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Original poster

What is the best book you have ever read?

140 replies

KatyDidItAgain · 28/08/2013 20:49

What was it, and why was it so good?

Mine is Nevil Shute's Trustee from the toolroom for his wonderful portrayal of the main character, Keith.

OP posts:
Original poster
KatyDidItAgain · 28/08/2013 22:25

Agreeing with The Cleft too, that was an exceptional book. Shall I make a list of MN favourite books?

OP posts:
ILovePonyo · 28/08/2013 22:20

I'm place marking too.

I love Richard Yates, but can't pick one... I remember feeling so gutted when I realised I had read Everything he had ever written.

Maryz · 28/08/2013 22:17

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LadyMetroland · 28/08/2013 22:11

Impossible to choose. Favourites change easily.

Any Human Heart and The New Confessions by William Boyd are the best books I've read recently.

Fifteen years ago I'd have said Donna Tarte's The Secret History was the best book ever.

Impala1967 · 28/08/2013 22:10

The Hobbit
Or
To Kill A Mockingbird
Read TKAM in school and, although I did enjoy it then, it's a book which has grown on me over time.
Also Primo Levi's If This is a Man. Just such an emotional, incredible book which gives a whole new understanding to life in the Nazi concentration camps.

Taffeta · 28/08/2013 22:09

Can I have 2?

Never Let me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Cleft - Doris Lessing

They both stayed with me for months afterwards. The Cleft really felt like an epiphany.

BaconAndAvocado · 28/08/2013 22:07

Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Amor Towles' The Rules of Civility.

aladdinsane · 28/08/2013 22:06

The poisonwood bible
One flew over the cuckoos nest
To kill a mocking bird
The grapes of wrath

chattychattyboomba · 28/08/2013 22:06

Zahir- Paolo Coelho

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 28/08/2013 22:04

A Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies will take it to top five.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 28/08/2013 22:04

Absolutely impossible to pick one but Jane Austen (can't pick just one of those), Lolia and King's Dark Tower are right up there in my top three.

Chopsypie · 28/08/2013 22:03

Fiction- the book thief Markus zusac.(sp?)
Unusual, poignant, funny and heartbreaking, all in one novel. I recommend it to everyone.
Non fiction - a short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson.
Intellectual enough to be Halle going in places but with interesting anecdotes and wandering stories. Incredibly interesting and he has an amazing turn of phrase!

2cats2many · 28/08/2013 22:02

I have load of best books but one of my all time favourites and one that I will definitely be thrusting on DD is I Capture the Castle by Dodi Smith.

VashtaNerada · 28/08/2013 21:58

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children . I fell in love with it from page one.

barmybunting · 28/08/2013 21:53

There are so many, it is hard to narrow it down. But - the one that has had the most impact on my life? Torey Hayden's 'One Child.' I read it at 12 by mistake, and I regularly re-read it. It influenced much of my career choice, and still speaks to me in a really profound way.

Original poster
KatyDidItAgain · 28/08/2013 21:49

I'm agreeing with so many of these - Room was excellent, so was The Lollipop Shoes. As for the others, I have sent samples of them to my kindle to have a look at later.

OP posts:
RubySparks · 28/08/2013 21:44

A few... William Wharton 'Birdy', Douglas Kennedy 'The Woman in the Fifth', anything by Robert Ryan and Amitabh Ghosh 'The Glass Palace'.

MyBoysAreFab · 28/08/2013 21:44

Oh, and just remembered another - Little Women. It is impossible to narrow it down to one!

ILoveMimislabel · 28/08/2013 21:44

Written on the body by Jeanette winterson. Really poetic and full of love angst. It's written so you don't know the gender of the character and I love that about it.

thecatfromjapan · 28/08/2013 21:40

I can't think of "best" - i think I'm too much of a fiction flibbertigibbet to have a "best".

At the moment I'm besotted with Penelope Fitzgerald. Her books are now on Kindle (hurray!) and I've just finished "Offshore", which was brilliant!

I was reading it at the same time as Grace Coddington's memoirs and the intersection with the 60s King's Road was very fortuitous.

Fitzgerald is funny - but not aggressively so - and generous towards her characters. She does really fascinating things with language in "Offshore", letting meaning slip to and fro by means of the specialised nautical language. I also found it quite optimistic.

Dollybird86 · 28/08/2013 21:40

The colour purple

MrsHowardRoark · 28/08/2013 21:39

This is such a difficult question to answer but if I had to pick one then I'd go for Brideshead Revisited.

It is such a beautifully written book that completely draws you in.

Or Blindness by Jose Saramago.

It's an impossible choice!

ExitPursuedByABear · 28/08/2013 21:37

How can you choose?

All those books ......

Yddraigoldragon · 28/08/2013 21:37

World Class, Jane and Burt Boyar. I had a paperback as a teen, lost it, bought a second hand ex library copy from the US, which fell apart but I still have the bits! I have since picked up an old paperback and have it on kindle...

It tells the story of the birth of open professional tennis, follows fictional characters from junior level to Wimbledon, and I have to read it again every year in June.

MamaMary · 28/08/2013 21:36

The God of Small Things bowled me over.

Amongst Women is very powerful.

The Remains of the Day is one of the most beautifully written, understated and moving novels I have ever read.

Jane Eyre is one I will always return to. I will probably keep re-reading it and Wuthering Heights until I die or can no longer read.

But I don't have one favourite. Sorry OP Blush