Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Fictions
Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls
Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose
John Hawkes - Second Skin (outside of the one single American Lit class where this was taught, I’ve never known anyone else who has read this guy. Shame.)
Number five is a toss-up between Alistair MacLeod (No Great Mischief) and John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meaney).
Here are today’s favorites, in no particular order.
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Tripmaster Monkey - Maxine Hong Kingston
Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Look for the new list tomorrow!
But The Lord of the Rings still rules!!
A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut
Hmmm, that was easy. A lot of contenders for #5:
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll
Rascal, Sterling North
1984, George Orwell
Flatland, Edward A. Abbott
The Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle
I think I’ll stop now.
Had to pop back with a few I’d forgotten that no one has mentioned:
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Madness of a Seduced Woman by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
Mystery by Peter Straub
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin
I wonder if anyone would come up with the same list twice?
Criteria is (1) there always has to be a copy of this book at hand and (2) I’ve bought extras for loaners.
The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow
The Stand by Stephen King
Heart of the Country by Greg Matthews
Crazy Love by David L. Martin
Celebrity by Thomas Thompson
In no order:
1984
Hamlet
Lord of the Rings
Dune
All Quiet on the Western Front
Beloved - Toni Morrison
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Stand - Stephen King
Princess Bride - S Morgenstern
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
(also Dune, Bel Canto, The Hobbit, I Robot, and Rebecca) 
My list also changes according to moods, world events, personal strife, etc…
certainly…I’d have to say
Nabokov’s Lolita,
Faulkner’s Light in August ,
Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace ,
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man ,
Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome …
The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien (if that is cheating then I’ll say just Return of the King)
The Witching Hour- Anne Rice
Animal Farm- George Orwell
The Little Prince - can’t spell his name (not really a novel since it’s awful short but it’s one of my favorites)
Alice in Wonderland- Lewis Carroll
Gone with The Wind
God of Small Things
Catch 22
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Confederacy of Dunces
Can I please go on? Pleeeeeease???
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Julian and Burr, Gore Vidal
Dune / Dune Messiah / Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
I, Claudius / Claudius the God*, Robert Graves
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Leguin
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
The James Bond series, Ian Fleming
Raise the Titanic!, Clive Cussler
The Plague, Albert Camus
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Titus Groan and Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
The Shining and The Stand, Stephen King
That’s all I can think of for now…
In no particular order, of course…
Catcher in the Rye
Watership Down
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I am unoriginal…yay.
In order, from No. 1 on my list to No. 5:
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Good Times, Bad Times by James Kirkwood
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan
The Stand by Stephen King
Tesa
I LOVE this book. I ran across a tattered and very old copy at a library booksale last summer and bought it for 10 cents. I’d never heard of it. I started reading it that afternoon and ended up staying up until 2 AM. It’s one of the most moving books I have ever read.
My criteria for Best Book is the same as AuntiePam’s. Two copies–one for the top shelf of my bookcase and one to loan out.
My list:
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Watership Down
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Stand by Stephen King
A Prayer for Owen Meany
I could go on and on and on…I have a list of about 20 favorites.
I also forgot about
Roots, Alex Haley
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Like water for chocolate (en espanol) Laura Esquivel
The Commitments, Roddy Doyle
Trinity by Leon Uris
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
William Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Okay, a couple of repeats here, but this is my list:
A Prayer for Owen Meany - I think I LIVED this book while I was reading it. It’s got everything a book should have, funny but moving, too.
War and Peace - Yes, I’ve really read the whole damn thing… twice!
Lolita - I’m working on this one again right now.
Illusions - by the guy who wrote Jonathon Livingston Seagull. But this one is a far better book, imho.
A Confederacy of Dunces - This book is one of the few that have made me laugh out loud many times. Pardon me, but excessive consumption of Paradise hot dogs has ruined my digestion for the day, and I feel I must write in a Big Chief and relax my pyloric valve for a while.
My nominations:
The Brothers Karamazov
Catch 22
Beloved
The Second Coming by Walker Percy
Sounder