readers advisory for all discussion

I know it’s hard to pick just one but what’s the book that you compare all other books to? For me All the Ugly and Wonderful Things. What’s yours??

I'm not sure it's "all time", since there is a lot of flux in my top books depending on mood, what I just read, etc, but *The Time Thief* by Terry Pratchett is definitely at the top right now.

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan and Everything Matters!! by Ron Currie Jr. :)

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.

I have read the book their and I loved it as well!

I understand that I'm missing the point of just picking one haha, but I really can't choose, so I'm doing my top picks for various categories.

Children's: The Giver (or the Oz books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, or The Phantom Tollbooth)

Classics: The Count of Monte Cristo (or The Catcher in the Rye)

Unreliable narration: A Pale View of Hills

Short stories: Anything by Flannery O'Connor

Surrealism: Anything by Aimee Bender

Comedy: The Jeeves series by P.G. Wodehouse

Mystery: And Then There Were None

Superhero: The Zeroes series

Literary fiction: Of Mice and Men (or The Remains of the Day or The Picture of Dorian Gray

Best Plot Twist: Shutter Island

Dystopian: Future Home of the Living God (or 1984 Feed)

Horror: Coraline

Gothic: Wuthering Heights (or Rebecca)

Mental health: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (or Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine or I Am Not A Serial Killer)

YA: Every Day (or Everything, Everything or anything by Patrick Ness or Matthew Quick)

Social Commentary: The Hate U Give

Best book I've read recently: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

I'm sorry!! I really failed at picking my one favorite, even within the individual categories. It was really fun going through my old favorites and picking, though, it was like reliving a lot of really good memories :)

That’s awesome!! It is hard to narrow it down to just one book for sure

Thank you!

As long as you enjoyed yourself, and nobody hands you any Pringles.

Oops, I re-translated my book incorrectly. It's "Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett of course. That's a bit embarrassing :D

Hellspark. I reread this book every year or two. It just makes me feel good. It's science fiction about an interstellar trader who must assist an advance team on a newly discovered planet when they cannot determine whether there is a sentient species already on the planet. And in the middle of that one of the team is killed, and the protagonist must determine who killed him. It's more a murder mystery than a traditional sci-fi, dealing with issues of what constitutes sentience and what constitutes language.

I don't have a favorite book, however my top 3 series are Kingdom Keepers (Ridley Pearson), Tapestry (Henry H Neff), and the Ascendance Trilogy (Jennifer Nielsen).

This is a book that has stuck to me since my early teenage years, truly, it is my go-to book and I read it when I’m sad, happy, or simply any mood will do.

It’s Melina Marchetta’s book “Saving Francesca”.

It speaks to me on so many levels and even though I’m a tad bit too old for it I can’t seem to let it go.

Dune. I was always afraid to read it - I thought it was too intimidating. And people I’ve talked to about it told me they couldn’t finish it because it was too complicated, blah, blah, blah. Then I talked to someone that absolutely loved it. I bought it, and now I can’t get enough of it. It’s a world builder’s dream come true. I totally adore that book.

Jane Eyre

JUST ABOVE MY HEAD by James Baldwin.

A Short Stay in Hell, by Steven L. Peck
It's more the length of a novella, which had me thinking there wouldn't be much to it. Boy was I wrong! It is a philosophical work built into a very dense world of characters that I felt connected on a profound emotional level. I hope you enjoy!

“One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” I read this book when I was young and conservative and judgmental. At the beginning I considered the main character to be uncouth and “bad”
After realizing that he was a hero, my whole outlook on life changed. I’m grateful to that author.

Impyrium by Henry H Neff

It's a sequel book to the Tapestry series set a couple hundred or thousand years later. And AMAZING!!!!!!!!

One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

I read this book when I was young and conservative and judgmental. At the beginning of the book I thought that the main character was nasty. After discovering that he was a hero my whole outlook on life changed.
And the last act of the quiet Native American
Taught me to not judge people. I’m grateful to this author for these insights.

Susan wrote: "“One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” I read this book when I was young and conservative and judgmental. At the beginning I considered the main character to be uncouth and “bad”
After realizing that he ..."

That is awesome! i love it when a book has impact. :)

It's impossible to answer this without adding some kind of more precise criterion, so I will say my favorite book in terms of how important it was to my outlook and political awareness: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. A really groundbreaking, eye-opening and significant piece of scholarship.

Steev wrote: "It's impossible to answer this without adding some kind of more precise criterion, so I will say my favorite book in terms of how important it was to my outlook and political awareness: [book:A Peo..."

such a great choice!

City of Thieves
A Novel
By David Benioff · 2008

David wrote: "City of Thieves
A Novel
By David Benioff · 2008"

City of Thieves is amazing! In my top 10.

