What is the BEST book ever?

my favourite books ever woul dbe fluke by james herbert because it was one of the first novels i remember reading as a child and the last continent by terry pratchett because he is hilarious

1.The Lord of the rings. 100% masterpiece. An epic tale with lovable characters and the beautiful world of middle earth with so much depth and history and numerous different languages made by Tolkien himself. It is written well but not in a pretentious or contrived fashion and the imagination of Tolkien must be the best in the world.
2. The silmarillion. heroic tales which came before LOTR, once again display Tolkien's vivid imagination and are powerful and moving.

To kill a mockingbird is awesome
but
the best book ever written has to be-

White Fang by Jack London......it always makes me cry

Ironically the book that I like a lot is the one I had to read in English class. It goes the other way around too. "I am David" is a good novel. There's one part, I remember, him experiencing normal livelihood that makes you ask yourself why you ever take such things for granted.

Forbidden City, The Giver, The Chrysalids (captivating style of writing), and The Outsiders (not the camus novel), are good also. There's one that's really sad too, I can't remember the name. It's about a kid who's in a mental institution, who's taken in by some government agent, and the novel went about his past, but you're not really quite sure how much told is true, because... well if you finished the novel you understand this point. Some people find it weird, but this novel is touching.

Sherlock Holmes story, great detective genre.

The Count of Monte Cristo, one of the best adventure novels.

Would have a hard time limiting it down to one work because, being not necessarily better or worse than one another, some books are just different.

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
The Idiot - Dostoevsky
Notes from the Underground - Dostoevsky
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Light in August - Faulkner
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
The Plague - Camus
A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man - Joyce (haven't finished Ulysses yet...)
Phenomenology of Spirit - GWF Hegel

The Lord of the Rings is, of course, amazing, but fantasy is in a different category stylistically.

I've read Anthem and Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, and I understand how they could be appealing, but I could never call her a serious writer or philosopher because what she wrote was so flagrantly wrong. She basically took what Emerson said in Self-Reliance, contorted it, and buried it under a lot of rhetoric to make it seem like caring about other people inherently harms yourself. There is a difference between losing your own identity when you help others and helping others because it is part of your identity, a distinction that she fails to make in the "system" she calls a philosophy...

I agree that Rand does not write compelling literature.

I've never read Rand, but from I've heard I don't like her either.

Here's a link criticizing her: (I also don't understand why her pseudophilosophy is called Objectivism when it's extremely narcissistic)

Critique of Rand

I don't think such thing as a "best book ever" exists, but my favourite is probably "Les Oubliés de Vulcain" -Daniele Martignol.
"Lord of the Rings"-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Harry Potter"-J.K. Rowling, "A Series of Unfortunate Events"-L. Snicket and the "Myst" trilogy-R. Miller are in my top 10, with "Alice in Wonderland"-L. Caroll, "Girl with a Pearl Earing"- T. Chevalier, "Little Women"-L.M. Alcott and "La sorcière de la rue Moufetard, et autres contes de la rue Broca"-Pierre Gripari.
I don't know if the first and last exist in english...

Shogun....James Clavell.

The book I think I learned the most from was "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

Everyday life inside a concentration camp, told through the eyes of a survivor.

edgarblythe, I can't believe me and you are the only ones to mention "The Grapes of Wrath". Is there something wrong with us or them?

Here's my take on The Foutainhead. I read it when I was 14 and thought it was amazing. As an adult, I think Ayn Rand takes herself way too seriously, to the point of cliche. I remember, as a kid, reading the line (paraphrasing wildly here) "In order to make an omelette you have to break the eggs". I believe she was writing this in reference to the hero trying to slay the dragon, his demons, acheive his dream, etc.

Anyway, as a teenager, I thought that was the deepest, stinking line I'd ever read. Now I think about it and it's simply awkward, and a tad silly.

I thought Grapes of Wrath was pretty great.

"Grapes of Wrath" & "One hundred years of solitude" By Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Thats three for G.O.R.

Are You Dave Gorman by Dave Gorman and Danny Walace.

It's the only book to make me laugh, out loud, fairly hysterically, while on a train during rush hour.

First off, I think we all know that choices for 'the best book ever' are most definitely going to vary, so there's no point in even mentioning its subjectivity.

Many of my favorite books have already been mentioned (wayyyy to go iamcolin for mentioning Hitchhiker's Guide & Thalion for Camus' <i>The Plague</i>) but I am stunned that none of these have been mentioned:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm by George Orwell
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
(and lets not overlook the simple, yet wonderful beauty that is children's literature)
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
The Wanderer & Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Just to name a few...

Easy. Lord of the rings.
What other book has about 5 made up languages and a whole 2000 year history?

"1984" by George Orwell.

Without doubt in my opinion. It didn't catch me from the beginning, but it is truly amazing.

I was surprised to find out that the entire book is available for free on the internet.
I prefer paper tough.

Oh, and never see the movie.

Spengler, Michaux, Nietzsche, and Cioran are pretty good.

favorite books
my favorite books are probably:
CATCHER IN THE RYE;J.D Salinger
Siddartha;Herman Hesse
One Who Flew Over the Cukoo Nest;Ken Keysey
Zadig;Voltaire
Inferno:Dante
Catch 22:Joseph Heller
and... Slaughter House5;Kurt Vonnegut

Honorable Mention:
Candide;Voltaire