best novel you ever read?

[reepicheep]

I am in the market for a new novel and need some suggestions. What would you say the best novel you ever read is? Some novels I've liked in the past are:

Tess of the D'urbervilles
Howard's End
War and Peace
Brothers Karamazov
The Magic Mountain
My Uncle Oswald...

ok, anyway...any suggestions?
Rachel

[Annikate]

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

It's excellent and a MUST read imo.

[mcjessica]

Hmm...

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay
A Confederacy of Dunces
Replay ** this one is amazing ** by Ken Grimwood
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
The Agony and the Ecstasy

[mcjessica]

Whoops! Hit submit too early...

Anything by Paul Auster
Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Fountainhead & Atlas Shrugged, in that order, by Ayn Rand

[nonconformnmom]

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren.

[reepicheep]

Originally Posted by mcjessica

Hmm...


Memoirs of a Geisha
The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay
The Agony and the Ecstasy

I liked those, too!

[reepicheep]

Originally Posted by nonconformnmom

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren.

Ooh, I loved that... it might be worth rereading.

[suzysprite]

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

[Teensy]

The Great Santini by Pat Conroy
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

are four of my absolute favorites

Others I really enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

[ledzepplon]

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (my all-time fave : c : )

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevski

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (read this after Jane Eyre--it's kind of a "prequel")

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

[Daffodil]

anything by Mark Helprin
anything by Russell Hoban
anything by Ursula K. Le Guin
Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
The Living by Annie Dillard

[ani'smommy]

Middlesex
Jane Eyre
A Prayer for Owen Meany
A Pilgram at Tinker Creek

[sunshinestarr]

The Mouse that Roared is a great book. I think that Willerby is the author's name.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Wilson? I forget.

[damselfly41]

Firethorn, by Sarah Micklem. I read it three times in a row; as soon as read the last page, I turned back to the front again.

[crbyard]

Gotta agree with the pps, Jane Eyre is the BEST. I have read it at least 10 times. I also love Persuasion by Jane Austen.

[Birth Junky]

The Books of Great Alta by Jane Yolen
Mists of Avalon by Marian Zimmer Bradley

[NewCrunchyDaddy]

Fiction (in no particular order):
1. Bag of Bones by Stephen King
2. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper
5. Moby-Dick, or, the Whale by Herman Melville
6. Dracula by Bram Stoker
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
8. The Alienist by Caleb Carr
9. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
10. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Nonfiction (in no particular order):
1. Stiff: The Secret Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
2. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach
3. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences by Truman Capote
4. The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery by Wendy Moore
5. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
6. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
7. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
8. Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone by Martin Dugard
9. Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden
10. One Day in September: The Full Story of the 1972 Munich Massacre and the Israeli Revenge Operation "Wrath of God" by Simon Reeve

[holyhelianthus]

oh my. i'm going to name some and then remember others and drive myself crazy with this!!!

the Bell Jar
the Handmaid's Tale
Madame Bovary
Lady Chatterly's Lover
the Martian Chronicles
Fahrenheit 451
Candide

i know there's more!!

[holyhelianthus]

LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE!!!! i can't believe i forgot this one! i have a hard time picking just one favorite but if i had to this.... would...... be....... okay i can't do it! but it'd be up there.

[themamamama]

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
anything by Jane Austen

and yeah, I Jane Eyre too