What is the best book you have ever read?

[KatyDidItAgain]

What was it, and why was it so good?

Mine is Nevil Shute's Trustee from the toolroom for his wonderful portrayal of the main character, Keith.

There are so many, it is hard to narrow it down. But - the one that has had the most impact on my life? Torey Hayden's 'One Child.' I read it at 12 by mistake, and I regularly re-read it. It influenced much of my career choice, and still speaks to me in a really profound way.

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children . I fell in love with it from page one.

I have load of best books but one of my all time favourites and one that I will definitely be thrusting on DD is I Capture the Castle by Dodi Smith.

Fiction- the book thief Markus zusac.(sp?)
Unusual, poignant, funny and heartbreaking, all in one novel. I recommend it to everyone.
Non fiction - a short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson.
Intellectual enough to be Halle going in places but with interesting anecdotes and wandering stories. Incredibly interesting and he has an amazing turn of phrase!

Absolutely impossible to pick one but Jane Austen (can't pick just one of those), Lolia and King's Dark Tower are right up there in my top three.

A Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies will take it to top five.

Zahir- Paolo Coelho

The poisonwood bible
One flew over the cuckoos nest
To kill a mocking bird
The grapes of wrath

Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Amor Towles' The Rules of Civility.

Can I have 2?

Never Let me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Cleft - Doris Lessing

They both stayed with me for months afterwards. The Cleft really felt like an epiphany.

The Hobbit
Or
To Kill A Mockingbird
Read TKAM in school and, although I did enjoy it then, it's a book which has grown on me over time.
Also Primo Levi's If This is a Man. Just such an emotional, incredible book which gives a whole new understanding to life in the Nazi concentration camps.

Impossible to choose. Favourites change easily.

Any Human Heart and The New Confessions by William Boyd are the best books I've read recently.

Fifteen years ago I'd have said Donna Tarte's The Secret History was the best book ever.

I'm place marking too.

I love Richard Yates, but can't pick one... I remember feeling so gutted when I realised I had read Everything he had ever written.

Agreeing with The Cleft too, that was an exceptional book. Shall I make a list of MN favourite books?

I read the Cleft within a few months of having DD, who was the most placid, at ease baby. She came nearly 3 years after DS, who came out raging and at odds with the world. I think that's why I identified with it so much, it was an interesting time for me.

The Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner

Yes think Room was the best book I have read ....
bit of a head fuck when you realise the small space they live in and the boy thinks it is the world :(
Made me feel upset when the bastard who trapped them left them with no lights .... imagine living in darkness with no escape :(

Gosh. Just found out Alan Garner published a new book in 2012. Off to Amazon.

I've always loved The She Devil but my absolute favourite is any of the Harry Potter books - I've read them all about 20 times. (Feel quite embarrassed admitting that.)
No other book has had such an escapism effect on me.

An impossible question but I agree with One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest as it was so rewarding after such a difficult first 80-100 pages. Also loved To Kill A Mocking Bird but only as an adult.

Oddly, my favourite book as a child was Day Of The Triffids. And my fav horror book was Misery. But there's so many, arghhhh.

Too many.

As a youngster, it was the Little House on the Prairie books.

As a teen I progressed onto spy stories and blockbusters, I would say The Day of the Jackal was my favourite in that era.

Then, perhaps in no particular order, Wild Swan, The God of Small Things, Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, I'm sure there are more.

Impossible to choose just one, but on a scale of complexity, brilliance, and sheer intellectual satisfaction, these would probably make top three:

(in no particular order)

Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

I'm reading Anna Karenina at the moment. It's very good, but "the greatest novel ever written" it ain't, imho.

This thread is going to cost me a fortune on amazon! Can you stop now please :)

Best is different from favourite though, isn't it?

I have read many extraordinarily well-crafted books, but they wouldn't be my favourites, because often even in a less well-written book there will be a particular scene or character that strikes a chord with you, and stays with you long after the final lines have been read.

I'd say something by Mantel, Winterson, Barnes or Lessing as the best.

Finn Family Moomintroll as my favourite!