What's the single best book you've ever read?

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I need something to read for school.

― Mike Copeland, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Stay Here With Me - Robert Olmstead
Positively Fifth Street - James McManus

― Velveteen Bingo (Chris V), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:43 (twenty-one years ago)

the critique of pure reason

― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Try Ham On Rye by Charles Bukowski or The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim or How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Samuel Beckett - Trilogy (just started reading it again for the umpteenth time)

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Baudolino by Umberto Eco.

― Markelby (Mark C), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

The Count of Monte Cristo.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

bread and jam for frances

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:52 (twenty-one years ago)

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Mysteries - Knut Hamsun

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:56 (twenty-one years ago)

... haven't read that but thought "Hunger" would have been truly great if only it had been better translated

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:57 (twenty-one years ago)

the master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov

or the short story
benito cereno by melville

― todd swiss (eliti), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 16:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I feel inclined to say Critical Path by Bucky Fuller, so probably that one.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 17:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Although it did have all the tedious math and whatnot.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 17:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Dhalgren

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 17:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Right now I'll say Knut Hamsun's 'Mysteries'... sometimes called the first modern novel, and a tremendous book.

― andy, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 17:18 (twenty-one years ago)

One Thousand Nights And A Night, I think. If you want a novel: Dhalgren, by Samuel Delany (ha, xpost!). A collection: Ficciones or Labyrinths, both by Borges.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 17:18 (twenty-one years ago)

I'll second Confederacy of Dunces and anything by Donald Antrim. And blah blah Nabokov blah blah.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 17:49 (twenty-one years ago)

and 1001 Knock Knock Jokes For Kids. I remember quite enjoying that.

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 17:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Borges' Labyrinths is incredible. In a similar vein, I'd recomend the complete short stories of Kafka. I can't choose the best book I've ever read, though.

― Wooden (Wooden), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 17:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Jel - I didn't even see that you chose that book! what are the chances of that?... you score high in my book.

― andy, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Moby Dick

― sexyDancer, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Cronopios y Famas by Julio Cortazar.

― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Baudolino by Umberto Eco.

Really? It's good? It looked good but for some reason I distrusted it. I'll go pick it up.

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Mike, the answer depends on how old you are. Don't read Borges or Proust when you are 16, and don't read Kerouac when you're 40...

― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Tao Teh Ching - but it might not do a thing for you.

― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Where the Wild Things Are

― A Nairn (moretap), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Don't read Borges or Proust when you are 16...

What did it do to me?

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 18:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Lanark by Alasdair Gray

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 20:05 (twenty-one years ago)

DIANETICS

― phil-two (phil-two), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 20:07 (twenty-one years ago)

The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 20:10 (twenty-one years ago)

A Maggot by John Fowles.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 20:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I still love Winesburg, Ohio.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Life and Times of Tristram Shandy

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Nausea,
The Crying of Lot 49
or
Shit Magnet

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Lanark by Alasdair Gray

Good shout.
Or maybe A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:17 (twenty-one years ago)

NAKED LUNCH

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Perhaps, 'Money' by Martin Amis. It explains men well.

― Ally C (Ally C), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Confederacy of Dunces is grand, though I think the best book I ever read (ie. I was about to cry when I finished reading it because I couldn't go on anymore) was The Beautiful and Damned. Anything by Fitzgerald for that matter. But our taste mayn't be yours. What have you liked in the past?

― mouse (mouse), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Winesburg, Ohio seconded.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:27 (twenty-one years ago)

The Adventures of Augie March

― Lukas (lukas), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Winesburg, Ohio seconded

yay!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:03 (twenty-one years ago)

the sound and the fury

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Winesburg thirded. i thought i was the only one! "upon the half-decayed veranda..."

also Elementary Particles/Atomised

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Unlikely Stories Mostly by Alasdair Gray (note to self: must read lanark!!)

otherwise:

Waterland by Graham Swift

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:14 (twenty-one years ago)

also Elementary Particles/Atomised

yay/yay!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:25 (twenty-one years ago)

i preferred "The extension of the battlefield/ Whatever"

hmmm... Ulysses or Bartleby the Scrivener.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 23:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Fathers & Sons

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 23:10 (twenty-one years ago)

winesburg, ohio fourthed
I love how he descrives the hands of so many people.
I always wanted to be an artist so I could do a series of drawings of all the characters' hands.

Best contemporary nonfiction: City of Quartz

― Magic City (ano ano), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 23:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I also love Winesburg, Ohio. Anyone for Wm. Saroyan's The Human Comedy?

― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 00:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Skipping 80 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

big into douglas coupland at the moment. thort he was a "cult fiction writer" not a "proper literary novelist". can recommend everything he's written....am enraptured.

― minerva, Friday, 24 September 2004 00:23 (twenty-one years ago)

a second for The Crying of Lot 49

also, Snow White by Donald Barthelme, or maybe 40 Stories (actually a collection) by Barthelme. Something by Barthelme, anyway. He's so brilliant it makes me giddy sometimes.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 24 September 2004 02:19 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

I want to read Winesburg, Ohio again.

