What's your favorite book of all times?

Come on, you gotta have a favorite... Is it a mystery? A memoir? What???
Mine is "Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. This book had me at the very first page: the descriptions are beautiful and the prose is unlike any other. Even though I don't really like other books by this same author, "Shadow" really gets me every time I read it. And besides, it reminds me of my dad a lot, who I miss every single day of my life...
So, come on: tell me which is your favorite!

It would probably be Nancy E. Turner's These is My Words. It's about a woman named Sarah when she is 17, who is traveling with her family to the Arizona territories to homestead. She is basically uneducated (knows how to read, but has terrible spelling and no access to books), but she betters herself and makes a life for her family despite the hardships of desert life and the ongoing Indian wars.

ETA: the story is based on the life of the author's great-great-grandmother, I think.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It was the first book I took out when I was allowed to choose from the "Young Adult" section when I was thirteen. I've reread it every other year or so since then--over 65 years ago.

I am also a Bronte fan: mine is Wuthering Heights by Miss Emily.

Definitely agree with you on the Wuthering Heights. I'll check out the E. Turner book, since I live in Arizona it caught my eye.

Favorite of all time? How about past and present. "Gone With the Wind", "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," and "Grapes of Wrath" are from my earlier years. Recently, I've been pressuring everyone I meet to read :The Road". Oh, and I'm also a nutty Harry Potter fan, and hope that the series becomes my all time favorite books. I wont' know that until July 21...21.

I also read Harry Potter and am also waiting on that last one: hey you gotta read everything, right? I have The Road, but haven't read it yet: is it really that good?

AleAeta, "The Road" is overwhelmingly bleak, yet even at its darkest, it overflows with tenderness and hope. I see it as more than a story of survival, to me it says that love conquors all. Others may disagree; read it and decide for yourself.

Until last month, my ultimate, #1, absolutely-no-contest book was The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice... but then I read Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay and that all flew out the window.

One of my favourite (if not my favourite) is Possession by A.S.Byatt.

I'll read The Road and let you know. What is Tigana about? And Possession?

Oh, that's easy. The Master and Margarita.

Right now its a tie between A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Love both of them so much.

Oh it's so difficult to pick just one. The Code of the Woosters, perhaps. Or Summer Lightning. No, it would have to be Uncle Fred in the Springtime, I think...

>12 gregtmills::gregtmills: I usually stick at a book but couldn't fathom The Master and Margarita. Yes, I know it's certainly not hyper-realist and didn't expect that. Can you suggest a 'way in' for me?

#15: hazelk

Comprehension of The Master and Margarita definately benefits from doing a little bit of research into that particular era of Soviet history. At the time, there was a minor economic thaw happening, and Lenin encouraged entrepeneurs and foreign investment. In the Moscow scenes, Bulgakov was poking fun at proto-yuppies and bohemians that populated the city at the time.

The theme of the book as a whole, I think, is that the cycle and scope of history is much larger and more mysterious that the "scientific" Soviet conception of it. The Master understood that, and that is what the book-within-the-book (The sequences with Pontius Pilate) is about. Satan and his buddies represent history-as-it-is as opposed to the parochial and arrogant attitudes of the little busybodies that populate Moscow.

That's my own flawless and correct view anyway.

And here the reading that I'd always heard espoused was that Satan was Stalin. It's been at least ten years since I've looked at the book, though. I've always much preferred Dostoevsky's approach to the devil in The Brothers Karamazov, though.

Plato's REPUBLIC is my favorite. I have read it every two years for the past two decades, and I get something new from it every time.

My favorite book of all time is Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I love the story, the characters, the wit -- all of it! It made me laugh out loud in several parts, and it's just such a happy book. I love it to bits! =D

My favorite is Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. It's a long novel about a boy who is raised as a torturer in a far future world, but he learns compassion and is exiled from the guild. In the course of his travels he encounters a variety of fantastic creatures, wonderfully interesting people, and mysterious relics of Urth's glorious past. He is blessed with a perfect memory, but he lies to us. He rises in the world and takes on aspects of Apollo and Christ. The world Wolfe creates is rich in images and hidden history; his characters are multi-faceted and finely drawn; and his style is fabulous. I believe this is the finest work of speculative fiction ever written. It requires the reader to participate in its unfolding, and it rewards re-reading as much as any book I've ever read, which I consider to be one of the hallmarks of a great work.

Now, if you are talking 'all time favorite book' I would have to go way far back!! Scuttling around in my memory, a few titles hit me hard. It is impossible to pick just one: Gone With the Wind, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and To Kill a Mockingbird. More recently I have enjoyed The History of Love, The Thirteenth Tale, Broken for Me, As the Crow Flies, Cold Mountain and Shadow of the Wind. I guess I could go on, but doesn't this thread ask for the FAVORITE book? How to name just one???? By the way, am I the only one who hasn't read The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns?

Oops. I forgot two more by Steinbeck. East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath.

#21 rubberstamper--A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner are both wonderful reads--I highly recommend them both. And no there are lots of folks who haven't read either one. Kite Runner is coming out in either Nov. or Dec. this year as a major motion picture--I will be interested to see how it compares w/ the book. I hope you get to read these 2 books soon.

My fav is the secrets of droon.It`s a kids book but, it`s really good.

Judging purely by the number of times I come back to re-read, my favorite two books of all time would have to be The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, and Zodiac by Neal Stephenson. Two very different, but absolutely brilliant and unforgettable books. Highly recommended.

#21 rubberstamper -- I have not read Kite Runner or Thousand Splendid Suns either. I would love to read them some day, since I keep hearing so much about them, but my TBR pile is already way too big. ;)

#10 - aluvalibri - I'll second you on Possession. Definitely my favorite. Although I am just finishing up The Road, and it is going to be way up on my list as well.

Pickwick Papers. It's hilarious, heartwarming, full of memorable characters and even manages to indict English law and debtors' prisons into the bargain. It's Dickens' best work, imo. I read it every year, just to restore my (dwindling) faith in humanity.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Rubberstamper: we have similar taste in books: my favorite is shadow of the wind (LOOOOVE it) and I also really liked the 13th tale. By the way: i heven't read the kite runnner and thousand splendid suns... Guess I have to get to it :)

My fovourite books of all time are Winds of War and War and Remembrance written by Herman Wouk. I remember finishing the first book in 1-night and purchasing the second one and finishing it the next day.

Tough question! When I was younger, it was The Princess Bride hands down. I was stunned by The Kite Runner recently. Best book I have ever read though might be A Fine Balance, which was on the Oprah Book Club (but try not to hold that against it).

It's hard to determine what is my favorite book of all times. I still think about Life: a user's manual by Georges Perecwhich I read twenty yeaars ago, but I've never reread it. So, I guess I will have to nominate another Oulipo book, Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau. This book takes two vignettes on a bus in Paris and rewrites them a 100 times in very different and always intriguing and engaging styles. It really shows the malleability of language.

Good In Bed by Jennifer Weiner - the first book to make me cry, absolutely loved it.