What's your all time favorite book?

[Sir Thaikard]

JPod by Douglas Coupland is fantastic. It might be a personal thing but I generally don't like Canadian writers so this was a nice change of pace.

 

[Gnarl]

well, i liked Shielah of Earth, but i think, maybe Teesha of the ninth realm. Don't look for any deep meaning though, it was just a fun fantasy a person does not have to work at enjoying.

 

[Kuroserama]

Darren Shan's Lord Loss

Ugh I have yet to read The Demonata series but I really loved Cirque du Freak. That series will stick with me forever.

 

[Zehlua]

My Fathers Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

30 Covert Manipulation Tactics by Adelyn Birch

 

[Raever]

Moribito by Nahoko Uehashi.
I can read that ten times over before getting bored.

 

[Eli_the_Wolf23]

Oof that's a difficult one to decide.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Because it was the best one to read and it is the best one in the series.

 

[RyuokoWolf]

I absolutely adore Fallen Kingdoms and the series by Morgan Rhodes

 

[pascalthepommie]

Just over a year ago, my roommate recommended me the book House of Leaves. He told me to not scan the book at all, or flip through the pages, just start reading on page one. I won't go into spoiler territory here, but oh boy this book was the wildest fictional rides I have ever took on in my life. The subtle dread and despair on each page was captivating, and got me dreaming of the house on Ash Tree Lane. I felt like another character in the story by the end of the read, and have never gotten that feeling before. Years down the road, I'll still be talking to my friends about this lonely house in the southeastern Virginia countryside, waiting to be entered again.

House of Leaves is such an amazing book. It's definitely one of my tops reads. I've always described it more as an experience than an actual book haha.
I would recommend reading The Call by Peadar 0 Guilin
It's a young adult novel but it has some intense scenes and it's one of the few horror based young adult novels that actually out performs works I've read for older audiences. I haven't read the second book yet but the first was killer.

 

[Toby_Morpheus]

I got to read the first few parts of Transmetropolitan on my free kindle subscription, a graphic novel series about a writer who returns to the city from hermitage to repay an old debt and gets into crazy adventures reporting on social issues and political corruption.
It's good stuff and I wanna get the whole set.

 

[Attaman]

I really need to dig up (or, considering where it's been stored the last few years, probably replace and reacquire) my copy of Hyperion by Dan Simmons at some point. There's a great deal of books I'm fond of (Fiction and Non-Fiction, modern and generations / centuries old), but the first Hyperion book is just... It ages well. Particularly with the hindsight / context of having read Fall of Hyperion afterwards.

 

[TemetNosce88]

House of Leaves, as mentioned above, is a great book. I've only read it the one time, so I'm not sure it's a favorite per se.

That would be a tie between two John Steinbeck novels for me, East of Eden and Cannery Row. East of Eden is fantastic for its sweeping scope across generations and the fantastic way it tackles its themes of good and evil and original sin. Cannery Row is fantastic for almost the opposite reasons, it's a close-in look of a small community where nothing dramatic happens but it's such a rich and beautiful world.

 

[Mr-Rose-Lizard]

"Man's Best Friend: the National Geographic Book of Dogs"

 

[Tacoshark]

Tricky, tricky. Right now I would say favorite fiction is Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Splendid story and extraordinarily well written

 

[Punk_M0nitor]

Whitechapel Gods by S.M. Peters. I need to find somewhere to find a copy of it. I picked it up at a library and immediately fell in love with it. Steampunk and dystopia novels have a special place in my heart

The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi is a very close second and I really need to buy a copy of Tool (the side novel focusing on one of my favorite characters)

 

[sleepy kitty]

My favorite books are:
"Earnest" by Kristin von Kreisler
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

 

[grrfret]

An absolute favourite of mine is "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" by Claire North.

 

[FunniValentine]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance. A wonderful read on the metaphysics of quality.

 

[pthhpth]

poison by chris wooding. i know it's cliche to say this, but it's kind of an obscure gem. i got it at a scholastic book fair when i was in sixth grade, i was drawn in by the dark edgy cover. but the story is really good, kinda gives me tim burton movie vibes. would recommend if you like dark fantasy fairy tale stuff for young teens lol

 

[reptile logic]

I have read hundreds of books. Try as I might, I cannot come up with a favorite book or even a favorite author. At this point in my life, I can't even narrow it down to a short list.

