What's your favourite book and why?

[Jayburner]

I read this book way back in 1991 and it still remains my favourite to this day.




brief synopsis.

The year is 1964. On a cold spring morning before the sun, Cory Mackenson is accompanying his father on his milk delivery route. Without warning a car appears in the road before them and plunges into a lake some say is bottomless. Cory's father makes a desperate attempt to save the driver, but instead comes face-to-face with a vision that will haunt and torment him: a dead man handcuffed to the steering wheel, naked and savagely beaten, a copper wire knotted around his neck. The lake's depths claim the car and the corpse, but the murderer's work is unfinished as, from that moment, both Cory and his father begin searching for the truth.

The small town of Zephyr, Alabama, has been an idyllic home for Cory and his friends. But now, the murder of an unknown man who lies in the dark lake, his tortured soul crying out for justice, causes Cory's life to explode into a kaleidoscope of clues and deepening puzzles. His quest to understand the forces of good and evil at work in his hometown leads him through a maze of dangers and fascinations: the vicious Blaycock clan, who defend their nefarious backwoods trades with the barrels of their guns; a secret assembly of men united by racial hatred; a one-hundred-six-year-old black woman named the Lady who conjures snakes and hears voices of the dead; a reptilian thing that swims in the belly of a river; and a bicycle with a golden eye.

As Cory searches for a killer, he learns more about the meaning of both life and death. A single green feather leads him deeper into the mystery, and soon he realizes not only his life, but the sanity of his father may hang in the balance.

Welcome to the imagination of Robert R. McCammon, the New York Times bestselling author who now takes us on a whirlwind voyage into the realm where innocence and evil are on a collision course. Boy's Life is a tour de force of magic and wonder, a journey that is at once joyful, unrelentingly mysterious, and hauntingly poignant.

[Eleccybubb]

Around the World in 80 Days.

Read it and it's partially what inspired me to travel.

Honourable mentions would be Gone with the Wind, Ready Player One, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina and while not a full story I have a book that has all the Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.

[Deleted]

The electric Monk from Douglas Addams.

[Kyr]

Ender's Game has always been my favorite. But I just recently read Ready Player One and that one might actually fight for that position.

hopefully the upcoming Ready Player One movie does a better job than the garbage they put out as an Ender's Game movie...

[Jayburner]

A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony

I read it on a Military hop on my way to Hawaii as a kid - really enjoyed it. There was talk of it becoming a movie and it's listed on IMDb, but nothing has been updated for quite some time.

I read that back in the day. I love Bink

[Selastan]

Do trilogies count?



I'm honestly confused as to who the hell these books were aimed it. It has the magic and whimsy of a children's story, but is also extremely deep and has plots ranging from war to god damned metaphysics. It's like if you started watching Alice in Wonderland and by the end you didn't even notice that it turned into Evangelion.

[Nasuuna]

I think we all had that one book that caught our attention when we were young and we have reread it 50 times

mine was Lucifer's Hammer

[shaunika123]

hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

because it's not only a genius satire on the genre, but also on humanity as well

[Deleted]

All quiet on the western front

It's a great book, not to long and it captures the hell that was WW1 fantastically.

[Harry Botter]

This is the only book(s) of it's kind that I enjoyed but it has a beauty to it that just makes me love it.

[Puupi]

Can't name a single favourite book, but I'll throw a couple that have deeply affected me at some point in my life.



http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...The_Dark_Angel



http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59282.The_Egyptian



http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...sen-aikakirjat



http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...ts_of_the_Gods

The most recent book I read (actually finished it yesterday) was this:



http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..._for_Leibowitz

An absolutely great book, really enjoyed it.

It's kind of funny that religion/religiousness/faith is quite a central theme in all my favourite books... me being totally non-religious agnostic atheist...

PS. This thread belongs to the books section.

[Tack980]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemi...tion_cover.jpg

Artemis Fowl
Favorite book. May not be the 'best book' for many reasons, it was the book that got me into reading- mainly because it did 3 things that surprised me when I was younger and I had only read stories that my school made me ( all of the storylines of those were predictable)

1) It was a good twist on the perspective of fairy tales and fantasy, where fantasy creatures are technologically more advanced and monitor humanity from the shadows.
2) There was no definite 'good guy'. No one was golden, on either side of the conflict. In fact the main protagonist was the main ' villain' of the story, kidnapping to steal millions of dollars in gold, and playing mind games with a military force.
3) The story kept evolving every chapter, just when rules were set up, someone destroys the next set of events.

The story was meant for younger audiences ( mainly teens), but making the main character the villan, with good reason, was a neat suprise, and no story has lived up to that shock I got reading this for the first time.

[Deleted]

The only book you should read you fucking heathens.


But seriously : Siege of Mecca was great page turner. The Merchant of Venice is my fav play. Can't remember the last time I read fiction.

[the game]

I read comic books.

[Symphonic]

It's a very interesting story, and really opens up your imagination. The Ender's Shadow line is good as well, but now the book I'd read immediately after Ender's Game is Ender in Exile.

[Ratyrel]

Do trilogies count?
I'm honestly confused as to who the hell these books were aimed it. It has the magic and whimsy of a children's story, but is also extremely deep and has plots ranging from war to god damned metaphysics. It's like if you started watching Alice in Wonderland and by the end you didn't even notice that it turned into Evangelion.

I must say this really put me off it, I quit somewhere in the third book. To me it felt all over the place - too involved to be really easily readable and too full of children I didn't really care about to be thoughtful.

