FAVORITE NOVEL (The "Your NT friendsR DUMB" ed.)

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Whenever one of yer dumb, semi-educated "'Facebook' friends" writes, "I just read THE best novel EVERRRRRR...and soooooo...I'D TOooootally recommend it TO YOU - YAYYYYY!! !" but...lol...then...they list some...just...comPLETEly, bull$hit, $hitty-a$$$$$$/embarrassing novel (or author), WHAT NOVEL (in your opinion) ALWAYS comes to (YOUR) mind as "THE Greatest Novel, EVER Written"?

(LOL You know that, if YOU were to recommend YOUR [fav.] novel to THEM, they'd be like, "Ummmmm, Ewwwww, NO! That's STUPID!! ! THAT'S,
like, over 200-PAGES!! !")

For ME - MY favorite novel is "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham (1915).

This novel's often ranked in the top-100 among "Classics".

Without giving-it-COMPLETELY-away, it's about a young, poor, English boy (who has a deformity) and his gradual, life-altering lessons... in each of the following life-areas: religion, education, the question on "love" vs. "desire", "women vs. men" (Can anyone declare who's usually smarter?), the importance - and power - of money, the importance of art vs. the condemnation of wasting your time pursuing art, life-long desires for travel & freedom vs. security. Also, marriage, attitude, the coldness of death... and friendship.

Ya REALLY hafta "stick with it" in places, because, in places, it's slow and not happy (just like LIFE CAN be, sometimes) - and Maugham goes to great lengths to condemn "the pursuit of art", however, in the end (lol), it ends-up being (imho)
THE most extraordinarily work of written-art, EVER (by arguably the most popular author of his time)!

This novel contains such honesty!

WHAT novel DO YOU most-love (i.e., which novel KICKED your a$$$$)?

Why?

Last edited by WilFindUndrstndng on 24 Jan 2014, 4:02 pm, edited 4 times in total.

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" ...

"Cities in Flight" ...

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."

The book depicts working class poverty, the absence of social programs, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. Wikipedia

My favorites include - -

American Tabloid, by James Elroy
Labyrinthine story of two FBI agents, and a mob enforcer/hit man who find themselves drawn into the still murky chapter of American history in the Kennedy years when the CIA worked hand in glove with organized crime to kill Fidel Castro. As this combustible mixture leads to the unthinkable, one agent loses his soul, the other discovers discovers by the time it's too late that he had never had one, while incredibly enough, the mob henchman rediscovers his.

Heart Of Darkness, by Joesph Conrad.
The basis of the movie Apocalypse Now, the narrator is sent by the ivory company he works for to find one of their agents, a charismatic German man named Mr. Kurtz, who has gone missing deep in the jungle of the Congo. There, he discovers the terrible truth, that Kurtz had succumbed to the isolation from western civilization, losing his mind and becoming god of his own little piece of Africa.

Fat White Vampire Blues, by Andrew Fox.
A vampire named Jules, having gained an incredible amount of weight by feeding on the high fat diet of the poor black people of New Orleans, finds a younger, meaner black vampire muscling in on his action, and telling him to stay away from his old feeding grounds for racial reasons. Jules finds himself faced with misadventures in this farcical horror novel as he tries to regain his old hunting ground.

I'm sure there are others.

1984 by George Orwell

No description necessary, as I think most people here already know what it's about.

What the heck! How many favorites can a person have?

actual novels? ....Probably Heat Wave by Richard Castle. I love those books....

Considering that the vast majority of literary works are little more than narcissistic drivel, it's possible to have at least one favorite from every genre and sub-genre.

For instance, in addition to the two works of science-fiction I mentioned above, my favorite children's stories are "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss, and "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown.

I'm not really one for fiction, and I don't read it very often at all, but I enjoyed the novel "Assignment In Brittany" by Helen MacInnes. It's not in the best novel ever written category, that's for sure, but I enjoyed it when I read it. My best friend in high school made me read a similar story about WWII bravery and espionage, but i didn't really enjoy it. He loved that book, but I didn't. So it's all very subjective, I think.

john dies at the end and this book is full of spiders.
"Kevin Smith’s Clerks meets H.P. Lovecraft"

The novel that comes to mind is Infinite Jest.

Patrick O'Brian's amazing Aubrey/Maturin series, considered as one vast book. (The first one is Master and Commander.)

I don't have any dumb friends, though, if that matters.

hmm tough tough tough one!

À Rebours by Huysmans

Great Expectations, I suppose . It is the only Dickens novel that I have read to date, but it greatly impressed me with the complexity of its technique. The way to approach it is to read all of Shakespeare's plays first. There is barely a scene that isn't an intertextual pastiche from Shakespeare's plays. These references paint character nuance, but also plant expectations which prime us to look for certain things that we wouldn't notice otherwise. This, as well as Pip's expectations, informs the title. GE also works as a prequel to the modern detective novel as It is set before London had a modern detective force, yet plays with the conventions of the genre. Every film adaptation misses the point, and makes people hate Dickens!

My favourite contemporary novel is, ASOIAF.

I don't technically have a single favourite. I have favourites in various genres, of course.

If I had to choose the one book that everyone who is literate should read, then it'd be George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. That is debatably the single most important novel ever to be written in the English language.