Right-I'm sick of Booker shortlist fiction-so help me, post your all time favourite work of classic fiction

Another member of the Middlemarch fan club. I see nobody's mentioned Trollope yet.
So I vote for:
The Barchester Towers series
The Palliser series
The Way we Live Now
Can you Forgive her?
And there are plenty more if that is not enough to keep anyone going till 2010.
Also being Irish I have to put in a word of Kate O'Brien (not be be confused with Edna).
Her last book, As Music and Splendour, is one of the great unknown classics IMO.
Her most famous book is The Land of Spices which is set in my old boarding school and was banned in Ireland for many years (we used to pass it round under the desks).

Ooh I'll happily be forced to read Larkin.

Oh God, Cap, I'm reliving every awful page now

I am with margoandjerry about Owen Meany

you really didn't mind that he started off a comedy book and then lost it?

you really didn't mind that he told the same story over and over again in case we'd forgotten it?

you really didn't mind how ridiculous it was? the Nativity scenes went far too far. And the crowbarred symbolism?

And Christ alive, that damn tailor's dummy and the Mary statue with the arms.

Awful

Oh yes, Owen Meany is one of Irving's fab ones. A friend of mine once had an armadillo party as he was so into the book. Someone came with a vibrator encased in a tinfoil suit of armour - an "armoured dildo" - geddit? It was a great party.

Hardy?

I'm not going back there thank you very much

everyone should be forced by law to read Philip Larkin imo

I agree with pretty much all he says but don't you think he pushes his opinions down his readers throats just as determindly as CS Lewis did?
I think readers should be given the facts and allowed to make their own judgements. Neither Pullman and Lewis concede to their readers that respect. Also both of them get carried away as their series progess by their own eloquence. IMO it is no coincidence that LWandW and N Lights are by far the best books either of them wrote. If the stable was horrible the yoghurt eating elephants on wheels were ridiculous...
CS Lewis, whatever else, could tell a story. I escaped to the magic of Narnia as a child, the Christian message went right over my thick head, but the magic wardrobe and the fauns and the beavers went straight to my pagan heart. As did the armoured bears to my daughter's.
I do not think Pullman needs to protest so much against Lewis. I wonder why he does. It is not very much to his otherwise very creditable credit.
IMHO!

Just in case anyone's interested, here's an interview with Philip Pullman that says what I feel about Narnia far better than I ever could.

Warning though, it's pretty devastating, so if Narnia is your favourite comfort read, I wouldn't read the interview!

nobody has mentioned Ulysses yet have they

Also Grapes of Wrath. Loved it.

Hated Owen Meany but I am in a very small minority.

Vanity Fair is amazing. Brilliant story and so vibrant.

My best book ever is Great Expectations. Another great story.

Also Wilkie Collins's Woman in White. Fabbo.

Am also resolving to avoid all Bookers from now on. Just finished Mister Pip and was really disappointed. I thought it was just shockingly badly written in parts.

If you are prepared to go a bit more up to date then anything by Wally Lamb is fab (This much is true).

The Shadow of the Wind
LIfe of Pi
All the Claire tomalin books

another one for owen meany!

joseph heller's catch 22 and closing time (but even better than those is...God Knows)

margaret atwood's handmaids tale ( and can i sneak in a future classic by her: the penelopiad )

john fowles; the magus

somerset maugham; cider with rosie

One of my favourites is The Counterfeiters
Andre Gide.

Others that haven't been mentioned

Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
Whisky Galore - Compton McKenzie

my other favourites are

Madame Bovary
Candide
Room with a View
Great Expectations
Franny and Zooey (not sure if a classic but we can sneak it in)

Oh no Jude is wonderful, absolutely wonderful

here Is really good and absorbing.

jude the obscure

reading the above posts makes me think I should read Jane Eyre again (remember frisbeeing it across the room in hatred when I was about 14)

My faves:

Vanity Fair - Becky Sharp THE best character
Pride and Prejudice
Middlemarch
Silas Marner
The Age if Innocence and Buccanneers (Buccanneers unfinished, Wharton died I think, but what was written was beautiful)
Washington Square
Vilette (the only Bronte sisters book I have ever enjoyed)

How about:

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Of Mice & Men - John Steinbeck
Staying On - Paul Scott
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Any Evelyn Waugh

Don't forget Colette. I love those norty Claudine stories. X rated Enid Blyton.

When I first read them I was quite young - I couldn't quite understand what all the kissing was about. We didn't go round doing that at my school. I just thought they must all get along really well.

It wasn't until I read them again later that I realised they were all at it

Another vote for Updike - the 'Rabbit' series is one of my all-time faves. I actually thought 'The Gathering' was really good, and I think her previous book 'Making Babies - Stumbling into Motherhood' was the best book I've ever read about becoming a mother - and SO funny.