What other Sherwood Anderson should I read? My wife won the Sherwood Anderson prize for fiction.

― Lion-O (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 21:33 (twenty years ago)

His old house (where he once boarded a young William Faulkner) was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 21:37 (twenty years ago)

― Lion-O (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 21:38 (twenty years ago)

1984.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 21:39 (twenty years ago)

Congrats Mrs. Lion-O!

― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 21:39 (twenty years ago)

(or, if you like, nineteen eighty-four. depends how wanky you want to be.)

how the hell did this become an x-post? goddamn these slow fingers.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 21:40 (twenty years ago)

Congrats Mrs. Lion-O!

This was about 4 years ago, I should add! but still.

― Lion-O (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 21:41 (twenty years ago)

Hmm, no one listed Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

― mikef (mfleming), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 22:22 (twenty years ago)

xpost - that's AWESOME!

I haven't read any other Anderson. I just bought a new edition of Winesburg and started it a couple days ago. My friend's Mom bought him a first edition!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 22:26 (twenty years ago)

I second Gravity's Rainbow. And also what cutty said: Civilwarland in Bad Decline. Saunders is awesome.
My own contribution: any collection of Sherlock Holmes.

― wmlynch (wlynch), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:05 (twenty years ago)

How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman

Back in print!

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:07 (twenty years ago)

I guess I'm in the Karamazov camp. It actually changed, or at least helped focus, my moral view of the world.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:12 (twenty years ago)

Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton

― shookout (shookout), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:14 (twenty years ago)

I'll second 100 Years of Solitude.

― the pr00de abides (pr00de), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:16 (twenty years ago)

Or maybe Love in the Time of Cholera. Either way, Marquez is the man.

― the pr00de abides (pr00de), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:18 (twenty years ago)

Where's the love for Lady Chatterly's Lover? Sure it has four-letter words (!), but it also has brilliant social commentary couched in utterly believable characters. Banned in Britian until 1960, it remains forward-looking to this day.

I also have to give a shout to just about anything written by Ursula LeGuin, particularly Always Coming Home. Recently I've been enjoying Silas Marner by George Eliot...should I go further with her works, or is that about as good as it gets?

― viborgu, Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:23 (twenty years ago)

teh plague, maybe

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:27 (twenty years ago)

Middlemarch is much much better, and one of my favorite books. I completely and totally abhor DH Lawrence, though, so perhaps my taste doesn't align with yours at all!

Otherwise, "Bartleby the Scrivener" seconded. Or The Idiot..

― dar1a g (daria g), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:19 (twenty years ago)

teh plague

Would be in my top 5, fer sure

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:24 (twenty years ago)

Also - a shiny penny to the first person who knows how Anderson died.

― Lion-O (nordicskilla), Thursday, 13 October 2005 19:20 (twenty years ago)

I looked it up, sounds painful.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 13 October 2005 19:40 (twenty years ago)

It took a couple of false starts, but once I managed to get a good part of the way into Infinite Jest, I seriously had to force myself to put it down.

― Deric W. Haircare (Deric W. Haircare), Thursday, 13 October 2005 22:33 (twenty years ago)

I know there's a deal of controversy about Foster Wallace, but I have to say in all fairness he's UTTER FUCKING WANK.

― The Blunnet Boy Wonder (noodle vague), Thursday, 13 October 2005 23:50 (twenty years ago)

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 13 October 2005 23:53 (twenty years ago)

Just one is impossible. Here are five.

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
Tom Clark, Junkets On a Sad Planet
Luis Bunuel, My Last Sigh
Anthony Beevor, Stalingrad
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest

― rasheed wallace (rasheed wallace), Friday, 14 October 2005 00:05 (twenty years ago)

I almost hate to say it, because it sounds like such a worn answer, but I really think it's Lolita.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Friday, 14 October 2005 00:07 (twenty years ago)

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. An amazing book. I'm about to start in on Ulysses though, so it may be supplanted.

― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 14 October 2005 00:25 (twenty years ago)

david foster wallace is totally a WANK, but infinite jest is very very good (not single best good, but still).

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Friday, 14 October 2005 01:29 (twenty years ago)

wind-up bird chronicle by haruki murakami. for those that have read it, no need to explain (unless you didn't like it... i guess). for those who haven't read it, you should.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Friday, 14 October 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

essentially all i can remember from wind-up bird chronicle is the bit down the well. although i agree that it's extremely worth reading.

it does seem, however, that all murakami books are more or less the same, i.e. girlfriend/wife goes missing etc etc...

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Friday, 14 October 2005 01:36 (twenty years ago)

100 years of solitude - marquez
v - pynchon
underworld - delillo
bleak house - dickens
middlemarch - elliot
anna karenina - tolstoy

hmm. i like long novels.

― barbarian cities (jaybob3005), Friday, 14 October 2005 09:34 (twenty years ago)

oh and american pastoral - roth

― barbarian cities (jaybob3005), Friday, 14 October 2005 09:35 (twenty years ago)

Samuel Beckett - Trilogy (just started reading it again for the umpteenth time)
-- Dadaismus (kcoyne3...), September 21st, 2004.

