Your Definitive, No-Nonsense, Laminated, Indestructible Best Book of All Time?

[Spookberries]

I am genuinely curious, and I know it is fecking hard to pick just one, but in case I've missed any of these fantastic books I want to be privy!

Please pick just 1, your fave of all time, doesnt necessarily have to be fiction (ahem) but maybe could choose fave fiction and fave non-fiction? [hgrin]

the remains of the day, kazuo ishiguro.
the politics of breastfeeding, gabrielle palmer.

excuse lack of capitals - bfing!

I have read neither!

Thanks nicky!

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault, a bit heavy going, but made a lot of sense to me, despite the dodgy title

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I loved Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

'Birdsong' without a doubt
and Non Fiction would have to be Proved Innocent

Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

The complete works of Jane Austen - or is that cheating? If I can only have one, I'll have Sense And Sensibility...no, Pride and Prejudice....no, Persuasion...erm...

Non-fiction - probably Madhur Jafrey's World Vegetarian. But really I'd like a complete history of the world too.

My Traitor's Heart by Rhian Malan (SA Journo biog)
Pride and Prejudice by Austen

Gone to Soldiers, a great big fat book of deliciousness by Marge Piercy. Set in WW2, follows the lives of several people, very good at documenting wartime experiences for people who weren't actually in battle. Wonderful to have a war book that isn't about guns and tanks, and isn't a love story.

What's yours, Spookberries?

Either Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford; or Middlemarch - George Eliot

Non-fiction: any book debunking neo-Darwinist reductionism, genetic determinism and EP (probably by Prof Steven Rose); or any science/theology/faith book by John Polkinghorne.

The World According To Garp - John Irving

Awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome

Hrm

Probably To Kill A Mockingbird...I'd really have to think about it though and perhaps sweat it out between that and Seven Types of Ambiguity.

Non-Fiction...Contented Little Baby Book [hgrin] ................

just joking

Erm, One of the Henry VIII's wives books I've read. Can't choose a particular one.

Behind the scenes at the museum by Kate Atkinson. Made the mistake of lending to a friend, who wanted ideas for her book club, and never got it back. Then during one interminable wait at the doctor's with my DD I spotted a copy for sale, yippee.

Non-fiction is Wild Swans by Jung Chang (?), ashamed that I knew NOTHING of the famine and hardships durng the Cultural Revolution. All we did in school was the boring old Long March.

Gone with the Wind

Jean de florette and the sequel manon des sources
marcel Pagnol ( translated!)

100 years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald.

Then The Magus by John Fowles.

Everything by Jane Austen but especially Persuasion.

Lots of John le Carre - especially The Little Drummer Girl and The Perfect Spy.

Fiction - Mansfield Park.
Non-fiction - The Reason Why by Cecil Woodham-Smith.

For Esmé, with Love and Squalor: And Other Stories - JD Salinger
The Continuum Concept - Jean Liedloff