While i was writing the title “My favourite book…” it reminded me of primary school where you had to do book reviews of the last book you read. We were always told at the end to say “i would definitely recommend this book to anyone.” What a pointless thing to do…but still that’s incidental and not the point of this post
I’m interested to see what the best book you’ve ever read is. I know some of you are already sitting there, hand in your pants, getting ready to type “the Bible” or “the Koran” and then laugh maniacally as if that’s a really clever thing to do, so I’ll say now, don’t do it. Try and think of another good book.
I think the best book I’ve ever read is “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand. It’s a fictional book which promotes individualism as opposed to collectivism. The hero, Howard Roark, at first seems to be someone we would usually see as a social outcast but by the end the reader is strangely endeared by him. The female protagonist, Dominique Francon follows Roark’s ideals and I certainly became a bit obsessed by her while reading the book, something that has never happened to me before.
The book won’t be enjoyed by everyone and it does take a while to get into but once you have it’s very difficult to put down. Some of the speeches made, especially towards the end are phenomenal. The author, Ayn Rand, has been described by some as a “soul-less harridon” and perhaps they are right. Either you’ll be disgusted by this book or extremely impressed, only way to find out is to read it.
‘I know some of you are already sitting there, hand in your pants, getting ready to type “the Bible” or “the Koran” and then laugh maniacally as if that’s a really clever thing to do’ you are such a w***er some times ben!
Mine is ‘Jurassic Park’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’. The Novel of Jurassic park is so much better than the film… it includes a whole bunch more on the science of what they did and also the whole island sequence is amazing! the break down of the social structure… humans trying to control and be God…
‘‘the enchanted wood’’ by enid blyton, hands down (hehe). quite clearly the best piece of literature of all time. and no, ben, it doesn’t have to be for adults to be great.
mine has to be either Generation X or Girlfriend in a Coma, both by Douglas Coupland. i’m not gonna explain why they are good, just read them and you will realise why they are good.
my family and other animals, by gerald durrell. i read it when i was the same age as he was in the book, and his life was mine. apart from the whole greece-england thing, but never mind eh. it was still the defining moment of my life.
after that… lord of the rings. or possibly the wheel of time, for sheer epic scale.
The Catcher in the Rye, which was required reading in the U. S., at one time at least. It is the great neurotic american novel. I’m splitting hairs between that and To Kill a Mockingbird, though.
“Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark.”
Good choice, Ben. This book influenced me heavily which I’m sure comes as no surprise to anybody around here who has had to put up with my tirades on individual freedom.
Roark was, indeed, a social outcast, Ben. The beauty was that he didn’t care. That takes a strength I wish I had. This strength is what Dominique saw.
I could fill this thread up with a thousand best reads but I won’t because we all have better things to do and it would be an exercise in tedium if anything else, so I’ll select one with a brief and wholly unsatisfactory listing of some of the books themes and ideas in (that most postmodern illness) general:
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
A mammoth book, complex, hardgoing and overflowing with a fecund imagination! At book about a small village, a people, a nation, a state. A book about myth, superstition, magic and perception! A book about discovery, history, social and cultural building and development! A book about family, inheritance, magical Lamarckism…this book is about South American Civilisation…a fermentation of pure imagination, history, social and magical realism…legacy and decay! And above all MEMORY or the loss thereof. READ THIS! You will nto be disappointed…you will be confused in the most beautiful sense.
If I ever have another child, I hope it’s a boy so I can call him Alyosha. I am the brothers… each one. I struggle, as the brothers do, with the issues of faith, god, religion, anger, hatred, rejection, parental letdown, with logic and reason. I had chills when I read the story that Ivan Karamazoc tells about The Grand Inquisitor.
Wanting hard to say The Count of Monte Cristo or War and Peace, I have to ultimately choose The Karamazov Brothers By Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Along with what Thirst wrote, I have never read such a psychologically powerful book on so many levels (albeit that it is not as psychological a book as Crime and Punishment). Nevertheless, I have never been so conflicted between mind (Ivan), passion (Dimitri), and soul (Alyosha) – I would abstract the father also – pity.
Never have I encountered such memorable characters – and never a more beautiful, sublime, character than Alyosha – I love him. Nor was I ever able to, at one and the same time, find myself absolutly hating and loving a single character (dimitri) – but, I guess that that is precisly how passion operates. This is a book that takes you through many, if not nearly all, aspects of the human being at the extremes of mind, passion, and soul.
A professor from Boston University claimed that we are all each one of these characters – and I second that claim.
Here is a quote:
“To compare man to beast is terribly insulting and unjust . . . to the beast, for no wild animal can ever be as cruel, as artistic and refined in his cruelty, as man.”
