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On Broadway - Damon Runyon.
The Lady in the Lake - Raymond Chandler.
Donna Tart writes a good book too.
If it's classics you want, I find Charles Dickens hard to beat.
The only book book of any size I remember reading in a single sitting was Crosstown Traffic by Charles Shaar Murray, although wether it’d stand up as my best ever I don’t know ( and doubt). Sort of a contextualised history of Hendrix.
I’ve rarely ever reread a book so saying the last thing I read was better or worse than something I read 30 years ago is probably a bit meaningless. However, the last book I read and thought was just fascinating was A Very English Scandal by John Preston. About the Norman Thorpe scandal but will reaffirm your beliefs if you think the British political classes are rotten and superbly written.
His one on Shakespeare is very good ( Shakespeare The World As A Stage ) - short but tells you a lot of useful stuff ( and I highly suspect that Ben Elton has a copy to hand when writing Upstart Crow).
I’m not much of a fiction reader ( or reader at all really, I’m basically listing all the books I’ve ever read here...) but my default is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. What happens when a top literary author has a go at sci fi.
Merry Christmas
Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance
Douglas Adams - Hitch Hikers Guide
God (via various humans) - The Bible
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
If you liked 1984, have you read Huxley's 'Brave New World'? Written around the same time as 1984, it's another dystopian future story, but comes at it from a very different but equally powerful angle.
I'd argue it's an equally prescient visionary work, despite being less well known and less a part of popular culture. One of the best sci-fi novels ever IMO.
As for greatest book ever, God knows! Far too many great books to narrow it down to just the one!
I read it shortly after my son was born, and it resonated with me like nothing else I've ever read. For a relatively short book, it's a very hard, dark read with a massive emotional heft to it.
:
A man called Ove
bought it for summer holiday and finished it in 2 days. Made me laugh out loud lots, and made me cry - seriously, and I’m a 51 year old man.
wife and teenage daughter were intrigued. So daughter took it and cried several times in 2 days and couldnot put it down, and loved it.
Mrs then had to, and it even broke her frosty exterior as well.
took us a couple of months to find the Swedish film of it on Prime. Was worth it and the subtitles. Even though we all had read the book, we were all 3 of us crying and laughing through the film
fabulous.
hope a few of you take up the challenge and run the whole range of your emotions.
In fact, given the interest that the “life changing” thread on here got, I wholly encourage you all to give it a go.
Only joking.
i wish someone had told me about this when i was 16 , i read it much later and it still helped put some events in to perspective ....
Transported me as a 20 year old to an amazing fantasy land, utterly brilliant.