What's the best book you've ever read and what was it about?

Answer 1

As always: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

It is set in the 1930's and deals with prejudice. It is a warm, touching book.

Answer 2

I have 2 favorites:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger. It sounds cheesy, but it is about a woman married to a man with a gene problem, which causes him to travel through time. The book opens with the wife (Claire) being 6, meeting her future husband (Henry) when he is 38. They eventually get married when she is 21 and he is 28. A very, very well written, unique, and beautiful book. I highly, highly recommend it for anyone.

Graham Greene, 'The Power and the Glory.' This one is a bit heavy-- it is about a priest living in the Tabasco region of Mexico during the time that Catholocism and the church were banned, and about the policeman who is hunting him down to 'bring him to justice' (= hang him for practicing his religion). It's a bit of a strange book in that there doesn't seem to be any real resolution and you don't really know what happens to a lot of the characters, but it is beautifully written and as soon as you finish it, you want to start again from the beginning. Another good book that everyone should read!

To whoever said The Stand-- well done. that's another great book!

Answer 3

Marcel Proust, Rembrance of Things Past (in French: A la recherche du temps perdu)

This is a classic that I think anyone interested in human consciousness should consider reading. It is unbelievably long (over 3,000 pages in several volumes) so it is a real commitment. Some people only make it through the first volume, Swan's Way. But if you persevere, the rewards grow in time.

It's basically a novel that allows you to get into another person's mind in a way that may be unique. You get to know the main character intimately--his past, his sorrows, his patterns of thought--and by the end of the novel you feel a real grief that you won't have him in your life anymore.

Except of course you do, because his thoughts become your thoughts. You'll learn so much about how memory works, and you'll gain a long perspective about your own life as well: how childhood morphs into adulthood, into old age, and what it all means as a whole. Profound stuff, rarely attempted on this scale by other writers.

Proust also has a wicked sense of humor and a keen power of observation of people's pretenses. The setting is early 20th century Paris, and it is powerfully evocative.

I wouldn't suggest that young people read this, but some time in your life, you should.

Answer 4

BAck in school we had to read any book from the library and do a report so I chose a book called Z for Zacariah (sorry can't remember the author name) anyways this book so intrieged me, couldn't put the book down. It was about a teenage girl who lived deep in a valley surrounded by mountains and one day her parents took off to go to a nearby town and pick up some things but never came home. In her small town in the valley, there was not a one live person for this teenage girl to talk to. Throughtout the book, she talks about how she survives alone in the valley until one day some mysterious man shows up dressed in like a space suit(the ones our astronauts wear) and after some time of watching him from a cave above her valley vilage, she desides to let him know she is alive. That is all I will tellin case someone gets the book and wants to know what the end is about, I will not spoil it, but it was a great book in which I couldn't put it down. I read it in 2 days.

Answer 5

A portrait of the artist as a young man. James Joyce.

It was about finding yourself and changing yourself and your realization and reality and individuality amid a generational, geographical, religious and very imposed and narrow personal outlook and way of life.

It takes the man through his life from wandering down a lane as baby tukoo looking at a moo cow to a man realizing his limitations and learning his way into personal freedom as an artist and as an adult.

I also liked his others but this was my favorite. Ulysses was a very hard read.

My other equal favorite is a little paperback book by James P. Carse called " Finite and Infinate games." I can't decide between these two as a favorite (I have so many favorites this was hard enough as it is)

This book is about exactly what the title implies. The games in life that are acted out as reality and all those situation that hold such weight with us that are merely games we use to interact and cast ourselves into the roles of all our lives. The methods, means and reasons we play them and what they are.


I have hundreds of favorites though. These are just what I have been re-reading lately.

Answer 6

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

The novel is about a young boy who has been bred for military genious, and is sent to Battle School, a rotating space station in orbit around the earth. They push him and push him, as he is Earth's last hope to survive against an alien species in the third invasion. The story is more than just science fiction; it encompasses universal humanity, and everybody can identify with the decisions and emotions expressed by this book. Great as a stand-alone, but much better with the sequal series and the parallel sequal series.

Answer 7

Harry Potter series, especially Half Blood Prince.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a true classic, which I first read at school.

For sentimental reasons, I have a huge soft spot for Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery, about an orphan growing up on Prince Edward Island.

Answer 8

The Drifters by James A. Michener.

Here is the story of a man named Brady... Sorry, wrong show!

Really, the book is extremely good. It tells the story of six (or eight) strangers that find themselves in Torremolinos, a fictitious place in Spain. The story is very descriptive of all the stages that these "drifters" go through, why the find themeselves in Torremolinos, and how each one affect the lives of each other in a world they do not control. Drugs, sex, machismo, and exotic locales round up all the subjects these people confront and how they react. Great read.

Answer 9

Wow, that is a hard one to answer because there are so many good books out there.
My personal favorites are :
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
The Stand by Stephen King
Swan Song by Robert R McCammon
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (just finished this one and was very taken with it)
The Thornbirds by Colleen McCullough
Wideacre by Philippa Gregory

I could go on and on...........it is too hard to just pick one.

Answer 10

Try "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse. It is symbolic, it is about the many sides of our minds, of the many "I" we are / could have been. It is really written like an allegory / parabol, with characters that can be interpreted as simple characters, or else representations of feelings or events.

And despite all this (which may sound brainy and unbearable), it reads very, very easily.

It was very, very popular in the US at the time of Woodstock but it does not date from that time, it was published in 1927.

A very, very interesting and a bit weird book, that I have read at least a dozen times and I continue to find new and interesting things in it.