To ask what the best book you've ever read is?

[AtlasShrugged]

As above really. Inspired by the worst book thread running at the moment. What's the best book you've ever read? And why?

Wuthering Heights
Pride and Prejudice
Brave New World
Harry Potter
The Hobbit
The Millennium Trilogy
The Mill on the Floss

My comfort read has to be

James Woodforde-The diary of a Country Parson 1758-1802

The Magus by John Fowles which i read as an impressionable teen in the 70s always stays with me. I don’t generally re read so not sure if i would rate it today.
More recent reads I have really enjoyed include We Need To Talk About Kevin, Appletree Yard and the sister chimp one - all on the worst reads thread :)

I, Pilgrim - incredible thriller, absolutely first rate of its genre.
The Collector, John Fowles - dark, creepy 1960s precursor to The Room.
What a carve up! Jonathan Coe

Will probably think of loads more....

Great Expectations
Midnight's Children
100 Years of Solitude
The Gospel according to Jesus Christ (may offend some Christians)

The Magus - yes!! I was utterly enthralled by it as a teenager, could not put it down. A complete behemoth of a book.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, I must have read it a dozen times and I have the audio book in my car 😊

Pillars of the Earth is the worst book I've ever read! Only book I've ever failed to finish.

Almost anything by Margaret Atwood. Particularly The Year of the Flood.

Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon. It’s a coming of age novel set in the American south in the 60s. It combines magical realism with historical fiction and crime. There is literally not one part I don’t love.

The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard ( the first four, not the strange later one)
Great Expectations or David Copperfield
Middlemarch
Pride and Prejudice
The Lord of the Rings
Rivals or Polo by Jilly Cooper - has to be some Jilly on the list!

Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon. I loved that too. Lent someone my copy and didn't get it back. I'd have liked to re-read.

Pratchett always. I’m deeply distressed that there will be no more.
The man was a genius

I don't about 'best', I have several favourites but one of them is 'A Suitable Boy' by Vikram Seth. I've read it more than twice.

Another is 'That Hideous Strength' by C S Lewis. First read it in childhood and several times since, each time taking something different away. Wonderful book.

Lonesome Dove

I love this thread but have so many -yes yes to Athena51 and Penguingirl

East of Eden
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Anything by Nancy Mitford or Gerald Durrell
Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies
The Goldfinch
Narrow Road to the Deep North - horrifying and incredibly beautiful
The Lives of Others
The Emperor Waltz
I always find Anthony Trollope’s books comforting, and Jane Austen is the mistress of restrained detail and recognisable characters.

Currently reading the Immortalists and quite enjoying it (but it’s so sad)

Yes! Johnny there must be Jill’s and Cazalets, I’d forgotten them

Great thread! Another one marking for inspiration later.

The Group by Mary McCarthy
Burmese Days by George Orwell (anything by George really!)

The other thread has just reminded me that I loved The English Patient!

Showofhands i agree! It escapes me how it got published, let alone became a bestseller!

Too many to choose but books I return to time and again are:

Any Human Heart William Boyd
Autobiography of a Supertramp W H Davies
Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood
Jalna series Mazo De La Roche
A Moveable Feast Earnest Hemingway
End of the Affair Graham Greene
The Go Between L P Hartley
Tom's midnight Garden Phillipa Pearce

Margaret Forster is brilliant, as is Kate Atkinson, and Kazuo Ishiguro.
I love most of Somerset Maugham's stories. Raymond Carver's short stories are incredible.
It's not my favourite book but I loved Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders, took a little while to get into but very much worth persevering.

For those who, like me, love books that are at least 2 inches thick, I'd recommend "Life and Fate" by Vassily Grossman. The story of different members of a family around and during the battle of Stalingrad.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell!

Also loved:

The House of the Spirits
Memoirs of a Geisha
Rebecca
The Secret History
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Beach

Both already mentioned but A Suitable Boy and A Town Like Alice.

I also really loved The Hunger Games .

I strongly dislike Withering Heights - studied it at GCSE, which possibly ruined it for me, but I still can't understand why so many love it. It's dull and everyone in it is awful.