What's the best book you've ever read

surf-mat the magician isnt intellectual lol i could have put 'the unbearable lightness of being' by milan kundera which probably is probably my second favourite book 😉

This one.
http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/sex/all/05720/facts.the_big_butt_book.htm

It's art, but nsfw.

surf-mat, I'm thinking 'best' is not the same as 'most enjoyable' for a lot of people.
Am I the only person who's got a collection of battered old shitkickers and easy reading like old Alistair Maclean, Dick Francis, Wilbur Smith etc etc that they can just pick up off the shelf and demolish in an evening or two, even if I've read them plenty of times before.
Much rather do that, than watch re-runs on the box. Great ofr the train or plane as well

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence by Robert M Pirsig. I love it.

vinnyeh – I am with you on that – I have a large collection of SF novels I read like that as well as the authors you name.

best book – too hard to define.

Lord of the rings, "Excession" Iain M Banks, "Dune" frank Herbert, "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" "Catcher in the Rye" Call of the wild, road to wigan peir,

Like the way everyone is trying to put the most intellectual book they can thing of!

Er, people have said James Ellroy, Clive Barker & Iain Banks. So they're not really, are they.

I couldn't possibly answer the question. It's like music, how do you decide what's best?

Catch-22 made me laugh out loud, a lot, in public. Brilliant

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Based on his life in India after escaping a prison in Australia. Brilliantly written book and I will definitely be reading it again. As well as eagerly awaiting the sequel. (Which will no doubt not be as good)

Most enjoyable – the Willard Price adventure books with Hal and the other one (can't remember his name). Read all of them when I was a kid and can't think of one that I didn't enjoy.

Catch-22 made me laugh out loud, a lot, in public. Brilliant

It amazes me that, though I hated English at school, four of the books we had to read (Lord of the Flies, Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird) are still amongst my favourites.

Most enjoyable – the Willard Price adventure books with Hal and the other one (can't remember his name). Read all of them when I was a kid and can't think of one that I didn't enjoy.

Roger was the younger one. God, I loved those as a kid. Learnt a fair bit of exotic animal trivia from those.

Okay not "everyone" then just a few people.

Really love books that are a surprise "hit" – had a few that I've left on the shelf for ages then finally read and loved them. Also works the other way around.

Yep Shantaram is very good but it's one hell of an ego trip for the writer.

Most funny books are Jack Reacher novels – the author is clearly a bit gay and has this central figures and some huge, invincible lady killer who is harder than anyone despite only being ex Military Police. He goes on about the guys physical attributes a wee but too much…

Got bored of those type of novels years ago – they are all the same.

In terms of impact I would have to say Anne Frank's Diary, which I read when I was about 10, changed my world view quite considerably.

For pure reading pleasure Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Too flowery for some !! And honorable mention for The Bone People.

Non-put-downable – the Tales of the City Books by Armistead Maupin.

Catch-22 made me laugh out loud, a lot, in public. Brilliant

Catch 22 has it all.

There's obviously a lot of 'laugh out loud' but some of it is really quite desolate.

i think mine has to be foucault's pendulum by umberto eco. followed closely by wind in my wheels by josie dew.

Big fan of Kerouac, esp The Dharma Bums

You either love it or hate it, and I fully understand why people don't like him. Why ? Just do.

The one that made the biggest impression at the time was 'A Clockwork Orange' by Harpurhey's finest son, Anthony Burgess.
I can understand why Kubrick pulled the film though.

Favourite actual piece of writing is 'The Sun also rises' by Hemmingway.
Sparse, beautiful writing that affected me deeply at the time.

The funniest and most life affirming is probably Three Men In A Boat' by Jerome K Jerome. Showed me that although time passes on, attitudes and humour stay the same. The TV thing with weirdy, beardy and the other one was a bit of a let down though.
That's closely followed by the collected P G Wodehouse golf stories – give it a go, even if you hate the bloody game – his funniest stuff IMO.

Best biography is probably the Spike Milligan War diaries, which I still can't read in public without embarassing myself.
Oh, and 'White Line Fever', Lemmy's autobiography is hilarious. Not, in any way, literature, but bloody funny all the same.

My 'comfort book' is 'The Complete Sherlock Holmes', which I can return to anytime and still find superb.

Scariest by a mile are the M R James ghost stories – best read on your own, at night, under canvas. 😯

And a special mention for the first edition of 'Richard's Bicycle Book', for obvious reasons 😀
By Richard Ballantine, BTW. The later editions are a bit of a let down – less philosophy, more 'what bike for me?'.

Sweet. I have a few more to add to my Amazon wishlist now. Thanks peeps.
Also have just remembered Martin Amis' Money. Cracking read. I think I enjoyed Zen and the …. but I'm not sure. Alex Shulgin's Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved is interesting too, from a chemist and one-time space cadet's perspective.

There are some "excellent" books that I really didn't get though. Does that make me an uncultured philistine? e.g. Paul Auster's New York Trilogy? Meh.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon,mad as a fish.
Ian

Catch-22 made me laugh out loud, a lot, in public. Brilliant

I have been struggling with Catch 22 for several months. I've never laughed out loud so much at a book that at the same time utterly frustrates me.

