What would nominate.
I suppose Euclid’s Elements and Newton’s Principia should be on the list. I haven’t read them. I can’t imagine any work of fiction deserving to rank as best book ever.
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.
And it gets worse!
Over 5,000 Brits voted it the “Novel of the Century” in a Waterstone Books Poll: http://books.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4300875,00.html
And in America, in an Amazon.com poll, it was voted “Best of the Millennium”! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/features/c/century/best-of-millennium.html/103-2610894-9952664
Muh-ha-ha-haaaaaa!!
RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!
“Edmund: A Butler’s Tale” – a giant rollercoaster of a novel in four hundred sizzling chapters. A searing indictment of domestic servitude in the eighteenth century, with some hot gypsies thrown in.
Darkrabbit
Catch-22
I haven’t read Don Quixote yet, but I have it on a bookshelf somewhere.
And, hey! I like Lord Of The Rings!!
Jeez, I can’t believe there’s only one mention of Catcher In The Rye. It gets my vote.
And rsa, I hope you were serious, because The Cat In The Hat is in my top five. If the OP were “greatest book of all time to read out loud,” it would be number one on my list. I beg my three year-old to let me read it to him whenever I can. He’s pretty sick of it by now…I still love it.
American-- To Kill A Mockingbird
World-- The Odyssey
I’d vote for The Lord of the Rings as a good second.
The Bible? No. It is a paltry collection of jumbled myths and legends and as a whole is interesting and entertaining, but is not cohesive enough to be defined really as a “book”.
I’d like to second Catch 22. One of the few books I can time and time again.
V
Okay, let me try that again:
I’d like to second Catch 22. One of the few books I can (read) time and time again.
I don’t know about #1, but The Odyssey should definitely be in the Top Ten, at least IMO. If I were King of the Universe, and if I trusted teachers not to ruin it*, I would make this story required reading in all my schools. Truly, a great tale. I loved it.
Catcher and LOTR would both go in my Top 100, I think. I’m not sure if the Bible would make the cut or not.
The very best book of all time, though . . . wow, I think there have been just too many great books written to place one in the top spot.
- I know, there’s some truly great teachers out there–some of them, no doubt, even post to the SDMB. I was thinking of some of the teachers I had in school who could take some of the greatest pieces of literature ever written and absolutely ruin them.
For shame! No one has mentioned The Straight Dope , by that great american author Cecil Adams.
Your doper cards have now all been suspended.
Huckleberry Finn
The Grapes of Wrath
And another nod for To Kill A Mockingbird
Ulysses.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (trilogy) by Douglas Adams is my favorite sci-fi & comedy…
Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory is my favorite fictional and is the best book on Arthurian Legend…
Siddartha by Albert Camus gives interesting perspective of Budda and Hinduism…gets honarable mention for giving me some perspective of a culture…
The Bible just can’t be compared to other books…it’s not meant to be entertaining or interesting (I make it sound like a dry read, but I hold The Book in high regard) like any other book. That goes for non-fiction and fiction as well…
Thanks, Biffy; I was beginning to worry that I’d get to the end and NO ONE would have mentioned Joyce.
I’ll second James Joyce’s Ulysses. Though after a few drinks I might try making a case for Finnegans Wake.
Seconding Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Dostoesvsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov. The first defines epic poetry (with honorable mention to The Iliad). The second is like reading a chronicle of every human hope, ambition, weakness and suffering ever experienced.
I’ll second the Bible. Come on people it’s beautifully writen, diverse as hell and influential as no other book.
LOTR is a great book but best of all time?
Threads like this drive me nuts: On one hand, I want to participate - talking about books is the best! One the other hand, it often just becomes everybody offering their list.
I always want to take an analytical point of view: What criteria should you use for a “greatest book”?
Fiction? Non-fiction? Religious?
Most read? (something religious, probably)
Highest quality? (in fiction, Ulysses by Joyce is generally considered highest quality in the English language for the 20th century)
Most Popular - i.e., most well known?
I can’t break down the analysis all by myself. Therefore, I will talk a different angle:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/~subway/Prints/chaucer.html
I give you: The Kelmscott Chaucer - generally considered to be the most beautiful book printed in the English language. That’s a form of “Greatest Book” isn’t it?
The Bible is not really a book. It is a collection of stories, myths, folklore, and second hand hearsay. It is a mumble-jumble of primative man’s fear,hopes and delusions. It belongs with other studies of early man. Nothing more.
my short list would include:
Death in Venice
Moby Dick
crime and punishment
king lear#
long days journey into night#
Anna Karenina
Catch-22
Dictionary of Quotations
Roget’s Thesaurus
Ancesrtal Passions
Winny the Poo
Any really good cook book
#plays[ as great as any book when it comes to dealing with the human condition]