What is yout favorite novel?

Read it twice. Didn't like it either time.

Page four and no William Faulkner?

Start with Go Down, Moses. Maybe it's not his best novel, but critics argue whether it is a novel or just a collection of stories. I believe that it holds together well as a whole.

Of course, the great American novel is The Brothers K by David James Duncan. No, it has nothing to do with a Russian novel with a similar name. The Brothers K is about baseball. Not only baseball, though.

Agreed. Overly long due to constant repetition.

King should read Greene to learn a little efficiency.

No contest:  The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. 

Can't believe the second post was The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut as that would have been my choice - thought his first two books were his best.

This is not my favorite novel, probably, but I just read "Cry The Beloved Country" (don't know how I missed that all these years).   Just because of my spot in life, I found it devastating and fantastic.  If you are a father troubled by a son, this is an amazing book (great for other people too probably).  

Also, if you have some time on your hands, check out the author's intended cut of "Look Homeward Angel" (which alas is just available in hardcover - no Kindle edition).  This just came out last year or something and is better than an already great book.  And while we are at it "You can't go home again" is awesome even if you have to read 200 pages that seem like drivel before you are awed.

@chiaroscuro62: I have never heard of those books. Do you mean the book 'Cry, the Beloved Country' written by Alan Paton? And 'Look Homeward, Angel' written by Thomas Wolfe?

I my remember years ago how impressed I was with myself after reading both Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead.

I cant imagine myself today reading through 300+ pages of John Galt's speech  again, and even less caring about any of it :)

Yes - but Look Homeward Angel was originally published when it was extremely edited by a guy who is a highly respected editor (whose name I can't remember because I had some medical procedure today and am seriously drugged) but he chopped it up.  There is a brand new edition which retores all of Wolfe's edited out stuff.  That makes some parts of it very different from the version that was out even a couple of years ago.  Thomas Wolfe is among the most talented writers to ever live (so says Faulkner) and that you haven't heard of him is because he died very young (and you didn't go to school in North Carolina where he was from so he is revered).  So if you have the $32 (or whatever)  get the new version (far be it from me to stop you from reading the edited version if you need Kindle editions which I greatly prefer).

Cry The Beloved Country is by Alan Paton.  I've never read anything else by him though I think he wrote 10 or so books after his amazing first novel.  I hid in the bathroom and cried after finishing that book.  Really moving for me....

And because I am thinking of books that moved me...  Shusaku Endo's "Silence" is a great read but I think it helps if you are a reasonably religious Christian (Endo was Catholic, I'm currently Episcopalian but have been every brand of Protestant that exists I think).  

Oh..and this is a nice thread.  I smiled at many of these posts thinking of some of these books that I enjoy and putting a couple on my "to-do" list.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee has to be one of the finest I've read. It seems damn near perfect.

My son's favorite was "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving, and I have to give it two thumbs up also. It's a wonderful, magical novel.

For diving in and reading (rereading) a great epic from an old "friend," I can't beat "The Lord of the Rings" by Tolkien. Though it seems trite and common to bring out such a famous choice, it is famous for a reason.

Favorite all-time Dickens novel is a tie between "The Pickwick Papers" (hysterical) and "David Copperfield."

And for modern thriller fiction, no novel but a novelist: Jonathan Kellerman. If I want thrills and excellent detective writing, I know that Kellerman will keep me up until the wee hours every time.

there's nothing wrong with pulp fiction, trying hard to read a book makes me mad. i read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' once on a really quiet 8 hour train journey. Never again, the guy was tapped who wrote it.

It shocks me how many people like To Kill a Mockingbird. I get that it's a compelling story. I've read dozens of novels that deal with issues of racism in the South in the 1950s-1960s. Many of these are redeeming stories. Most do not make a White man the hero. Most are written by Black authors.

To be honest, I have not read To Kill a Mockingbird. I stated it. I found the characters cliche and wooden. I found the prose pedestrian. I quit reading, and concluded the book was terribly overrated.

I had a student in a college class who was a high school English teacher and raved about the discussions that To Kill a Mockingbird provokes. I wanted to know whether those same discussions (and other more useful ones) migh be provoked by Ernest Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Unlike that novel by a White Southern woman, Gaines does not need a White man to rescue Black victims of racial oppression. In Gaines's work, the Black victims rescue themselves and their peers.

Both books became films.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman was pretty amusing.

I never read it, but why would a Buddhist have a motorcycle, let alone have to fix it?

I've only read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance once. I have no reason to avoid repeating the experience except for the stack of books awaiting their first time.

Plato is the main character in Zen, even though it's not clear that you meet him. Have I said to much?

Wow! I wiki'd it and it is a philosophy book which sold 5 million copies!?

That's weird...I thought philosophy books were never supposed to make money

No, it's philosophers who don't make money.