Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut. A collection of short stories.
Because even the worst story is good and there are at least 3 absolute gems in there that should be required reading in every school. I can carry that book anywhere, open it to any page and start reading with pleasure. And because I can’t help feeling like my dog can understand everything I’m saying 
As much as I’ve tried to claim to love the classics that I’ve sloughed through, I can’t admit them honestly. That said, I’m going to narrow the list to 3 which are a bit unorthodox.
Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper. My fourth grade teacher introduced me to the Dark is Rising series and that was the first installment. I’ll always remember reading this book in our downstairs living room. I had my feet up on one end of the loveseat and my head bolstered by pillows on the other when I started. A couple hours passed and when I looked up I realized that my body had unconsciously shifted into the quintessential edge-of-the-seat position.
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. A recent addition, but after reading through that maze and escaping the other end, it took me a long time to feel like I wanted to read a book again. But in a good way. It set a creative standard that I felt couldn’t be met any time soon.
Honorable mention: The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. My intro to mythology as a world wide net that encapsulates the human experience and shows that fabled red thread which connects us all.
I just realized I didn’t state why it’s my favorite.
To tell the truth, I don’t even really know why, and I’m not terribly inclined to analyze it too much. I suppose the big deal, though, is that it evoked feelings on a grander scale than other things I had previously read. It’s easy to find books that can make you sad, angry, or whatever; it’s hard to find books that can overwhelm you with grandeur, give play to tremendous courage and complete treachery, give voice to silly songs and tales of sorrow and sacrifice, and speak of the wonder of creation, hope, and despair. To do all that in a consistent, believable world is a major feat.
RR
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, because Nabokov’s prose is so lyrical that it flows like music and he writes with such beauty that I forget, in spite of everything that he’s done, what a bastard Humbert really is.
I can’t possibly choose a favorite book, because different genres have different things to recommend them. Most obviously, my love for, say, Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World is quite different from my love of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but not less or more. Similarly, my affection of Mary Gaitskill’s Because They Wanted To (a collection of short stories with little in common other than the author’s style and brilliance) is not much like my appreciation of the Pat Califia-edited Daddy, which is again different from my love of the great Valerie Martin or Pat Conroy or Toni Morrison.
Winne the Pooh and House at Pooh Corner.
Tender interaction between the characters.
More than one reason exists as to why Lord of the Rings is at the top of my list. Tolkien’s mastery of the pen n’prose is the main reason, it’s an extra added bonus the book is both compelling and fun!
Ignasious is one of my favorite charactors. The publishing of the book posthumous is something else I value for some reason in this instance. I think it’s because I’m from New England and I’m surrounded by a cacophany of affluent dunces all the time that and I can empathize with his disdain for “snobish elitism”. It remains one of the funniest I’ve read in a while.
The OP asked for our favorites, not for the books we considered the Greatest. Those are two different lists for me, although there is some overlap.
Fair enough. My question is answered
There are very few books I’ve read more than once for personal enjoyment. All science fiction. Common thread would be that they’re more about exploring how individuals/societies adapt to changes than excessive details about the science/technology underlying those changes… which is a common author wank in sci-fi.
Armor, Ender’s Game, The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.
Honorable mention: Knowledge of Angels, which is one of the few books assigned in high school I actually found interesting enough to really sit down and read at the time. I’d probably read it again if I happened across it at a book store.
“The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense. Actually, the three philosophies are barely distinguishable…”
Favourite novel: Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Why? Because it’s relentless, encyclopedic and beautiful, and it changed my way of thinking about the possibilities of novels forever, even more than ‘Naked Lunch’, which was my favourite before MD. The best piece of advice I ever got in reading was from a great lecturer who told me that you don’t have to enjoy every page - if you want to skim through the slower parts, that’s fine.
Favourite ‘fiction’ book: Labyrinths by Borges. Why? Every story makes me smile, and I have to spend time (sometimes five minutes, sometimes a week) after each one, to absorb the whole thing.
These days I spend most of my time reading non-fiction, and it’s much harder to choose a favourite n-f book.
The Fountainhead.
Because it was written before Rand became bitter, before she lost her almost childlike adoration of human intelligence and reason and achievement and creativity and honesty and integrity and singular devotion to one’s principles and ideals. Hearing her speak, in person, when she was in a good mood, I heard the mind that created *The Fountainhead, *much more than the mind of her later years, when the depression took over. And it was, by far, the most intense and electrifying intelligence I’ve ever experienced first-hand. And she taught me to appreciate the music of Rachmaninoff. I will always be grateful to her for that, in spite of . . . well, everything else.
And the “rape” scene was amazing . . . in the context of the rest of the book.
And in the end . . . he got the girl!
Heh, I’ve read a few of the other books out there, and I’ve certainly enjoyed many of them, but I know my favorite “book” is an odd choice. It’s Have a Nice Day the autobiography of Mick Foley, my favorite professional wrestler when I was young.
It’s my favorite because as a kid, I really loved the guy, and I was in a dark place with depression in high school, and that was sort of the first book that really spoke to ME- the fat loser kid who wondered if he’d ever really do anything. The book’s always been inspiring to me, and to know that he hand wrote out each and every page of it rather than having it ghost written by a professional (and it shows- I wouldn’t really recommend the book to just anyone or any english majors looking for “high” literature), just really made me admire the guy. He’s not a great writer, but he’s the one that I could EASILY relate to, as I could always see myself in his shoes. I’ve always been inspired by that book because it really helped me out of those years of my life. Since then I’ve always tried to read it once a year, and I always enjoy reading it as it brings back pleasant memories now of my childhood and that warm fuzzy feeling of where I was and where I am now, and that maybe someday I too could hand write an autobiography like that- just for myself to really read. It’s not for everyone, and I know it’s not a classic or anything- but it IS my favorite book because of how it has affected me.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene told me that I was not alone.
Also, LotR, and the works of Flannery O’Connor.
I already posted my favorite fiction but it occurred to me to think about non fiction.
Best is probably Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams, a travelogue in which he travels the world with a photographer in an attempt to find and get pictures of species which are soon likely to be extinct. What’s great is that the people he meets on his journey are as quirky and interesting as the characters in his novel.
Honorable mention to Michael Chrichton’s colection of essays, Travels; The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, and How Children Learn by John Holt.