Best book you've ever read

[Paul]

A counter to the "Worst book you've ever read". What's the best book you've ever read?

Off the top of my head I'll pick To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck. Yes, I was assigned both books in school and I thought (and still think) they're both excellent. I re-read them both every couple of years.

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

Neil Gaiman's American Gods as far as fiction. For non-fiction, The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker.

[Natural Born Farmer]

Blood Meridian or The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Also really enjoyed pretty much all of Erik Larson and Jon Krakauer’s bibliographies.

[Deleted]

I’m partial to Frankenstein by Shelley and Cannery Row by Steinbeck.

I like just about anything non-fiction, biographies, histories, etc.

[Deleted]

Don Quixote

[Duke Cameron]

American Psycho

[Deleted]

The Grapes Of Wrath

[IgnahtaSempria]

The Belgariad by David & Leigh Eddings. Yeah, it's a bit formulaic, and you can see some of the plot twists coming a mile off, but it regularly keeps me coming back.

[Citizen Snips Has Left]

Three-way tie

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis

If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

[eDemento2099]

Here are among the best books I've read:

Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin

Tess of the D'urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell

The Governator: From Muscle Beach to His Quest for the White House, the Improbable Rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger, by Ian Halperin

Shut Up and Give Me The Mic, by Dee Snider

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, by Marilyn Manson

[Natural Born Farmer]

Oct 7, 2018 11:51:18 GMT -5 Citizen Snips Has Left said:

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Another personal favorite.

[Natural Born Farmer]

Oct 7, 2018 13:23:05 GMT -5 eDemento2099 said:

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, by Marilyn Manson

Far and away the grossest book I’ve ever read.

[Perd]

Big Apple Takedown

[Deleted]

Historical fiction is my genre of choice and The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephanson (cheating as its a series of 3) is the best of that category.

[Jumpin' Jesse Walsh]

Not sure if it's the best book I've read, but The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy contains some absolute knockout writing that encourages me to become a better writer, including but not limited to:

"This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt."

or

"There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart."

[britishbulldog]

Atlas Shrugged
The Dark Tower
The Stand

[Milkman Norm]

I don't know if it's the best but "A Prayer for Owen Meany" is the book I keep going back to.

[Urethra Franklin]

Some of my absolute favourites:

- A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James - a massive novel spanning decades that looks at the drug trade in Jamaica from the late ‘70s to the New York crack wars of the early ‘90s. It’s an enormous book, but I couldn’t put it down. It’s being turned into an HBO series.

- In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje - the prequel to The English Patient, it’s a bunch of interconnecting stories in Toronto around the creation of the Bloor Viaduct in the late 1910s

- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - after a plague wipes out most of mankind’s population, the story picks up about 10 years later and follows a travelling Shakespearean troupe and looks at characters’ lives from before and after the plague. Without giving anything away, the book is like the yin to The Road’s yang. It’s a surprisingly hopeful distopian novel with an uplifting conclusion.

- The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt - the movie with John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix in the starring roles just came out. It’s about two hitmen brothers during the gold rush sent to take care of a prospector in California who claims to have created a foolproof system to find gold. If you like westerns and really funny black comedies, give this a read.

- Fifth Business by Robertson Davies - if you’re Canadian, you probably read this in high school. It’s the story of Dunstan Ramsey, a man who finds himself to be “the fifth business” (a supporting character) in his own life and his quest for finding purpose in his life.

[cabbageboy]

In the other thread I already noted that To Kill a Mockingbird is the best book I've ever read.

If we're talking about non fiction type stuff I quite liked Showtime by Jeff Pearlman. Just an awesome and in depth look at the 1980s Lakers and I got it at Ollie's for about 3 bucks. It made me interested in some of Pearlman's other books like The Bad Guys Won (1986 Mets) and another on the 90s Cowboys. After reading the others I kinda realized Pearlman is mainly interested in this seedy, drugs, and sex aspect of sports though. I mean that stuff is in Showtime as well but characters like Kareem, Magic, Riley, and West emerge as truly fascinating and 3 dimensional people.

[The Sam]

Either "The Time Machine Did It" or "Double Wonderful" nu John Swartzwelder.