyes. Anybody Out There has me sobbing every time I read it.

And for books I can return to time and time again and alway love - Neither Here nor There and The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. They've kept me going through many a shitty day!