Different strokes and all that, but this choice boggles my mind. The awkward change in Boffin’s character was clearly a case where Dickens wrote himself into a corner.
My vote will go to Vanity Fair.
A book where the lyrical writing really struck me was Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I don’t often re-read books, but I read that one twice. Might even read it again.
Or Washington in 2008.
Not.
I’ll add two:
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
Desmond Bagley’s Running Blind, a little known but excellent spy novel, less wordy and more action than le Carre.
I’ll have to give Vanity Fair a read.
Personally, I dont think there is a perfect novel. The closest I have come to one is something like Atonement by Ian McEwan.
The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin. Brilliant mystery, multiple layers of symbolism, tight plot, humor, and great character interaction.
So many of my favorites have been mentioned! I will also go with the stories of James Herriott - “All Creatures Great and Small”.
And the trilogy of “The Awakening Land” by Conrad Richter (which won a Pulitzer Prize and was a mini-series with Hal Holbrook and Elizabeth Montgomery). From the moment the family stopped walking, coming to a halt in the middle of the vast forest, through their trials and tribulations eking out an existence, to the establishment of an actual town and civilization - it’s all there. ALL there. More, more, more…complete and wonderful to read.
A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole is a tragi-comedy masterpiece! Just thinking about it now is giving me fits of laughter. I must read it again soon.
Cannery Row by Steinbeck
Runner-up: The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W.P. Kinsella (author of Shoeless Joe)
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold, in the category of romance.
The Mountains of Mourning, same author, short mystery.
Wrack and Rune, Charlotte MacLeod, novel-length mystery.
In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden, drama.
Watership Down, by Richard Adams, fantasy.
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones
More votes for Good Omens and Confederacy of Dunces. Always entertaining rereads.
I consider Jingo by Terry Pratchett a timeless classic, because the absurdity of two nations fighting over a rock and propagating nonsense as reasons to fight will always be prevalent, no matter how advanced our world becomes.
“Love and War in the Apennines” by Eric Newby is just perfect to me. A memoir of his capture and escape from an Italian POW camp and his subsequent life with, and concealment by, and ultimate betrayal by a group of Italian villagers, one of whom becomes his wife after the war.
Funny, sad, moving and romantic in all the right places.
I think “perfect” is going to be an individual thing, based on life experiences up to the time you read it. I think that explains my different reaction to “East of Eden” when I read it twice, ten years apart. One time I was going thru a rough time with my girlfriend, the other time I was married.
I second the earlier nomination of Jack Vance’s “Demon Princes” novels.
…and I have a couple of my own:
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The perfect late-Victorian suspense novel,by a man whose prose is always perfect.
The Lost World, also by Conan Doyle: The first Englishmen-vs-dinosaurs novel, and still the best.
A couple non-fiction books:
Lancaster: The Second World War’s Greatest Bomber, McKinstry: An excellent, very very readable history, touching on design, production, strategy, and lots of first-person accounts. Perfect prose. I finished it about a month ago and am re-reading it, just for the pleasure.
**
Steamboats on the Western Rivers**, Hunter: Hunter was a perfectionist, and it took him forever to write this. But if you want to know about Mississippi steamboats, it’s in here. How were they built? What kinds of companies operated them? What were their limitations? Absolutely comprehensive, and quite readable.
That’s silly. A better saying is “I don’t have to be a chicken to tell if an egg is rotten”.
A good book (like any art) communicates to others. It can communicate ideas, emotions, characters…but a book that only speaks to the writer is a bad book–masturbation, in essence, not art.
In case people are still following this thread, I wanted to say that I am struck by the near absence of works of nonfiction. I find that especially ironic since the book I dropped in to mention, my “perfect” book, is just that - hardcore nonfiction.
I am referring to the monumental The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. What a treat to read if you’re into science, physics, military, biography, cold war, . . . A perfect book. Rhodes covers the science, the times, the people, the politics, all of it. And, boy, does he cover it well. He chronicles the lives and stories of some of the most brilliant people to have walked this earth while providing fascinating and perspicuous accounts of the science they created. But he didn’t leave it at that. Rhodes managed to also show how the Cold War (if not government paranoia in general) followed inevitably from the events of the Second World War and most especially from the race to build ‘the bomb’. And so much more.
If your love for ‘science biography’ is matched by your love for modern history (and, in particular, for the history of the wars that pervade it), and if those loves are complemented by a yearning to understand and appreciate the wonders of the universe, this is the perfect book for you.
That reminds me of another perfect book: Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing, by John Trimble. A perfect, short little primer on effective writing. One of my professors required that we read it before submitting our first papers and it was incredibly worthwhile.
Under Heaven by Guy Gavrial Kay. I wouldn’t change a single word.
Love that book!! Great choice.