Your *ONE* favourite Book of all Time?

[echoSE7EN]

Do short story collections count? If so,

Bagumbo Snuff Box

Vonnegut

Because I think no other American author so perfectly nails the short story almost every single time pen met paper. I like his novels, but nowhere as much as his shorter writings. They're like 20 - 30 minute long snapshots from behind the set of Leave it to Beaver. They're "golly-gee" and "sunshine" and "things are looking up", and then they simply aren't. You're woken up. The walls are pushed out of the way, and you see the bestboy, or the grip sitting on a milk crate waiting for the actors to leave the set. It's dark humor, but you never laugh. You smirk. And then you set off thinking about why you are smirking.

If short story collections don't count...

Mother Night. Also by Vonnegut.

[Tituscrow]

Originally Posted by bassybill

That is definitely one of his best - very clear, very accessible.

Have you read "The Ancestor's Tale"? That is perhaps his magnum opus.

That's one of the few still on my to-do list. 'The Selfish Gene', 'The Blind Watchmaker' and 'The Greatest Show On Earth' are right up there IMO, but there is something simply unputdownable about my choice.

[Johnny StingRay]

"A River Runs Through It"
Norman Maclean
It's about my family.

[Phalex]

Stephen King
The Stand

I was going to go with Tolkien, but I think I've read the Stand over 20 times. I can just pick it up and start from a random location I know it so well.

[NightTripper]

Like several of you, I have to go with Tolkien, though it's a hard choice.

The Hobbit. Fantasy/adventure. I call it my favorite book because it is the book that really got me into reading. I read it in middle school, and I'm in college now and I have read it several times. Aside from all the vivid imagery and fantasy content, I think what I love the most about this book is that the underlying theme seems to be that even the most ordinary person can have great potential within them.

Honorable mentions: the Harry Potter series, G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (blew my mind, the man was a genius), Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. All of these impacted my way of thinking significantly, even Dawkins whose views I don't share.

[jmattbassplaya]

Lot's of Vonnegut popping up, which I really like. I thought he was an amazing writer. That said, my favorite work is probably Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I think he was amazingly ahead of his time, and I think most of his predictions have turned out to be true.

[bigswifty1]

Anything by Patrick O'brian. And I must be right cause Keith Richard agrees with me

[Sav'nBass]

Originally Posted by HaMMerHeD

This is an impossible task.

You mean aside from the Bible right..? Yeah an impossible task.. I'd have to split that up into genres.. Bios.. fiction.. mystery.. sci fi.. politics history.... classics..

[jugglingfreak]

"Moby Dick"
Herman Melville
Fiction

Why: I'll try to be brief and not bore every one to tears (I can talk about it for hours on end. Just ask my poor, long suffering wife..)

The way concepts of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God are all examined.

Remember, it was first published in 1850, slavery was still legal. The ship had a multi-cultural and multi-racial crew and it made little difference. Everyone earned respect based on their ability to do their job, not their ethnicity. Very forward thinking for the time.

Also, the characters discussing the psychology of actions such as Starbuck's arguments with Ahab about the ridiculousness of trying to seek revenge on a "mindless creature"

The symbolism all through the book.

And also, on top of all that, it's a cool adventure story. That's what first drew me to it, reading a simplified version when I was about 10 or 11. (Not to mention the intestinal fortitude it took to go whaling in that fashion. Sail out to the ocean, get into the long boats and row out toward the whales and try and take them out with hand thrown harpoons. If you manage not to die, strap the thing to the boat and row it back to the ship. Balls of steel..)

I have read it about 6 times, not counting the above version. I find something new every time I read it. Personally, the greatest piece of American Literature ever written, in my opinion.

[HaMMerHeD]

Originally Posted by Sav'nBass

You mean aside from the Bible right..? Yeah an impossible task.. I'd have to split that up into genres.. Bios.. fiction.. mystery.. sci fi.. politics history.... classics..

Yeah, no. The Bible...doesn't even rank on my personal list.

[MatticusMania]

Originally Posted by jmattbassplaya

Lot's of Vonnegut popping up, which I really like. I thought he was an amazing writer. That said, my favorite work is probably Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I think he was amazingly ahead of his time, and I think most of his predictions have turned out to be true.

Brave New World is awesome!

[fjadams]

Don't really have time for a lot of reading now, but listen to audiobooks at every opportunity.

Like Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, Terry Brooks, Tolkien, writers and stories of that sort.

Favorite book right now is Sanderson's Way of Kings, Book 1 of the Stormlight Series.
After that the Wheel of Time series by Jordan and Jordan/Sanderson.

[HaMMerHeD]

Before a couple of years ago, I would have said Ender's Game was my favorite book out of all of them. It remains the only one I feel like I have to read every couple of years. I go out and get a copy, read it, and loan it out to someone else. They never bring it back, so the next time I feel like I need to read it, I have to go buy another.

With the later books in the series, though, it's sometimes a bit hard to tell whether I'm reading about Ender Wiggin or Alvin Maker.

[Tegzsa]

At the moment:

Vanity Fair

W.M. Thackeray

Satire

[Marial]

Originally Posted by MatticusMania

Brave New World is awesome!

And it wasn't the only excellent novel Huxley wrote.

[MatticusMania]

Originally Posted by Marial

And it wasn't the only excellent novel Huxley wrote.

To which of his other novels doth thou speak?

[Mr. Pickles]

I'm hoping to be finished with Infinite Jest in about 6 months () so I can read some titles you've all mentioned.

[UncleFluffy]

Originally Posted by MatticusMania

Brave New World is awesome!

Have you read "The Island" ?

Originally Posted by Aldous Huxley

If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the Utopian and primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity... In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque co-operative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle – the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"

I think you might enjoy it.

[bassfran]

Originally Posted by Roscoe East

While that's definitely not one of my favorites, I liked it well enough that when I was 16 or 17 years old I wrote an epic prog-rock suite of songs based on that book that became part of my band's repertoire.

Yeah, we were pretentious little brats...

I've kept my copy for over 3 decades as it was a gift from a special ladyfriend. More to do with my memories of her than the actual prose.

Vonnegut, HST, Joyce, etc. phases since. All types of the world's religions/spirituality. I really could never name just one defacto favorite.

How's about these two-

"Ampeg; The Story Behind The Sound" by Gregg Hopkins and Bill Moore
or "FM 21-76" The US Army Survival Manual by Uncle Sam.

[MatticusMania]

Originally Posted by UncleFluffy

Have you read "The Island" ?

I think you might enjoy it.

I havent yet, though its on my list of books to read. Ive read a description of it, and it does sound like a read I might enjoy.