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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

The Greatest Book In The World

17:16 / 17.10.06

The search is on.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

19:01 / 17.10.06

my problem is that the books that sound like they're going to be the greatest books in the world (Glass Bead Game, Ulysses, etc) always turn out to be hard for me to get into. probably a statement about how I'm actually an idiot but have pretentions of being literate and valuing books which are too good for me.

Hmm...keeping in mind that I'm a romantic idiot: Cyrano de Bergerac made me gasp out loud. Then I had to pretend not to be crying so my sister wouldn't see. Great tragic Romance.

On a sentence/dialogue scale, Pride and Predjudice is amazing, but the overall story lacks a little of the oomph it ought to have.

Valis is probably my favorite mindfucked mess.

19:30 / 17.10.06

Shibumi by Trevanian

It was an amazing mix of humor, cheese, tragedy, philosophy, adventure all presented in a gorgeous writing style. There were moments I had to put it down just to breath in the beauty.

Kiltartan Cross

06:48 / 18.10.06

Red Shift, by Alan Garner. Sex, madness, Mow Cop, astrophysics, King Lear and a neolithic axe are enough to make it my favourite, but it's also exceptionally well written (to my eyes); complex, intricate, eloquent. Honourable mention to his books Strandloper and Thursbitch, which are stylistically similar and could loosely be continued to form a series.

(edit) Did I say continued? I surely meant considered. Perhaps, at a pinch, construed. Hum-ho.

17:31 / 18.10.06

Since you said book, I'm going to eliminate short stories and plays because that makes things easier.

It just might be Lolita. The writing is excruciatingly, concisely beautiful, and I'm always floored when Nabokov sharply defines vague mental landscapes you could have sworn were indefinable. It's tragic, fascinating, and the perfect example of an unreliable, monstrous narrator. After reading it, I've been slowly collecting all of Nabokov's books. Pale Fire was amazing and intricate and in some ways just as good, but Lolita edges it out since the wordplay there is a bit more exquisite.

Part of me also wants to put forth Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Susanna Clark's eerie, convincing and strange portrayal of magic blended in with the period-novel writing created something very special for me. I'm a little hesitant to use the phrase, but there was something almost Lovecraftian about how the people practicing magic were teetering on the edge of terrible, unimaginable forces and were blissfully unaware of it, except perhaps until the very end. I loved that (I'm going to rush out and purchase Clark's The Ladies of Grace Adieu at lunch. It's out at last!).

Please keep these coming, by the way, I've already begun to draw up a list of recommendations from what people have already posted.

Earlier than I thought

18:57 / 18.10.06

I could go on about The Third Policeman or the works of Borges. But the one book I keep returning to, not for any other reason than the wonderful character studies and the harassed sounding narrator, is Funeral in Berlin. Just can't ever leave it alone.

Oh, and like, Don Quixote and that. You know. Classics and stuff.

Jawsus-son Starship

19:30 / 18.10.06

Of Mice and Men. Simply put, the book that made me love books. And it makes me cry.

13:53 / 19.10.06

Critics say that we're supposed to love The Great Books because they are the best and people always retort that the canon is dense and impenetrable. I have one exception. The greatest novel I've ever read is easily James Joyce's Ulysses. I took a university course on the novel (it was called Ulysses and its European Contexts) and I loved the course and I loved the novel. Every fucking sentence in that novel means something. Every word. Nothing is wasted. It is an exercise in style, plot, character, theme that just has never been done again. You could read that novel one hundred times and still find something new the next time.

Keith, like a scientist

19:40 / 19.10.06

The book that does it for me To Kill A Mockingbird. It just wraps too many "important" things into one seemlessly charming novel. It's effortless, funny, touching, and contains good messages and a little bit of wisdom.

20:39 / 19.10.06

I've read a lot of the classics, and while I appreciate many of their qualities, often they lack one very important thing: joy. As a consequence, I cannot recommend any of them except as great examples of craftmanship; without joy, most such books fail to capture the true range of the human spirit.

Really, there's only one book that I've been able to return to over and over again, for which I've never found an equal in insight, humor, and general compassion for the foibles of humanity.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Thank you, Douglas Adams. May you rest in peace.

22:00 / 19.10.06

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl. My childhood favorite.

23:07 / 19.10.06

In a sort of similar thread back here I mentioned my favourite book of all time, The Changeover.

But for this thread I'll nominate Catch 22 (Joseph Heller) - I'm not really into war as a topic of books or movies, but this book is the big exception. It is so devastatingly funny and desperate all at once. I love the messed up cyclical structure of it - the layers upon layers of characterisation and narrative until it all comes together at the end.

Picking one is just too hard though! Other books that vie for the title of 'greatest book in the world' in my head include the His Dark Materials trilogy (Phillip Pullman), The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy), The Windup Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami), and Emma (Jane Austen).

(I also second the nominations of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and To Kill a Mockingbird - I am re-reading Mockingbird right now and just loving the wonderful combination of simplicity and depth in both the writing and the characters.)

03:13 / 20.10.06

Oh, definitely His Dark Materials. Definitely. I think children should read it in school, instead of the boring and stiff 1984. Pullman's trilogy is a far more enjoyable comment on controlling fascist dictators.

