What is the best book you have ever read?

[damnedgrubble]

I think mine has to be (at least at the moment) The House at the End of Hope Street because I grew up not far from there.

Which is your favourite book and why?

Enderby by Sebastian Foukes is also outstanding.

Sorry, should be Faulkes!

So many but We are all completely beside ourselves is the most recent. To kill a mockingbird bird, Fludd.

The night circus, by?

Should DH ever see this I am completely outed -.but A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, and Anna Karenina. 😍

Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
After Leaving Mr Mackenzie - Jean Rhys
Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood
A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon
Most Martin Amis
All of David Mitchell's books - outstanding author
And the fantastic Mog books by the amazing Judith Kerr

Too many to pick just one

Charmed Life - Diana Wynne-Jones my oldest favourite - read when a child and still a fantastic book.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

I love all Terry Prachett books

I second the James Heriott books too

Dick Francis books

But my all time favourite is Rings of Ice by Piers Anthony

Oh gosh, I love so many of these books, can't just pick one!

EssentialHummus
Fuck that was a good book!

Lolita - Nabakov
The Border Trilogy - Cormac McCarthy
Frank Bascombe - not the title but the series with him as protagonist by Richard Ford
Life and Fate - Vassily Grossman

Not outed eggshell- those are probably the two I'd pick as well. There may be a tribe of us.

I actually can't do it. I have to go by author.. so forget my last post.

Cormac McCarthy
Vladimir Nabokov
Martin Amis
Richard Ford
James Ellroy
Phillip Roth
JM Coetzee
Janet Frame
William Faulkner
Vassily Grossman
Ernest Hemingway
Eleanor Catton
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I read a book every day or two

MagicalMrsMistoffelees

Similar taste!

As mentioned already :

The Road by Cormac Mccarthy
James Herriot : simple, but so well written
1984

Also :
Alias Grace and also The Handmaids Tale
Angela's Ashes

Wuthering Heights. Every time I read it I find something new to marvel at. Not a favourite on Mumsnet I know

I do love P&P as well. It's just so perfectly written.

marking place

Birdsong
Atonement
Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Probably some more I can't remember of the top of my head

Haven't read a lot of those listed on this thread though including Harper Lee so thanks for the reading list

The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

I can't pick just one.

From my childhood, the most memorable are Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee; Jane Eyre; Lord of the Flies; The Day of the Triffids; The War of the Worlds; Black Beauty.

As an adult I still enjoy the above, but have others to add to my list of favourites. They are: The Woman in White; Pride and Prejudice; Gone with the Wind; A Suitable Boy; Wild Swans; A Fine Balance; Birdsong; The Garden of Evening Mists.

.

Satre's The Age of Reason, can't get on with the rest of the trilogy but I've carried the same battered and bathtub- mangled old paperback from pillar to post for ten years now. Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is a close second, the whole Disworld series is the third :)

JaneJeffer I really enjoyed Wuthering Heights!

I went into expecting to loathe it

If you ever come across an older gentleman selling his own books in a bookstore or at a tube station - his name is Stephen Benatar and he is a fab read. Wish her safe at home, and When I was otherwise are terrific books, a bit mad, funny and very, very black.

MsJuniper, The Sea, The Sea - is my favourite book ever and one I buy for people.

Other than that, no book can fill every hole.

Interestingly, I've read pretty much every book cited here but my natural literary milieu is science fiction, in which case it' The Hyperion Cantos' by Dan Simmons.

You won't regret it.

Oh my goodness. I can't pick one.

A Prayer For Owen Meany and The World According To Garp. John Irving

I Know This Much Is True
She's Come Undone
The Hour I First Believed. Wally Lamb

The Goddess Of Small Things. Arundhati Roy

The Hand That First Held Mine. Maggie O'Farrell.

It's a tie amongst A Fairly Honourable Defeat, by Iris Murdoch; A Locoman's Log by GT Alcock, and George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

For me

Hostile waters,
Red Storm Rising