What is the best book you have ever read?

• Wild Swans
• Pride and Prejudice
• Gone with the Wind
• Heart of Darkness (no. 1). This goes everywhere with me. I love its turn of phrase, themes, development, imagery, everything. It inspires and calms me.

Jane Eyre, ever since I first read it at 11 years old.

Also Pride and Prejudice because it's perfect.

All Quiet On The Western Front

This will out me if anyone I know is reading but Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco is a book I rave about and have read over and over. It is a brilliantly written spoof/critique of conspiracy theorists and confirmation bias. You can almost feel yourself descending into madness while reading it. It's hard going at the start but becomes so worth it.

I'd say "A Handmaids Tale" by Atwood....but if I was being truthful I'd admit to the Harry Potters being my absolute favourite reading experience.

Its almost impossible to pick just one book but amongst my favourites are:

A Prayer for Owen Meaney
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Possession
Life After Life
Of Human Bondage
The Ragged Trousers Philanthropists - not because it's particularly well written but I read it when I was about 14 and it woke my political consciousness.

I'm sure there are others but these are the ones that spring to mind.

Vernon God Little. Absolutely brilliant book. It's set in America and is a dark comedy about Things that happen there like high school shootings, gun culture, racism...fast food...so many things. When reading you automatically put on the Texan accent. It's a bit sweary and crass in places but I've read it loads of times 😆.

The Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan. Subtitled 'Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence'. Sagan emphasises that he's writing as a layman not an expert in the field although he can't hide the fact that he was a biologist by training. It's wonderfully well written, with wit and humour, very accessible, engaging and utterly fascinating. I read it right through from time to time and often dip into it when the world seems to be going crazy, it restores my sanity. It also contains a greeting: When you read a book the author speaks to you in your head. Hello!

My username is one of my favourite books. By Ernest Cline if you want to look it up

I loved the Cicero trilogy by Robert Harris.

Little Women . I cry every time!!!

For me

Hostile waters,
Red Storm Rising

It's a tie amongst A Fairly Honourable Defeat, by Iris Murdoch; A Locoman's Log by GT Alcock, and George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

Oh my goodness. I can't pick one.

A Prayer For Owen Meany and The World According To Garp. John Irving

I Know This Much Is True
She's Come Undone
The Hour I First Believed. Wally Lamb

The Goddess Of Small Things. Arundhati Roy

The Hand That First Held Mine. Maggie O'Farrell.

MsJuniper, The Sea, The Sea - is my favourite book ever and one I buy for people.

Other than that, no book can fill every hole.

Interestingly, I've read pretty much every book cited here but my natural literary milieu is science fiction, in which case it' The Hyperion Cantos' by Dan Simmons.

You won't regret it.

If you ever come across an older gentleman selling his own books in a bookstore or at a tube station - his name is Stephen Benatar and he is a fab read. Wish her safe at home, and When I was otherwise are terrific books, a bit mad, funny and very, very black.

JaneJeffer I really enjoyed Wuthering Heights!

I went into expecting to loathe it

Satre's The Age of Reason, can't get on with the rest of the trilogy but I've carried the same battered and bathtub- mangled old paperback from pillar to post for ten years now. Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is a close second, the whole Disworld series is the third :)

.

I can't pick just one.

From my childhood, the most memorable are Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee; Jane Eyre; Lord of the Flies; The Day of the Triffids; The War of the Worlds; Black Beauty.

As an adult I still enjoy the above, but have others to add to my list of favourites. They are: The Woman in White; Pride and Prejudice; Gone with the Wind; A Suitable Boy; Wild Swans; A Fine Balance; Birdsong; The Garden of Evening Mists.

The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

marking place

Birdsong
Atonement
Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Probably some more I can't remember of the top of my head

Haven't read a lot of those listed on this thread though including Harper Lee so thanks for the reading list

Wuthering Heights. Every time I read it I find something new to marvel at. Not a favourite on Mumsnet I know

I do love P&P as well. It's just so perfectly written.

As mentioned already :

The Road by Cormac Mccarthy
James Herriot : simple, but so well written
1984

Also :
Alias Grace and also The Handmaids Tale
Angela's Ashes

MagicalMrsMistoffelees

Similar taste!

I actually can't do it. I have to go by author.. so forget my last post.

Cormac McCarthy
Vladimir Nabokov
Martin Amis
Richard Ford
James Ellroy
Phillip Roth
JM Coetzee
Janet Frame
William Faulkner
Vassily Grossman
Ernest Hemingway
Eleanor Catton
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I read a book every day or two