I realized I have not answered yet, and it is difficult. My teacher has asked this in class and the Narnia series popped out of my mouth, as well as Always checking out cozy mystery books, for example, author Amanda M. Lee

Empire Falls by Richard Russo. The perfect blend of insightful characterization (both the people and the town), dialogue, story line. Won the Pulitzer. Gorgeous writing.

Donna wrote: "Empire Falls by Richard Russo. The perfect blend of insightful characterization (both the people and the town), dialogue, story line. Won the Pulitzer. Gorgeous writing."

Awesome Choice, Russo is one of the best!

Hi, I really enjoy "brief question to the big anwers" by Stephen Hawking, he has a way to tell important science stuff and turn it very simple to undertand. Also one of my favorites is "Hambiento" by Nach, he is a rapper from Spain and the poems in there are really great, if you undertand spanish I recomend to listen his music.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout with a second place being Olive, Again by same author

The Fifth Head of Cerberus It's such a rich, multi-layered scifi puzzle box on identity and colonialism. You've got a family of a man's clones and genetic off-shoots trying to psychoanalyze himself over generations, a robot that is a copy of that original man but doesn't have the processing power to fully simulate him, shape-shifting aboriginal aliens who may have never existed at all or who may have replaced all or some of the original human colonists as soon as they arrived and then subsequently forgot they weren't human to begin with.

I feel like I could re-read this book every year for the rest of my life and still discover new things and have new epiphanies about it.

It's also such a good, low commitment entry into Wolfe's ouvre compared to his four book series The Book of the New Sun, which is what everyone says you have to read by him, but Fifth Head is just as good, imo, and arguably much more focused.

This is one of those questions that you would answer differently for every decade of your life. There are books I have read a dozen times at a certain age and then, picking them up 20 years later, I thought, "Ugh!" and wondered how I stood it. But one book that sticks with me is The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin. Many of her books resonate for me in various ways, but that one...it shows up so clearly the possibilities of how to live a meaningful life, in such stark yet gentle terms.

My all time fav is Ready Player One. The book which is full of 1980's Pop Culture. Even if the book is sci-fi, Young Adult, Fantasy, etc etc it has a depth which only pop culture enthusiast would get. The movie was the worst, on same level as movie adaptation of HG Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau.
Ready Player One has everything in an action packed story and it is quite fascinating.

AshishB wrote: "My all time fav is Ready Player One. The book which is full of 1980's Pop Culture. Even if the book is sci-fi, Young Adult, Fantasy, etc etc it has a depth which only pop culture enthusiast would g..."

Yes, the movie SUCKED, and the book was really good, so much more in depth.

Melliott wrote: "AshishB wrote: "My all time fav is Ready Player One. The book which is full of 1980's Pop Culture. Even if the book is sci-fi, Young Adult, Fantasy, etc etc it has a depth which only pop culture en..."
Yes exactly. I heard in 2016 Ernest Cline was goona write next book to Ready Player One...thank the gods its still not complete. He'll have to find a book fairy to get the story so over the top to top Ready player One's perfection.

The Lord of the Rings

I think it's really hard to choose a favorite book of all time but when I think about books that have had the most impact or that I reach for over and over again one book in particular stands out more than the others. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is my go-to book for all kinds of things. It gives me hope when I am sad, it reminds me what love is about, it teaches me about responsibility and friendship and loneliness ... I can't possibly keep track of all the times that I have re-read it.

I've shared it with my younger sisters and their children, used passages for wedding speeches, found comfort in it when I've lost loved ones, and most special to me is that it was the first book I read to my newborn daughter 16 years ago. So, if I could choose just one favorite book, this might be it.

Impossible to say in a general sense. It has to be qualified. Actually, re-reading the original question, I would have to say there is no book that fits that criterion for me. There is NO book that I "compare all others to." I've never thought to ever do that and am in fact baffled by why anyone would do that. Some kind of "ur book" in your mind, some platonic ideal of "book" that you somehow stand up against every book you read? Seems totally impossible. I mean, MAYBE the answer would have to be the book one has the earliest memory reading. maybe? In which case it would have to be The Hobbit, or else Podkayne of Mars by Heinlein. But I have no conscious awareness of "comparing" either of those to any book i've read later. Each book is its own thing. The concept is just bizarre. it'd be like saying what food do you compare every other food to? or what color do you compare every visual stimuli to? like... uh.. I don't?

Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
Although set in another time and place, the characters, what they faced, how they dealt with life's challenges and how beautifully the author expressed those experiences has resonated with me over the years. Rarely has a month gone by when I don't think about those characters and am astonished about the author's profound understanding of what, "A Fine Balance' life must be.