So what IS your favourite book?

[Emerson]

I know, kind of a dead topic, but I can't help myself.

I went to a college where basically all we did is read. And then read some more. And I love reading. A list of my favorites could fill pages, and the top are always in flux, but right now...

The top 5, in chronological order.

The Oedipus Cycle - Sophocles
Don Quijote - Cervantes
Treatise on Human Nature - David Hume
Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

[lucy]

Goethes "Faust" will always be in my top five.
For entertaining "The hitchhikers guide to the universe" by Douglas Adams and many books by John Irving and T.C. Boyle, especially "Hotel New Hampshire" and "Water music".

The only book that has changed my life was a rather lousy written book with great pictures of Tasmania which made me pack my bag and travel thru Australia for almost a year and visit the places i've lived the first four years of my life.
I came back rather different to how i was when i left.

[Pearlgem]

In no particular order:

'Private Peaceful' by Michael Morpurgo moves me to tears every time I read it.
'The Oxford Book of English Verse' I will never be done with.
The poetry of Donne, Auden, R S Thomas.
Shakespeare!
'The Pickwick Papers' or anything by Dickens delights me.
'Interview with the Vampire' by Anne Rice is just riveting and so sensual.
'Dr Faustus' by Marlowe feasts the imagination.
Any Alan Coren for supreme wit and invention with language. Ditto, PG Wodehouse.
'Gerald's Game' by Stephen King. BDSM gone wrong and the creepiest escape attempt ever.
'Black Narcissus' and 'In this House of Brede' by Rumer Godden. She's a wonderful, insightful writer.