-
A Confederacy of Dunces - Toole: One of the first books I read after college, after multiple nudges by my uncle, and probably the first book I read for pleasure since I was a kid. I’m not sure if it was because of that, but it’s the first book that leapt off the page at me and showed me what fun literature can be when you’re not forced to read something.
-
The Great Gatsby: Probably the best book I’ve read.
-
Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls: Sentimental favorite from my childhood that still holds up in my memory, if nowhere else.
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
I guess I like stories about long journeys.
I don’t think of novels in terms of favorites, so these are just memorable and enjoyed.
Cat’s Cradle - Vonnegut
The Caine Mutiny - Wouk
Huckleberry Finn - Twain
Lonesome Dove
English Passengers
Gone With The Wind
At least today…Lonesome Dove is always #1 though.
Critical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller
The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Catcher In The Rye
Fight Club
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
And I picked two by James Joyce. And there have been two Dickenses and two Keseys mentioned.
Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Roddy Doyle -*** Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha***
Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now
Only 3? That’s just mean. As a protest, I’ll only give you 2:
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
Edwards: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Rand: The Fountainhead
Hugo: Les Misérables
Today it’s:
Daniel Dennett - Consciousness Explained
Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds
Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in The Willows
Narrowing it down to three is difficult, so here are three books I’ve read more than three times:
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susannah Clarke
Dracula - Bram Stoker
I’ve read most of the Discworld books at least twice.
Gone with the Wind is number one with a bullet.
#2: Watership Down
#3: The Haunting of Hill House
Subject to change at any moment, because it depends a lot on my mood, but three books I’ve reread several times and will read again in the future:
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
That said, I’m happy to see A Prayer for Owen Meany getting some recognition in this thread.
I could narrow it down to 30 favorites, maybe, but not to only three.
The number one favorite is easy:
- The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
After that, the works of about a dozen authors are jostling and trying to get in, and I can’t choose. Heck, I’d have trouble choosing three out of each genre. But for this moment, I’ll say - The Collected Works of Terry Pratchett
- the Constance and Charlie series by Kate Wilhelm
- Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
- 1984 - George Orwell
- Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon.
Simon’s book should be of particular interest to fans of The Wire. It’s a work of ‘True Crime’ journalism charting a year in the life of a team of Baltimore Homicide detectives. Speaking as someone who had already seen the entire show before picking up the book, I was amazed by how much of the series is based on true events. For instance, that bit where they use the photocopier as a lie detector? That really happened! The anecdote about Prez shooting up his own car? Likewise, and I could go on all day.
Anyway, even if that kind of trivia doesn’t interest you, you should still pick it up. It’s a great read, and one of the few books I’ve ever read that I got so into that I decided to ration myself to a few pages a day so I wouldn’t finish it too quickly.
A list of three doesn’t even allow me to pick my favorite of each genre I read. But here are three of my favorites, based on what I would take to a desert island (and I’m still cheating by listing series):
The Aubrey-Maturin series, by Patrick O’Brian
All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot
The Outlander series, Diana Gabaldon
The Holy Bible - Even viewed as just a work of literature, the breadth of the narrative and beauty of the language (the King James gets bonus points here) are things of wonder. As a Christian who just finished my first full read-through, it’s more or less impossible for me not to include the Bible.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - The first Christie novel I can remember reading, with a great twist that I never saw coming. Bonus points for not making use of any of Christie’s recurring detectives, who can get a bit old sometimes.
Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross - My favorite comic, bar none, it gives a great study of the characters of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman and a rejection of a lot of what I hate in superhero stories (not to mention beautiful art from Alex Ross.)
Honorable mentions go to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, World War Z by Max Brooks and The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.
In no particular order:
The Mote in God’s Eye - Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
*The Moon is a Harsh Mistress *- Robert A Heinlein
Gaudy Night - Dorothy L Sayers
Absurdly difficult choice 
but all good reads. Couldn’t pick out one of the Aubrey/Maturin series or a favourite S M Stirling (anything but the Draka!), nothing from Ngiao Marsh, Ellis Peters, or Lesley Davis, no James Clavell or even - God help me - Tom Clancy!