What’s the best book you’ve ever read?

[lostinthoughts]

Holidays coming up and I’m fed up of starting books and not finishing them as they just don’t grip me. Give me your best ever books that have had you hooked….

Shuggie Bain. It has stayed with me.
also, Wolf Hall and Olive Kitteridge

That's a bit crushing. I don't see why you think it's ok to call out people's choices. How do you think that makes them feel?

I want to add to my choices:

Fingersmith - just amazing
Wolf Hall
The Sunne in Spendour
Any Human Heart

It has to be The Goldfinch.

Fair and Tender Ladies Lee Smith - set in ?Appalachians
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - much set in Africa.
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris set in 19thC France based on a true story
His Bloody Project Graeme Macrae Burnett think it was a booker winner
Editing to add Piranesi by Susannah Clark - a strange slightly spooky story, not very long if you want something different.

Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky

Catch 22 - Heller. You will feel like you are going crazy as you read it.

The Magus - John Fowles

Fiesta, The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway

Siddhartha - Hesse. Beautiful prose

The Salt Path - just joking, thought it was full of holes

Stepford Wives
Lord of the Flies
Wild

You have just helped me remember a book I read years ago, loved and forgot!

Thank you, it's is a wonderful book. I will read it again.

What a bunch of snobs there are on this thread! What’s amazing to one person might be shit to another and that’s ok. It’s not for you to sneer about what other people enjoyed.

I read American Dirt because people were raving about it and thought it was ok but not rave worthy and that’s ok. I didn’t feel the need to shit all over their opinions of it.

A Fine Balance. Rohinton Mistry

It’s funny how polarising it is - I thought it was one of the worst books I read that year! I also disliked Lincoln In The Bardo, but thought Piranesi was wonderful.

It would be a dull world if we liked the same things.

The Heart Shaped Bullet, by Kathryn Flett.

It broke my heart,and mended it too.

The House of the Spirits
The Ginger Tree
I recently read Small Island and wished I had read it years ago.

Replay Ken Grimwood
the Shardlake mysteries CJ Samson
anything by Stephen king
light relief anything by Gabrielle Zevin or Marianne Keyes

Try CJ Sansom the Shardlake mysteries

here’s the wiki blurb :

The Shardlake series is a series of historical mystery novels by C. J. Sansom, set in 16th century Tudor England. The series features barrister Matthew Shardlake, who, while navigating the religious reforms of Henry VIII, solves crime and tries to avoid getting caught up in political intrigue. The first six books are set during the reign of Henry VIII, while the seventh, Tombland, takes place two years after the king's demise. Sansom said before his death that he planned to write further Shardlake novels taking the lawyer into the reign of Elizabeth I.

Yup. I loved the books because he was so miserable and uncooperative and important characters kept being killed off 😀.
Complete opposite to the heroine of the book I am reading at the moment, picked up for pennies at a fete. Not sure why I am persisting with it, I suspect the hot weather has fried my brain. Talk about a Mary-Sue... Arrows Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey.

Depends how you define "best". For me it's a book I would read and enjoy over and over.
I agree that books like "Middlemarch" are well plotted, insightful etc. but I'd never bother to read them again.
As for "Lincoln on the Bardo" and "Wide Sargasso Sea" and "Beloved" and such like - I thought they were appallingly bad. I like a ripping yarn, not something that sounds like a boring drunken ramble.

Both fantastic choices !

Agree. I hate ‘book snobbery’. It’s such a mean, petty-minded attitude.

People who think they’re superior because they don’t read chicklit or Romantic fiction or whatever miss the point. Like music, there are books for every taste.

Completely agree that the book snobs are dire and uncalled for - being frankly rude but choosing to be absolute snobs on a global forum where anal is also freely discussed - why don't you go get your superior massive clever book dicks out in the British library instead of shitting on a thread where people are sharing their favourite books with good nature

Book snobs are the worst.

The more obscure the title the better for them. Nothing like an engaging plot, decently drawn characters, interest maintained with the pace, etc., it must be something that most people would throw down in frustration, but because the likes of the Guardian recommend it, well it has to be read, and their opinion is often plagiarised from reviews.

Been there, seen it all.

I would ignore book snobs quite easily. Each to their own -there are endless reasons why you might like a book. Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch for example has 123,741 responses on Amazon. Obviously hugely popular.

The Fortnight in September, RC Sheriff. I read it once a year because it's just so peaceful and lovely.

The Crimson Petal and The White/Under the Skin, Michel Faber.

The Night Watch/Affinity, Sarah Waters.

The Darling Buds of May, HE Bates. Another one I read every year, and the others in the series.

Edit to add The Last Unicorn, Peter S Beagle. Read it over and over since I was 14.

Ooh, haven't RTFT but now I'm going to have to go back and look for the snobs