What is the best book you have ever read?

The Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies

Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Northern Lights Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
The Light Between The Oceans by ML Stedman

I haven't seen The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera or Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut mentioned here yet but they are both books that have stuck with me a long time after reading them.

I love lots of the others that posters have added already so I didn't want to repeat a long list!

I loved I am pilgrim.
Also anything from John Irving and Stephen King ( hence my username!)

Mo Hayder- Birdman
Terry Hayes- I am Pilgrim
Steinbeck- East of Eden

So many good books are listed here. However im suprised that anyone would like Little Women. Also, i really really wanted to enjoy Cloud Atlas but it is one of the very few books that i couldnt finish.

Snow Falling on Cedars
The Line of Beauty
Birdsong
Anything by Kate Atkinson
Pat Barker

I need to add The Collector, The Road and God of Small Things. My mind went blank before.

Of Mice and Men
Wild Swans
Time and Time Again
The Ice Beneath Her
The Narnia books

Can I choose two?

Non-fiction: A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. What an utterly compelling book. It's basically a linear timeline of the sinking of the Titanic, comprising eyewitness accounts. It led me to read the original narratives of those eyewitnesses, along with many other firsthand accounts of the sinking. The composite reading has completely changed my understanding of what happened that night - it genuinely opened my eyes to the amount of untruths that are currently considered to be facts.

Fiction: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. Possibly the most frightening and eerie book I've ever read but truly a masterpiece of the genre, and utterly shocking in its denouement.

Oh, I want to choose more! Dracula for horror, Mapp and Lucia for comedy, Pride and Prejudice for romance...eek!

His Dark Materials trilogy
Adrian Mole (Secret Diary and Growing Pains)
Malory Towers
Nineteen Eighty Four

I love most things Margaret Atwood but my favourites are The Year of the Flood and The Blind Assassin. I've read both several times - Flood I was bought as a birthday present as it was released around then, I read it through, turned to the beginning and started reading again. The follow up, MaddAddam, is one that's slowly growing on me. The more I read her books the more I pick up on the clever little things in them.

I adore Fannie Flagg books, they are the ultimate in feel-good American nostalgia. Just gorgeous. Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man is probably my favourite - it's so funny!

I've loved Station Eleven and have read a couple of times. I do in general love apocalyptic fiction.

Thanks to this thread I've added several more books to my 'to read' shelf on GoodReads and have just downloaded The Goldfinch.

Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

And basically almost every other Murakami novel. I am deeply in love with his writing style.

Carriemac
Was it the one where he keeps her photo under the wall paper in prison?
I will do some googling.
I would love to read it again.

Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

Endoftheline that book about the american girl who marries the Chinese man was by Pearl S Buck. I can't remember the name

I love these threads.

Dead author
The Count of Monte Christo - I savoured every single word of that book. It knocked Wuthering Heights of the top dead author book post. I remember where I was and all the emotions that ran through me, everything.

Living Author
It is Louis de Bernieres. I absolutely adore him and his books. It took me three attempts to get into Captain Corelli but when I did ... I am though, picking Senor Vivo and the Coco Lord as my absolute favourite. Devastating, but so funny sometimes.

I love so many of those mentioned too.

There's a couple of mentions of Maggie O'Farrell but my favourite of all hers is The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Star of The Sea - Joseph O'Conner
The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
The Quincunx - Charles Palliser
The Crimson Petal and The White - Michel Faber
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Meaning of Night - Michael Cox
The Goldfinch - Donna Tart
The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
We Had It So Good - Linda Grant
Asta's Book - Barbara Vine (plus many more of hers)
The Forgotten Garden Kate Morton
After You'd Gone - Maggie O'Farrell
Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Life after Life - Kate Atkinson
Numerous Agatha Christies
Wuthering Heights -Emily Bronte
From childhood - Alice in Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass, The Water Babies, What Katy Did and a load of Enid Blytons

I bet I've forgotten a few then I'll kick myself when I remember them.

The womens room Marilyn French
Avalon by Anya Seton
Kathryn by Anya Seton
As well as many of the books already mentioned.
Years ago I read a really haunting heart breaking novel about an American girl who married a Chinese man just before the revolution. They were separated and he died in prison. She was eventually reunited with their son.
It was one of those epic stories. I wudh I could remember what it was called. I would love to read it again.

Impossible to chose one

Some of my favourites:
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolfe
Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene
A Passage to India - EM Forster
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Stoner - John Williams

Less "set text" but I really love these - The Snowman - Jo Nesbo and The Girl with the Dragon tattoo - Larrsson and LA Confidential and Perfidia by James Ellroy.

Interesting that so many, particularly early in the thread talk of Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen. DS (9yo) read it last year and enjoyed it. I'll have to give it a read!

Dorothy Dunnett, Lymond or Niccolo. She should be read by a wider audience, her books are breathtaking, literally.

At the moment, My Fight For My Family (the mega pig file) by David Jordan. It's a powerful emotive nonfiction book surrounding a father's struggle to get his baby daughter back after social workers literally snatched her off the mother in the street. It's one of those books i couldn't put down.

I think it's so hard to pick one book. I'd have to go with the Lord of the Rings trilogy as I re-read it every 2-3 years. I never get bored of it and it spurred me to read other Tolkien books to appreciate the extent of his world building. Still get a lump in my throat when Sam returns to the Shire after seeing Frodo sail into the West.

Favourite of all time: The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

Others:
In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
The Alexandria Quartet - Laurence Durrell
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
The Razor's Edge - W Somerset Maugham
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Skinny Legs and All - Tom Robbins
Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder
English Passengers - Matthew Kneale
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg
Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
The Hand that First Held Mine - Maggie O'Farrell (love all her writing)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
And a random that has stuck with me:
A Confederate General from Big Sur - Richard Brautigan

Janey thanks for the recommend cation for the Poison Tree! Half way through, I would never have picked this up but am also hooked (also had it on my kindlewaiting for me!)