Your favourite book.

X is the best book ever.

This is difficult because I've only read a handful of books that I would consider great. For me, it's a toss up between Brave New World and Naked Lunch. The influence of both of these works is undeniable. Not to mention, they're two of the most distinctly imaginative works I've ever read.

and put it in the trash can where it can have a suitable repose. What a selection for best book: better than Cervantes, Dickens, Fielding, Elliot, et al? I shouldn't have read this post. the worst and best books threads are generally answered by those who don't qualify as legitimate readers. I don't mean to be disrespectful or querelous, but really, William S. Burroughs is the best you've read? How ignominious.

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Originally Posted by dfloyd

and put it in the trash can where it can have a suitable repose. What a selection for best book: better than Cervantes, Dickens, Fielding, Elliot, et al? I shouldn't have read this post. the worst and best books threads are generally answered by those who don't qualify as legitimate readers. I don't mean to be disrespectful or querelous, but really, William S. Burroughs is the best you've read? How ignominious.

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I agree that what you shouldn't confuse your favorite writer with the best one but the writer you enjoy the most should be the most valuable to you. The canon must be respected but you shouldn't have to conform the tastes of your enjoyment to what the scholars say.

My favorite books... ones I've read over and over.

The entire Harry Potter series

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

One Hundred Years of Solitude

These are the ones that are coming to me off the top of my head. I'd say Portrait of the Artist and Harry Potter are the two (if you count all of Harry Potter as one unit) I'd take to a desert island.

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Originally Posted by Hyacinthine

I'd say Portrait of the Artist and Harry Potter are the two (if you count all of Harry Potter as one unit) I'd take to a desert island.

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:smilielol5:

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Originally Posted by Brian Bean

:smilielol5:

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Well, yes, you could say my two favorites seem odd together. They fulfill two very different needs.

The reigning champion (at least until something better comes along) is Until I Find You by John Irving. He really makes your work for it in part I but part II is a stunning work of literature all on its own.

Probably one of my collections of short stories by Guy De Maupassant :)

This was one of those writers who do not simply write, but create an entire universe to fill their mental world. And although im sure 19th century France was not like he describes, much like 19th century Russia is not what Dostoevsky saw, again i am very much amazed by the depth of his vision, and the vividness of the image he presented of it.

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Originally Posted by Kyriakos

Probably one of my collections of short stories by Guy De Maupassant :)

This was one of those writers who do not simply write, but create an entire universe to fill their mental world. And although im sure 19th century France was not like he describes, much like 19th century Russia is not what Dostoevsky saw, again i am very much amazed by the depth of his vision, and the vividness of the image he presented of it.

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I like Maupassant, and he's like a French Chekov [although earlier of course] but if you like Maupassant you've absolutely got to read Balzac. His humor, knowledge and breadth, as well his creation of his own little world is the definition of literary genius.

My favorite book is the Prophet.

This book is a collection of poems, not exactly poems but poetic expressions. By Khalil Gibran this book has transformed more than any other books I have read.

I like war and peace and the Brothers Karamazov were some of the books that moved me and their philosophies something I find highly enlightening.

I like The Road by MC carthey too.

The greatest book, the Mahabharata is unbeatable and no books were or will be written of that grandeur and philosophy and a thousand bibles cannot equal its depth and substance

I like Harry potter serious and i think don't to define "why" .every one knows :)

Razor's Edge - Somerset Maugham
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

Ulysses by James Joyce

It moved me and spoke to me like no other book has. Simple as that.

My favorite for now is Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. But I have only read like... 50 classics or so, I'm not precocious, I'm 21 so I think that by the time I've aged like wine my knowledge of literature will expand. I also love The Inferno by Dante (I think somebody mentioned it already), John Milton's Paradise Lost, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky's The Idiot and Crime and Punishment (The Brother's Karamazov comes pretty close too although I did not care for The Adolescent, which is ironic considering I get my forum name from that book and the fact that I was an adolescent at the time I read it). Anyway choosing a favorite book is hard for most people because the depth and breadth of the classic, poetry, prose, contemporary etc... catalogue is so extensive it is a daunting task to choose just one.