Best Book ever?

[Le Premier Cru]

Re: Re: Best Book ever?

Favourite ever would be Nausea by JP-S.

Is that the same as Nausea by J-PS?
Peculiar book as a fave, IMHO. If we're getting esoteric, I'd plump for Voltaire's Candide. ...otherwise, as previously stated, it'd still have to be Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

 

[aftershavedave]

Re: Re: Re: Best Book ever?

..otherwise, as previously stated, it'd still have to be Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

an excellent book. i've followed his filing system ever since i read that many years ago!

 

[Theatre of Trees]

5 Go to Ninian Park (due soon)

Follow up

5 try to go to White Hart Lane

 

[chez]

Storm Crow. Best fiction I've ever read.

 

[Brightonfan1983]

American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis

Woman in Black - Susan Hill

The Omen - Blatty

The last 2 are the scariest books I've ever read...and I'm over 30

 

[Brighton Breezy]

Re: Re: Best Book ever?

Awaydays? The fictional hoolie book concerning Tranmere fans or am I thinking of something different?

Yeah I loved it.

"Catcher in the Rye with Stanley Knives"

 

[The Laughing Bluebird]

The Omen - Blatty

The Omen was written by a guy called David Seltzer. It is a very good book, but not as good as The Exorcist, which was written by William Peter Blatty. Was that the one you were thinking of?

My favourites (in no particular order) are:

Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Midnight Cowboy - James Leo Herlihy
Jaws - Peter Benchley
Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
The Siege of Trenchers Farm - Gordon Williams
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Jack Finney
Carrie - Stephen King

 

[East Preston Gull]

The Second World War....By winston churchill

 

[fatbadger]

The Second World War....By winston churchill

In that case, make sure you read 'In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War' by David Reynolds, which has just come out. A brilliant insight.

 

[ben andrews' girlfriend]

Stasiland - Anna Funder
The whole Harry Potter series
Lazy ways to make a living - Abigail Bosanko
Much ado about nothing - Shakespeare

 

[Dave the OAP]

Quite liked Pompeii as well, as it happens.

His books are always brilliantly researched.

bloody hell....so did I. this is very scary. are you me in disguise?

 

[Shizuoka Dolphin]

Re: Re: Re: Best Book ever?

Is that the same as Nausea by J-PS?
Peculiar book as a fave, IMHO. If we're getting esoteric, I'd plump for Voltaire's Candide. ...otherwise, as previously stated, it'd still have to be Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

Yep - damn my punctuation! Nothing else I've read comes close to it for me.

 

[Trufflehound]

Brighton Rock, obviously.

 

[lost in london]

Candide was very good, but the winner for me is Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. The only book I've ever read (apart from Fantastic Mr Fox) that I've finished and gone straight back to the beginning to start again.

I'm reading Song of Solomon by Toni Morrisson and have just read Love also by her and they are incredible.

The Da Vinci code would be near the bottom of my list. Farcically simple and really badly written, but the guy knows his market and has made a fortune so good luck to him.

 

[Gwylan]

There's a big difference between best book and favourite book. My favourite book is probably Diary of a Nobody (I re-read it regularly) but I would never describe it as the best book ever - or even close to the best.

It's a bit like football teams: the Albion are obviously my favourite team but never in my wildest imagination would I call them the best in the world.

Obviously 'best' is going to be subjective and culturally-orientated. I suspect that British readers would choose an English language book: Ulysses would be high, Pride and Prejudice would be popular with women , as would Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. There'd be lots of votes for Middlemarch and Vanity Fair too.

But French readers would probably choose Proust (all nine volumes) or Madame Bovary; Russian readers would opt for Crime and Punishment or perhaps some Tolstoy (long-winded old buffer) or Master and Margarita. Americans would plump for Great Gatsby or Moby Dick, Italians would ...etc, etc

A list of the 'greatest' books ever would be interesting. They do it with films, so that Citizen Kane regularly finishes top, but I wonder why there's not a similar international poll for literature.

 

[zefarelly]

http://www.theweeweb.co.uk/ladybird/images/1c.jpg

a quality read, although I felt they lost the feel by 4c

 

[fatbadger]

A list of the 'greatest' books ever would be interesting. They do it with films, so that Citizen Kane regularly finishes top, but I wonder why there's not a similar international poll for literature.

There is a list that is compiled every five years or so for novels (but only novels), voted for by a large committee (i.e. several hundreds) of writers, editors, booksellers and publishers through some international literary organisation - but I can't remember what it's called. Best of all, they just give a 'top 100' - they don't try to put it in any order. All of the obvious ones are always there (Don Quixote, for instance) and one or two not-so-obvious examples. It's a very international list, as you can probably imagine, and it's a wonderful read. Keep an eye out for it (the last on was about 2 years ago, I think).

 

[Meade's Ball]

I loved What A Carve Up by Jonathan Coe. Wonderful paintings of grotesques.
When i was a teenager i loved Herman Hesse. I think i considered myself "spiritual".
I laugh now, but his books are still well-written.

 

[Biscuit]

Catch 22, Joseph Heller.

 

[Gwylan]

There is a list that is compiled every five years or so for novels (but only novels), voted for by a large committee (i.e. several hundreds) of writers, editors, booksellers and publishers through some international literary organisation - but I can't remember what it's called. Best of all, they just give a 'top 100' - they don't try to put it in any order. All of the obvious ones are always there (Don Quixote, for instance) and one or two not-so-obvious examples. It's a very international list, as you can probably imagine, and it's a wonderful read. Keep an eye out for it (the last on was about 2 years ago, I think).

Thanks Fatbadger, I've never seen that but it would be interesting to find. It would certainly be fascinating to see an international list as we undoubtedly see things from an anglophone perspective here. I'll Google for it.