I've been reading a chapter or two, followed by a trashy fantasy novel for some light relief (go-to authors being Robin Hobb & David Gemmell), and then comimg back to it etc. etc.

I think the best book i've ever read is Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I love the idea that someone can reinvent themself completely multiple times. I want to mention War and Peace and East of Eden as well because they are epic in the proper sense of the word. When i finished War and Peace i felt like a relative had gone missing.

Danny Champion of the World, as a kid it got me hooked and I must read it every couple of years, very well written

Stalingrad was a chilling book

I really enjoyed De Berniers books more so than GG Marquez who I also liked, both of them are a bit flowery but still good..

The most moving book I've ever read is If this is a man by Primo Levi, mostly because of his attitude to what he went through.

For popcorn books I like Carl Hiaasen always makes me laugh and I generally get through them at one sitting as they have brilliant pace.

There are so many great writers, overall if I had to choose one it would be John Steinbeck everything he wrote is worth reading, several times.

Scariest by a mile are the M R James ghost stories – best read on your own, at night, under canvas

Yeah, they're great stuff!

All the Pretty Horses blew me away at the time, though I wonder how much your appreciation of books is closely tied to time and place. More recently The Road actually gave me a disturbed night's sleep, not sure if that's the mark of a good book though!

Oh, and Water Music by T.C. Boyle is fantastic, read loads of his since but none of them have quite measured up.

Don't have a best book.

Nobody has mentioned On The Road, Cuckoos Nest, F&L in Las Vegas, all the sort thing I tend to like; intelligent but lots of action and sex and drugs

Favourite biography – Shakey, Neil Young's Biography, by Jimmy McDonough. Better than a lot of fiction, what a story.

possibly alistair reynolds revelation space
dan simmonds illium
george rr martins somg of ice and fire series is good too

i hang out in the scifi/fantasy section

Razzle.
It made my willy big

I'm nearly at the end of 'Birds without wings' – what an epic read, loving it.
I have a couple of favourites, don't think I could really pick one…

One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest.
A Prayer for Owen Meany
This Side of Brightness

All great books IMO

george rr martins somg of ice and fire series is good too

I wish he'd bloody hurry up and finish the next one.

alistair reynolds revelation space

is excellent.

However the best and the set I return to, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant First and Second by Stephen Donaldson.
Because at my lowest ebb these books literally gave me the strength to carry on, to feel that life is important and worth holding onto, no pressure then 😆

Vinneh, me too on the wilbur smiths etc, am reading the one with the tug boats in it at the mo 🙂

Just finished 7 pillars of wisdom and needed something lighter.

Count of Monte Cristo is good too … but how can you define best book? Some are amazing, some moving, some inciteful, some show you that you should be very glad you weren't in The Somme, on a D-Day Beach or in Berlin in 1945 … I also love reading biographies; what some people achieve is amazing & travel type books – although it always gives me wanderlust

I'll read almost anything but the one that I get most enjoyment from reading & re-reading, maybe Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy.

Agree with 'Unbearable Lightness of Being', brilliant! A few more: Italo Svevo 'Confessions of Zeno', Flann O'Brien 'At Swim Two Birds'.

Swiss Family Robinson (when I was ten) it was a great adventure for kids!

for impact, 'flowers in the attic' when i was younger

An interesting insight to how an Aspergers child's mind works…

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Down and out in Paris and London by George Orwell.

Ahh, you beat me to it. I just reread Road to Wigan Pier which is also very good but the second half is a little bit tedious once the novelty wears off. There are a couple of sections bits about e.g. why poor people consume tea and white bread and about unemployment which could be relevant practically unchanged as retorts to some of the nonsense that gets posted up here. Sadly, in some respects not a lot has changed.

Martin Amis – Money – great book. Didn't they/aren't they televising it with the guy out of Spaced?

**** Milan Kundera. Josef Skvorecky if you absolutely have to – Miss Silver's past is a good one. Solzhenitsyn, Inner Circle.

+2 for American Tabloid, liked cold 6000 as well.
I like Ian Rankin as well, met him once in Gateshead, there's a photo of the back of my head on his website!
Read a couple of Mo Hayder recently, quite enjoyed her style and stories.
Anybody tried Christopher Brookmyre?? worth a read, mans a nutter and writes a good tale.

When I was a kid my grandad used to get books from readers digest, so I never really read kids books always ended up reading whatever he was reading. Always made sure I had books around the house when my daughter was younger and she would pick up the bug of reading.

At a push thinking back the book that has had my heart racing and thinking 'oh my god' was a series of books by Stephen DOnaldson "The Gap Series". Certainly not your usual Buck Rogers wins the day type SF.

Despite it being a bit obvious, the Harry Potter books are brilliant.

Another great book is The Time Travellers Wife. Bit depressing though.

Also Noughts & Crosses, and the rest of the trilogy.

And the Forever War.

Don't think I could pick between them.