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The best book you ever read?

I am enjoying this thread and everyone's input.

On the opposite tack, Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus, which I finished last month, was total crap. I've got The Heart of Darkness also on my list of books to read this year. I'll see if Conrad can redeem himself.

Also, anything by James Fenimore Cooper is garbage. I had to read all five of The Leatherstocking Tales (The Last of the Mohicans is the best known of the five) in the 11th Grade. I contemplated taking my own life by the second book. I felt vindicated shortly thereafter when I read an essay by Mark Twain (one of my favorite authors) in which he takes Cooper to task as being one of the worst authors of all time.

I have never enjoyed anything by Herman Melville, either.
 
Tale of Two Cities, though I admit that's partially because I have a real interest in that time and location.

Infinite Jest seems almost cliche to say at this point, but it really is an incredible piece of writing.

GD it, Crime and Punishment, anything by Camus, and mostly anything by Kafka deserve mentions too.
 
Absalom, Absalom! is probably the most challenging yet most rewarding book I've read (which could qualify it as best), although I would rate the Benjy chapter of The Sound and the Fury as the best single thing I've ever read in the English language.

Flowers for Algernon is my sentimental favorite book of all time, and I'm not just saying that because Daniel Keyes died. I've also included Less Than Zero, Crime and Punishment, Catch-22 and Sister Carrie among my favorites at one time or another.
 
Gotta agree with The Brothers Karamazov. Also on my list for sheer page-turn-ability is The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Also love The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
 
To Kill a Mockingbird and The Count of Monte Cristo, although I haven't read either in years and need to re-visit them.
 
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Human Stain by Phillip Roth
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

all come to mind. I wish I had the time to read more fiction.
 
A Sense of the World: How a blind man became history's greatest traveler

“On the summit of the precipice, and in the heart of the green woods… there was an intelligence in the winds of the hills, and in the solemn stillness of the buried foliage, that could not be mistaken. It entered into my heart, and I could have wept, not that I did not see, but that I could not portray all that I felt.”
 
Slaughterhouse 5 is absolute garbage. I'll go on a 5 page rant on how a bunch of drug addled baby boomers decided that was a great work and shoved it down the throats of the rest of us if you want, but I'm assuming nobody wants to read that anymore than I want to read that horrible piece of shit again.

Fan of The World According to Garp, White Noise, The Yiddish Policeman's Union and Gravity's Rainbow if we're talking mostly post-war 20th century American novels and A Good Man is Hard to Find for collections of short stories. I don't love everything by either Chabon or Pynchon, but they are probably the best American authors of the second half of the 20th century.
 
vadimivich said:
Slaughterhouse 5 is absolute garbage. I'll go on a 5 page rant on how a bunch of drug addled baby boomers decided that was a great work and shoved it down the throats of the rest of us if you want, but I'm assuming nobody wants to read that anymore than I want to read that horrible piece of shit again.

Fan of The World According to Garp, White Noise, The Yiddish Policeman's Union and Gravity's Rainbow if we're talking mostly post-war 20th century American novels and A Good Man is Hard to Find for collections of short stories. I don't love everything by either Chabon or Pynchon, but they are probably the best American authors of the second half of the 20th century.
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White Noise is excellent. Only thing by DeLillo I've managed to read so far.

McCarthy and Roth are both better than Chabon and Pynchon.
 
100 Years of Solitude
Catch 22
All the King's Men
The Power of One
The House of the Spirits
Long Walk to Freedom
 
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