08:20 / 20.10.06

Handful of Dust will, I suspect, always top my list. A superb mid-point between Waugh's earlier farcical stuff and later descent into Catholic sentimentalism (Brideshead can go suck a fuck). The title's a nod to The Wasteland and Modernist themes of decay and spiritual dissolution abound. Mix in some stunning dialogue and a narrative stuffed with the cruellest iroines and you have my favourite book, ever.

The Prince of All Lies

01:55 / 21.10.06

I don't know...it's a hard question, really. I'm reading Ulysses and it's great, too dense but amazing. But on a sheer enjoyment basis? Nah.
I'd rather say which books I enjoyed the most: in the fantasy genre, it's a draw between The Silmarillion (odd choice, but it's really tragic and sad, so I love it), and The Song of Albion trilogy, by Stephen Lawhead. That's the only book that's made me cry. Real tears. Check it out if you haven't read it, it's one of the best unsung fantasy books.

Regarding "serious" books, then it's either South of the Border, West of the Sun, and Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. Really powerful, beautifully concise books. I love their style, and enjoy similar attempts by other authors, but I haven't found anyone quite as moving as Mr M.

18:57 / 24.10.06

For now I will only mention Dostoevsky and his works, especially "Brothers Karamazov" and "Crime and Punishment". Journey into the minds of the people and the style, great style of his. I have certain best books which come in the certain era eg Realism in this case.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:10 / 24.10.06

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. Everything you need to know about melodrama, architecture (in a sense), Western society, love and betrayal, painted in elegant greys.

19:12 / 24.10.06

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.

oh yes very true!

09:29 / 25.10.06

What is the best translation of Dostoevsky?

11:33 / 25.10.06

Historical fiction may not be the most obvious genre in which to find books that you love with a passion and reread and reread until they are tatty, but this is where I found my favourite books of all time. I can't really pick out any one of the books in the series over the others, so I'll go for the first:

The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett.

Please read it. It is superbly crafted and introduces one of the most magnificent, fascinating and complex fictional heroes I've ever come across, set in a superbly depicted, wide-ranging and minutely-researched world.

Read the Amazon reviews if you don't want to take my word for it.

18:59 / 25.10.06

What is the best translation of Dostoevsky?

Depends. Do you mean "most accurate" or "most enjoyable"?

11:45 / 26.10.06

Most enjoyable preferrably. Although it would be good to know what the most accurate translation is as well. I read the Pevear & Volokhonksy version of Crime and Punishment and thought it over-rated.

03:25 / 27.10.06

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

A labyrinth of a book, a HUGE experimental novel with many tiny little corners of narrative and expansive hallways of exposition outside the narrative, bigger than the reality you're led to believe. Told through essays and diary entries and photographs and little snippets on scraps of paper--it's a jumongous puzzle that I haven't fully put together yet, but each piece is exquisitely delicious.

12:38 / 27.10.06

I don't really know which translation of Dostoevsky is best, for I am not from England, but I would say that the best translation is the translation which is accurate and not (well, it could be both) enjoyable, because the book wasn't meant to be enjoyed in, but for some totally different reason. Yes, Dostoevsky has a great style, but the idea is more imporatant and if the translator fails to pass this idea to the reader, that's a shame.

20:01 / 29.10.06

Giovanni's Room- James Baldwing

Saddest love story ever.

Closed for Business Time

10:53 / 31.10.06

xk and matt - i third titus groan and up the ante with thomas pynchon's 'gravity's rainbow', which, upon reading, punched a book-sized hole in my lobes. and he's publishing a new book ere xmas - yeay!

to those who've mentioned reading the whole of ulysses - i bend my knees and worship at the altar of your patience.

12:47 / 31.10.06

My top five would be:

Pale Fire - Though I resent it a little because I just couldn't escape its influence when writing my novel.

The Third Policeman - One of the funniest books about death I've ever read.

Moby Dick - Didn't like it the first time I read it, skipped all of the technical stuff about whales, but the second time I loved how bogged down I got in the description. Finishing it a second time was like finishing a long journey that I looked back on in simple amazement.

The Deer & the Cauldron - It's a three-volume Chinese swordplay novel by one of the most popular writers in the world (Louis Cha), and it's wonderful. It's basically a picaresque, but it has all the scope and humor of the great classic picaresques of literature (Don Quixote, Tom Jones, Huck Finn, etc.) Highly recommended.

Gravity's Rainbow - Actually, this is probably my favorite book of all time. I get lost in this book. I don't know how many times I've read it, but I still haven't reached the bottom.

Closed for Business Time

13:01 / 31.10.06

Dusto - I haven't read Pale Fire, but judging from Lolita (the only Nabokov I've read) it should prove a whirlwind.
About Pynchon, how do you rate Mason & Dixon next to GR?

13:12 / 31.10.06

Mason & Dixon is probably my second favorite Pynchon book. It takes a while to get used to the language, but it's another one that really just puts you through a journey. The only thing that keeps it from being as good as GR in my mind is that it doesn't really have a central plot. I mean, it's more that it has the central subject of these two guys, and it has central themes, but there's no particular conflict at the heart of the story. Still damn good, though.

Lolita is amazing, but Pale Fire somehow impressed me more. Ada is another great one. I couldn't really get into Pnin, though, even though it was written between what I consider to be his two greatest books.

Closed for Business Time

13:29 / 31.10.06

Also on my greatest book ever list: Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun vols. 1 & 2. Strictly speaking not one book, but wo/man, that guy writes utter dazzling beauty. Everything I've come across from that man is pure bliss.