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?

The God of Small Things is my absolute favourite, utterly gorgeous writing!

A few others I've loved have already been mentioned - Owen Meaney... just wonderful.

Also loved Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson). Whenever I need a good old laugh it's got to be Rachel's Holiday (Marian Keyes)

So many and some of my favourites have already been mentioned but I'll add;
As a teen The Dice Man, Catcher in the Rye and Jonathon Livingston Seagull.
And Animal farm
The Woman Who Walked into Doors
Under The Duvet
And Notes From a Small Island, as books that stand out for me off the top of my head.

Plains of passage by Jean Auel part of the earth children series.

Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi.

When Marnie Was There - Joan G Robinson
Another massive fan of John Irving - Owen Meany just pips The Hotel New Hampshire and Garp into joint second place
Any Human Heart - William Boyd
She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Anna Karenina
First Love - Ivan Turgenev
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg

The best book I've ever read was written in the 80s - Little, Big by John Crowley. I must have read it dozens and dozens of times, and I sometimes just let it fall open and read one of the chapters - they have beautiful and mysterious titles - in fact it's beautiful and mysterious all round. It won awards at the time, but not many people seem to have read it. It's like a lesson in good English without being starchy and when I read it I feel I've slid into a warm bath of escapist dreaming. It's centred around the world of Faerie but not twee in the least and the chapters involving a dystopian New York are so vividly drawn I have the architecture and characters and startling little vignettes in my head even now. (Going to put Poldark book no. 9 down and get Little, Big off the shelf again right now in fact)

Reading the thread, so many books come up again and again and I've got loads on my list now so thanks damnedgrubble

Such A Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry

Zemindar, by Valerie Fitzgerald. Sadly the only book she ever wrote, if you enjoyed Gone With The Wind, I think you'll enjoy this.

I couldn't get on with Owen Meany at all...
My desert island book would have to be 'Cider with Rosie' by Laurie Lee. So poetic, nostalgic, sad, funny and the one I just couldn't be without. If I were allowed to take just one more it would be 'The Worst Journey in the World' by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. You'll never complain about being cold again. A fantastic true adventure story. Increasingly, I'm drawn to non-fiction.

I see John Fowles' The Magus has been mentioned in this thread. I read it twice in my 20s. On the second occasion, I was on the Greek island where it is said and I'm sure we found the villa. The book was so strange and so perfect that I feel I would spoil it if I were to read it again thirty years later so it sits on my bookshelf calling me.

Possession
Persuasion
The God of Small things
Anything by Ursula Le Guin, though agree that the Disposessed is a standout

But all time favourite is the Bone People

AM Holmes - This Book Will Change Your Life - anything by AM Holmes is fabulous -
Brother of The More famous Jack - Barbara Trapido - actually my fav book
The Shipping News Annie Proulx - has saved my life.....(read while recovering from cancer)
Collected work of Dorothy Parker - like a Bible - by my bed at all times for the last 30 years
Brightness Falls Jay McInnerny - LOVE THIS BOOK ......why has it not been made into a film!!!!!!!!!!!!
Poison Wood Diary......Barbra Kinsolver (is that her name?)

love this strand!

Pride & Prejudice I could read it over and over again

Elinor M Brent-Dyer
LM Montgomery
Dorothy L Sayers
Dick Francis
Diana Wynne-Jones
Eva Ibbotsen
Jilly Cooper

The above are my absolute go-to comfort reading books where if I read one, I find myself reading the entire works. (Honourable exception for EBD - I read her best works, given that there are 70-odd).

Best fantasy: Ilona Andrews, Lois McMaster Bujold; Harry Potter; Lord of the Rings.

The Time Traveller's Wife
Possession
Jane Eyre
Wilkie Collins
Josephine Tey
Ellis Peters (not the Cadfael ones, the Felse chronicles)

I can't decide!

Shadow of the wind- Carol Ruiz Zafon
Harry potter series
Dark Tower series
Time Travellers Wife
Never let me go

Wow offblackeggshell I think you might be me!

As my username suggests - the Handmaids Tale would be the one if I had to choose just one book. The fact it is so relevant still today is depressing but I think a mark of how good a writer Atwood is.

Close second places works be The Poisonwood Bible and Midnights Children.

I think I'm going to add A prayer for Owen meany to my to read list after reading this thread!

Another vote for Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.

Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson.

I have lots of favourites from over the years starting with The Three Investigators from Alfred Hitchcock when I was eight (The secret of the Stuttering Parrot etc), through Barbara Michaels (Wait for What Will Come), to more "recently" Steven Saylor particularly "Roman Blood" as it was the first one I read and only by accident as I liked the picture on the cover but could not put it down, Dorothy Sayers "Busman's Holiday" and just earlier this year Flora McGowan "Material Witness" as it was written by a friend of a friend.

John Fowles' The Magus, Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong and Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres all stayed with me for a long time after reading. I love a proper immersive read!

To read over and over again

Elinor M Brent-Dyer's Chalet School.
Harry Potter.

The hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy.
(One of the best books ever.)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I first read it when I was about 11, although I'd watched the miniseries years before. The book is simply incredible. I recommend it to anyone I know who loves to read.

In no particular order:
Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
Little Women
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
Life after Life, Kate Atkinson
The Little Friend & The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber
Dr Norrell and Johnathan Strange, Susanna Clarke
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl
The Journal of Dora Damage, Belinda Starling
The Sabbathday River, Jean Hanff Korelitz
Over Sea Under Stone, Susan Cooper
Mrs Lincoln, Janis Cooke Newman
The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
The Love of Stones, Tobias Hill

IT
The Stand

Stephen King books to name a few..

And most other earlier books by this man and his brilliant mindset.