I'm reading it AGAIN! Jesus, I'm predictable.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 14 October 2005 10:25 (twenty years ago)

"The Bridge" - Ian Banks.

I read this when I was in Hospital for an extended stay. As you can imagine, I kind of identified with it, once the 'endgame' unfolded.

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 14 October 2005 10:58 (twenty years ago)

angela's ashes by frank mccourt. it's beautiful.

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 14 October 2005 11:33 (twenty years ago)

I was a bit robust about Foster Wallace last night on account of being pissed.

My answer is either Lord Macaulay's History of England or Pynchon's Mason and Dixon or just maybe Lolita.

― Nöödle Vägue (noodle vague), Friday, 14 October 2005 11:36 (twenty years ago)

fuck single

non fiction
history of sexuality&birth of the clinic
gender trouble-butler
air guitar-hickey

fiction
fanny erica jong
the great gatsby
mezzainne(sp)
billy budd
tales of the genji
as for me and my house--ross (!!!!)

(meta)fiction
labyrinths-borges
1001 nites trans. butler
decamaron
pillowbook (lady murakami, i think)

poetry
lunch poems--o hara
rimbauds collected
celan
laura (jackson) riding
patterson--by wcw
an awful rowing towards god--sexton

god books
the historical jesus-schwitzer
margeary kempe/julian of norwich/theresa d'avalia
the diamond sutra
the poems of lady kasa
the complete poems of basho
the gospel of thomas
the gospel of magdalene

― anthony, Friday, 14 October 2005 11:50 (twenty years ago)

i'm kinda surprised by the lack of love for Lolita. i realize it's been mentioned by paunchy and noodle here, but a lot of list went by before a mention. and it is really good.

― carly (carly), Friday, 14 October 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

and the crying of lot 49, and dhalgren, and phillip jose farmers greystoke novels and the postman always rings 2x and savage beauty:a life of edna st vincent milay and watchmen and from hell and things fall apart and tin drum and flounder and the lives you lead might be your own and the 7th and 9th volumes of thomas mertons journals and oryx and crake and no man knows my history and thomas waughs books o underground gay porn and poptimism and chromophobia and on grammatology and the birthday party and small craft warnings or cat on a hot tin roof and the cahier collections from the mid 60s and i lost it at the movies and the two volumes of agee on film and tulsa and shores uncommon america and everything else

― anthony, Friday, 14 October 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

Really the Blues, by Mezz Mezzrow, is the best book.

― autovac (autovac), Friday, 14 October 2005 13:42 (twenty years ago)

six months pass...

Elaza MOrante - The Histoty.

― emekars (emekars), Saturday, 13 May 2006 21:31 (twenty years ago)

no one said Alice in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass... I guess it's a bit less useful mentioning books like that which are so grown out into culture that even if you haven't read them chances are y're familiar with some aspects...

Conversations with Children by RD Laing is the book I make the most effort to hold onto my copy of and that I reread the most.

Books I've enjoyed solidly in a BESTy BEST kind of way are:

As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
Trout fishing in america/ A Confederate General from Big Sur/ So the Wind Won't Blow it all away by Richard Brautigan
The Woman Warrior and the Fifth Book of Peace by Maxine Hong Kingston
Amnesia Moon & Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
the Corrections by J Franzen
can't decide which Dashiell Hammett w/out rereading... my fav Burroughs is prob Place of Dead Roads.
S.E. Hinton

Much more importantly, my favourite yoga book is Essential Yoga by Olivia H. Miller!

― spectra (spectra), Sunday, 14 May 2006 06:44 (twenty years ago)

Graham Robb's Rimbaud bio was one of the most impressive and enjoyable things I've read

― spectra (spectra), Sunday, 14 May 2006 06:45 (twenty years ago)

also yeah George Eliot is great please go beyond Silas Marner (great book).
No love for the Huck Finn/ Tom Sawyer?
Walden?

― spectra (spectra), Sunday, 14 May 2006 06:48 (twenty years ago)

Single best-- The Complete Posthumous Poems of Cesar Vallejo

Fiction? Probably Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry.

― ramon fernandez (ramon fernandez), Sunday, 14 May 2006 06:50 (twenty years ago)

The End of the Road, by John Barth.
or
A Floating Opera, by John Barth.

Not sure which I like better, though they're thematically similar. TEOTR does slide right into a favorite genre of mine (i.e. snide fiction about a young(ish), male professional in academia; see White Noise & Lucky Jim), so maybe that should be the tiebreaker. FWIW, TEOTR was allegedly the first novel described as 'postmodern'.

― Pork Cheops (willpie), Sunday, 14 May 2006 12:51 (twenty years ago)

Replay, Ken Grimwood

― Hard like armour (Hard like armour), Sunday, 14 May 2006 21:44 (twenty years ago)

i think i should read the castle, again

― charltonlido (gareth), Sunday, 14 May 2006 22:10 (twenty years ago)

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