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?

catkind though I don't think I'd rank it as the best book I've read from a literary POV, the Dispossessed is the book that has probably had the greatest influence on the course of my life (and I didn't read it until I was in my early 30s).

I think the The Lovely Bones is a very good book it stayed with me, for sometime I couldn't read anything else

Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee

I love The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. It reminds me of the magic of being a child listening to fairy tales.

I also love I capture the castle.

As an adult (well teenager onwards):
Down and out in Paris and London
Catcher in the Rye
As a child:
James and the Giant Peach
The House of Sixty (or Fifty?!) Fathers

My absolute favourite childhood books were the Mazo De La Roche Jalna series, and all the Little House on the Prairie books.

And the Narnia books, of course!

I lived in Narnia for many years as a child.

Oryx and Crake, After the Flood, MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood. And Handmaid's Tale. All 3 books nearly killed me.

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro.
A Room With A View by EM Forster.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr.

There are a whole host of books I love but those I love most.

Nowhere near my list would be: Brontes, Austens, Rowlings, Hardys,... They deserve their place on various lists but bore the absolute arse off me

Loving all the recommendations on this thread. Thanks OP!

The Little Women series - loved them so much.

Just finished Eleanor & park, it was really good so feel the need to push it. Just one book though? So hard, Middlesex as I don't think it's been mentioned

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee and I absolutely love A Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, especially the first book in the trilogy - Sunset Song. First read them for standard grade English and still find something new in them 40 years later. Wonderful, wonderful books.

The hand that first held mine.

Too many to think about ...
Charlotte sometimes
The BFG
A handmaids tale
Tender is the night
A prayer for Owen meany
Cold comfort farm
Middlesex
Nineteen-eighty four
The crow road

All books I've read more than once and would love to enjoy again.

The secret history by Donna Tartt
Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

And my guilty pleasure is Tara Road by Maeve Binchey which I read every few years.

I've read many books that have affected me.

Nothing has poleaxed me like A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Nothing

Lord of the Rings- JRR Tolkien. I can always find passages that will help me through tough times, and it's just a story I can get lost in.

I'm going to read A Prayer for Owen Meany after this thread.

Siddharta by Herman Hesse has stayed with me for years.

As has Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky,and The Mayor of Casterbridge by Hardy.

Anything by Austen, any of the Harry Potter books bit especially Prisoner of Azkaban.

The Magus by John Fowles - amazing!

Cannot stand Wuthering Heights, Kite Runner, or Passage to India.

A Star Called Henry - Roddy Doyle

An encyclopedia of philosophy.

I'm going to read A Prayer for Owen Meany after this thread. You must Ava The World According To Garp is very similar. As is any of Wally Lamb's books. Also I thought Maggie O Farrell's This Must Be The Place was very much like John Irving's books.

Hmmm. We need an edit button on MN . You know what I mean .

Gone with the wind- simply phenomenal
Birdsong- emotional
captain correlis mandolin- challenging at first but incredible

Not rtft, falling apart by Jacqueline Wilson. Young adult book from early in her career.
It is amazing.