 

[Hogo]

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

The world that this author creates in this book is totally insane, but his writing completely sucks you in. I didn't want it to end.

I'm flabbergasted that I ran into a favorite of mine before I posted it because I didn't expect Murakami nevertheless one of his overlooked novels. The end of the world portion specifically is up in my top 5.

I feel like I have to answer this threads question by favorite for each type of book.

Favorite Poem Book: The Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur

Favorite Short Story Collection: Collected Fictions by Jorges Borges

Favorite Play: King Lear by Shakespeare

Favorite Non-fiction Book: The Mind's I - multiple authors

Favorite Children's Book: The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moors

Favorite Novel is a 5-way tie:

-Blindness by Jose Saramago
-Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
-Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
-The Last Report at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
-The Fixed Stars: Thirty-seven Emblems for the Perilous Season by Brian
Conn

Captain Bluebear is maybe my favorite of all of these but it feels kinda embarrassing since it's a children's book.

 

[Miles Marsalis]

This is a hard call, but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig is my tentative favorite. My granddad gave it to me when I got accepted to high school and it definitely left a lasting impression on me. It's one of those are books that really prepares you for personal and professional life with the gems it drops and exemplifies the philosophical novel genre. I think it's especially relevant during this pandemic.

 

[Punji]

I'm very bad at picking favourites and even worse with names, so here are my probable two top novels.

The first is a historical fiction following a disgraced German war hero tasked with abducting or assassinating Churchill. It opens and ends with a journalist investigating an old English church, and most of the characters on all sides of all the conflicts die.

It's an absolutely fantastic and exciting story. The author does a quite good job not vilifying anyone and the characters are never depicted as evil or morally wrong. Unfortunately this does come at the cost of a very cliche piece near he beginning but it's not really a significant aspect of the story. If ever I knew the name I'd buy a copy and read it again.

Fallen Angles is another sort of historical fiction following a young and intelligent black man with a bad knee being drafted into the Vietnam war, trying to survive and get his medical profile cleared so he can be brought back home alive. The story follows him through the various parts of his life at this time, ranging from meeting his fellow soldiers at the airport to how they all would put on a play of the only film they had to watch on their down time, having seen it so many times they could all play the roles and recite the lines. He sees combat, men are killed, he suffers regrets, injuries, sends letters to his mother and little brother. It's an absolutely fantastic story as well that depicts the life of an young innocent man wrongfully sent to war and what his life had become. Brilliant!

A bonus third would probably be The Warded Man, a first in a series of three novels. It follows a boy called Arlen through his childhood and eventual adulthood in a medieval-esk world where practically-immortal elemental demons rise from the earth every night, nigh untouchable with often animal-like intelligence. The only safety and refuge for the people are wards, which magically reflect and block the demons as long as they're clear and maintained, and the dawn's light which burns every demon to death if they are caught in it.

Arlen loses his mother very early on because of the demons, and out of disgust for the people's cowardice and hatred of them he runs away from home and eventually seeks out an Islamic nation known for fighting the demons out of honour.

I didn't love the second two books but they were decent. In terms of enjoyability I'd place this one up there as well.

 

[Xitheon]

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.

The suspense and sense of foreboding is wicked genius. I can't say too much without ruining the plot, but it will keep you hooked and unable to put it down.

I wish I could erase it from my memory so I could read it again without knowing how events transpire. It's amazing and the payoff is spectacular.

 

[Yakamaru]

Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

 

[Yastreb]

I have read hundreds of books. Try as I might, I cannot come up with a favorite book or even a favorite author. At this point in my life, I can't even narrow it down to a short list.

Same thing here. I could maybe list my top 10 or 20 but it would be impossible to put them in any order or find a single favourite. Here are some examples anyway. You can see I like sci-fi.

"The War of the Worlds" and "The First Men in the Moon" by H. G. Wells
"Warlord of the Air" by Michael Moorcock
"Rendezvous with Rama" and "The Fountains of Paradise" by Arthur C. Clarke
"After the Flood" by P. C. Jersild
"Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne
"His Dark Materials" (a trilogy) by Philip Pullman