My favourite books that I can read again and again are the Harry Potter books. They have a magic I have never experienced again.
The most formative book I have ever read is Plato's Republic (and Meno).
And almost anything by Oscar Wilde gets an honourable mention.

[Dyluck]

One of the more recent books that i enjoyed reading was Doctor sleep, which is a continuation of the shining. While its not as good as the shining, i read it when i was during a time of uncertainty and always sitting on the fence on tough decisions. There was something about Doctor sleep that just got me to go, alright time to jump of the fence and do things.

#Edit: Just to add in a bit, the thing i liked about both books is the character development. In the shining i do enjoy reading how Jack slowly and slowly gets manipulated, while at the same time the overlook gets darker and darker, while doctor sleep its more about Dan's recovery

[Halicia]

I think I'll go with Stranger in a Strange Land for now... was thinking of Redemption of Althalus too, but wanted to go with something a little more classic.

If we're going to "books you read in school", 'To Kill a Mockingbird' never gets old... oh, and 1984 is a mustread. =/

I'm surprised to see Canticle for Leibowitz listed here, that was an old favorite of mine.... the first timeskip really surprised me back then, I'd grown so attached to the main character at the time.

[Independent voter]

He sat down on a big rock to let the heat dry him. Then, looking beyond her, he apparently saw something she couldn’t see.
“Lorie, would you mind handing me my gun belt?” he asked.
“Why?” she asked.
“I see an Indian coming and I can’t tell if he’s friendly,” Augustus said. “He’s riding a pacing horse and that ain’t a good sign.”
His old pistol was so heavy she had to use both hands to pass the gun belt to him.
“Jake rides a pacing horse,” she said.
“Yes, and he’s a scamp,” Augustus said.
Lorena looked west, but she could see no one. The rolling plain was empty.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“He’ll be a while yet,” Augustus said.
“How do you know he’s an Indian, if he’s that far?” she asked.
“Indians got their own way of riding, that’s why,” Augustus said. “This one might have killed a Mexican or at least stole one’s horse.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“He’s got silver on his saddle, like Mexicans go in for,” Augustus said. “I seen the sun flashing on it.”
Lorena looked again and saw a tiny speck. “I don’t know how you can see that far, Gus,” she said.
“Call don’t neither,” Augustus said. “Makes him mad. He’s better trained than me but ain’t got the eyesight.”
Then he grinned at her, and put his hat on to shade his eyes. He was watching the west in a way that made her apprehensive.
“You want the rifle?” she asked.
“No, I’ve shot many a sassy bandit with this pistol,” he said. “I’m glad to have my hat, though. It don’t do to go into a scrape bareheaded.”
The rider was close enough by then that she too could see the occasional flash of sun on the saddle. A few minutes later he rode into camp. He was a big man, riding a bay stallion. Gus had been right: he was an Indian. He had long, tangled black hair and wore no hat—just a bandana tied around his head. His leather leggings were greasy and his boots old, though he wore a pair of silver spurs with big rowels. He had a large knife strapped to one leg and carried a rifle lightly across the pommel of his saddle.
He looked at them without expression—in fact, not so much at them as at their horses. Lorena wished Augustus would say something, but he sat quietly, watching the man from under the brim of his old hat. The man had a very large head, squarish and heavy.
“I’d like to water,” he said, finally. His voice was as heavy as his head.
“It’s free water,” Augustus said. “I hope you like it cold. We ain’t got time to warm it for you.”
“I like it wet,” the man said and trotted past them to the pool. He dismounted and squatted quickly, raising the water to his mouth in a cupped hand.
“Now that’s a graceful skill,” Augustus said. “Most men just drop on their bellies to drink out of a pond, or else dip water in their hats, which means the water tastes like hair.”
The bay stallion waded a few steps into the pool and drank deeply.
The man waited until the horse had finished drinking, then came walking back, his spurs jingling lightly as he walked.
Again he glanced at their horses, before looking at them.
“This is Miss Wood,” Augustus said, “and I’m Captain McCrae. I hope you’ve had breakfast because we’re low on grub.”
The man looked at Augustus calmly and a little insolently, it seemed to Lorena.
“I’m Blue Duck,” he said. “I’ve heard of you, McCrae. But I didn’t know you was so old.”
“Oh, I wasn’t till lately,” Augustus said. It seemed to Lorena that he too had a touch of insolence in his manner. Though Gus was sitting in his underwear, apparently relaxed, Lorena didn’t think there was anything relaxed about the situation.
The Indian called Blue Duck was frightening. Now that he stood close to them his head seemed bigger than ever, and his hands too. He held the rifle in the crook of his arm, handling it like a toy.
“Where’s Call if you’re McCrae?” Blue Duck asked.
“Captain Call went to town,” Augustus said. “He’s shopping for a cook.”
“I was told I best kill both of you if I killed one,” the Indian said. “It’s my bad luck he’s gone.”
“Well, he’ll be back,” Augustus said, the insolence more pronounced in his voice. “You can sit over there in the shade and wait if you’d enjoy a chance at us both.”
Blue Duck looked him in the eye for a moment, and with a light movement swung back on his horse.
“I can’t wait all day just for the chance to shoot two worn-out old Rangers.” he said. “There are plenty that need killing besides you two.”
“I guess Charlie Goodnight must have run you off,” Augustus said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be off down here in respectable country riding some dead Mexican’s saddle.”
The man smiled a hard smile. “If you ever bring that goddamned old tongue of yours north of the Canadian I’ll cut it out and feed it to my wolf pups,” he said. “That and your nuts too.”
Without another look he rode past them and on out of the camp.

[Jonnusthegreat]

Such an innocent tale of adolescence with the unknown trauma that affects it.