What is your favorite book of all time?

[Fishpants]

I'm hoping to gather some ideas and some real people recommendations rather than the Top 100 Novels to Read Before You Die type lists.

Disclaimer: I know it's hard to pick just one, so you can pick more than one if you really must. [hwink]

I have a set of Helen Dunmores but havent started yet.

Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann. Simply stunning.

For laughs - P G Wodehouse
For prose - Charles Dickens
For pleasure - Lindsay Davis
For story telling - Stephen King

So many........

Oh and Margaret Atwood, really liked Oryx and Crake which is not my usual cup of chia.

Oh and I love love love anything by douglas Copland too, and haruki Murakami, in fact right to the top of my list would go The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Birdsong?

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

To Kill a Mockingbird, have at least 5 different copies, including a signed first edition, with dust jacket. [hgrin]

A Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Danny The Champion of The World - Roald Dahl

Jane Eyre most definately.

Closely followed by To kill a mockingbird.

The best book I have had read in the last 10 years-The immortal life of henrietta lacks.

The best thriller-Miss smillas feeling for snow.

Yippee, have managed to add a few to my list. I found myself salivating for the release of Wolf Hall (self-confessed Henry VIII whore) but wasn't a fan

Boiled I'm sooooooo jealous!! How did you score that?

What is the book that is set in depression era America and is about a young boy and he is from an immigrant family, infact the whole community is all scandinavian. Lots of norwegian names. They are all poor, and he has this friendship with a very very poor girl, but she dies when it is winter. Nothing major happens in the book, it is just so beautifully written and the story so unassuming.

Anyone?

the author might be Kingsley something?

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen is my stand out favourite.
I adore it.

But I do love Bridget Jones, Stars and Bars by William Boyd and American Tabloid by James Ellroy.

Oh, finally found someone who loves A Place of Greater Safety

The Great Gatsby- if nothing else read that last paragraph and swoon at the perfection of it.

The Blood of Others - ditto, just read the last paragraph, if now't else.

The Little Prince- am having a chunk of that read out at my funeral (in the veeeeeeeh distant future obviously)

Room With A View (yes! and yes! and yes!) But you need to banish the image of Hairy Helena first.

Testament of Youth

All Quiet on the Western Front. (all teenagers should be force fed it, the world would be a better place)

Vida (also Marge Piercy)

Bonnety books I can cope with (and there aren't many) Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tess of the Durbervilles.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (just for the title if nothing else)

Whichever Graham Greene it is where he says "if he had not wanted me to love him, he should not have looked at me"

The rum diaries is good to by Hunter S thompson.

Wild Swans. I just didn't want it to end.

Joan Baez's autobiography. Amazing woman who tells about the love story between her and Ol' Bob. Who was a prize bastard, but her love for him shines through.

The Bridges of Madison County (again, you need to banish all thought of Clint with no pants on)

Music and Silence by Rose Tremain (anything by her really)
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Emma by Jane Austen
Tideland by Mitch Cullin
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Summer Book and Winter Book by Tove Jansson

I read everything by Chuck Palahniuk, Lionel Shriver and Ian McEwan, though none of their books make my top 5.

OK, that wasn't just one, but I enjoyed thinking about it

pinotscreechio I know Danny Scheinmann so will tell him when I next bump into him, I think he'll be delighted . I read his book because I knew him, not expecting to be quite so moved by his writing. It was my favourite read of that particular year and certainly in my top 5 books ever.

And Angela's Ashes, Bridget Jones and Jane Eyre.

And Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies because it sorted out my brain.

Angela's Ashes was excellent, one of only a few books that I couldn't put down. (shame it turned out to be a bit invented on his part, all that poverty, but it was beautifully written)

The Stand

And pretty much anything by Maeve Binchey

GHASTLYGHOULY was it by Vilhelm Moberg?

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Ray.

A story like the wind and A Far off place by Laurens Van Der Post.

Bucharest - I saw Joan Baez on concert earlier this month, and was perplexed by the songs she sang - all were covers and at least half were seriously religious - one about Mary Magdalene, another about "children of Jerusalem", loads about Jesus.

Was there anything in her biography that would explain this bizarre shift in her music? Has she found God?

(sorry for thread hijack)

posey Really? That's cool! It's the only book I've ever kept, to read again. Everything else I take to the charity shop. That one is too special.

Tell him it made me cry numerous times! I've recommended it loads of times :)