The question was: What's your favourite novel of all time? I don't mean a good one you've read recently and recommend. I mean one you may have read years ago but that remains your favourite to this day? Such a firm favourite that you don't have to think about it when asked this question. Favourite, of course, implies only one, but if there are more than one in that part of your heart reserved for fine literature let's hear them all.
And the results are in! Here is the definitive list of MR members' favourite novels of all time! With links to Amazon. A bonus PDF is attached at the bottom for offline decisions (again with links to Amazon). Happy reading folks
1984 (George Orwell)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)
Agony and the Ecstasy, the (Irving Stone)
Alchemist, the (Paulo Coelho)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
Artemis Fowl (series) (Eoin Colfer)
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
Awakening, the (Kate Chopin)
Big Clock, the (Kenneth Fearing)
Book of Bebb, the (Frederick Buechner)
Boy/Going Solo (Roald Dahl)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
Breathing Lessons (Anne Tyler)
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
Canticle for Leibowitz, a (Walter Miller)
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
Catcher in the Rye, the (J.D. Salinger)
Confederacy of Dunces, a (John Kennedy Toole)
Count of Monte Cristo, the (Alexandre Dumas)
Da Vinci Code, the (Dan Brown)
Dark Tower series, the (Stephen King)
Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
E: A Novel (Matt Beaumont))
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Enigma (Robert Harris)
Eugene Onegin (Alexander Pushkin)
Eye in the Sky (Philip K. Dick)
Factotum (Charles Bukowski)
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Badbury)
First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the (Stephen R. Donaldson)
Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)
Foundation Trilogy, the (Isaac Asimov)
Fountainhead, the (Ayn Rand)
Gates of Fire (Steven Pressfield)
God of Small Things, the (Arundhati Roy)
Godfather, the (Mario Puzo)
Gold Coast, the (Nelson DeMille)
Good Earth, the (Pearl S. Buck)
Grapes of Wrath, the (John Steinbeck)
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)
Great Gatsby, the (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Great Longing, the (Marcel Möring)
Ham on Rye (Charles Bukowski)
Hardwired (Walter Jon Williams)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
High Fidelity (Nick Hornby)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the (series) (Douglas Adams)
Hot Zone, the (Richard Preston)
House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)
Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Ice People, the (La Nuit des Temps) (René Barjavel)
In the Lake of the Woods (Tim O'Brien)
In the Skin of a Lion (Michael Ondaatje)
Instant Enemy, the (Ross MacDonald)
Jedi Academy Trilogy, the (Kevin J. Anderson)
Journey to the End of the Night (Louis-Ferdinand Celine)
Lamb (Christopher Moore)
Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, the (Vladimir Voinovich)
Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Master and Commander (AubreyMaturin series) (Patrick O'Brien)
Microserfs (Douglas Coupland)
Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
Moveable Feast, a (Ernest Hemingway)
Name of the Rose, the (Umberto Eco)
Neuromancer (William Gibson)
Oblomov (Ivan Goncharov)
Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham)
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
Of Walking on Ice (Werner Herzog)
On the Black Hill (Bruce Chatwin)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Patrick Süskind)
Pictures of Hollis Woods (Patricia Riley Giff)
Pillars of the Earth, the (Ken Follett)
Power of One, the (Bryce Courtenay)
Prophet, the (Kahlil Gibran)
Revenge of the Lawn (Richard Brautigan)
Road to Wigan Pier, the (George Orwell)
Roots (Alex Haley)
Saigon (Anthony Grey)
Shogun (James Clavell)
Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)
Silver Sword, the (Ian Serraillier)
Six Days of the Condor (James Grady)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Sleepers (Lorenzo Carcaterra)
Starship Troopers (Robert A. Heinlein)
Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlein)
Tale of Two Cities, a (Charles Dickens)
Tandia (Bryce Courtenay)
Tartar Steppe, the (Dino Buzzati)
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)
Things They Carried, the (Tim O'Brien)
This Time Next Week (Leslie Thomas)
Three Musketeers, the (Alexandre Dumas)
Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
Tortilla Curtain, the (T.C. Boyle)
Waves, the (Virginia Woolf)
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the (Haruki Murakami)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)
And the results are in! Here is the definitive list of MR members' favourite novels of all time! With links to Amazon. A bonus PDF is attached at the bottom for offline decisions (again with links to Amazon). Happy reading folks
1984 (George Orwell)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)
Agony and the Ecstasy, the (Irving Stone)
Alchemist, the (Paulo Coelho)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
Artemis Fowl (series) (Eoin Colfer)
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
Awakening, the (Kate Chopin)
Big Clock, the (Kenneth Fearing)
Book of Bebb, the (Frederick Buechner)
Boy/Going Solo (Roald Dahl)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
Breathing Lessons (Anne Tyler)
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
Canticle for Leibowitz, a (Walter Miller)
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
Catcher in the Rye, the (J.D. Salinger)
Confederacy of Dunces, a (John Kennedy Toole)
Count of Monte Cristo, the (Alexandre Dumas)
Da Vinci Code, the (Dan Brown)
Dark Tower series, the (Stephen King)
Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
E: A Novel (Matt Beaumont))
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Enigma (Robert Harris)
Eugene Onegin (Alexander Pushkin)
Eye in the Sky (Philip K. Dick)
Factotum (Charles Bukowski)
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Badbury)
First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the (Stephen R. Donaldson)
Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)
Foundation Trilogy, the (Isaac Asimov)
Fountainhead, the (Ayn Rand)
Gates of Fire (Steven Pressfield)
God of Small Things, the (Arundhati Roy)
Godfather, the (Mario Puzo)
Gold Coast, the (Nelson DeMille)
Good Earth, the (Pearl S. Buck)
Grapes of Wrath, the (John Steinbeck)
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)
Great Gatsby, the (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Great Longing, the (Marcel Möring)
Ham on Rye (Charles Bukowski)
Hardwired (Walter Jon Williams)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
High Fidelity (Nick Hornby)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the (series) (Douglas Adams)
Hot Zone, the (Richard Preston)
House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)
Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Ice People, the (La Nuit des Temps) (René Barjavel)
In the Lake of the Woods (Tim O'Brien)
In the Skin of a Lion (Michael Ondaatje)
Instant Enemy, the (Ross MacDonald)
Jedi Academy Trilogy, the (Kevin J. Anderson)
Journey to the End of the Night (Louis-Ferdinand Celine)
Lamb (Christopher Moore)
Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, the (Vladimir Voinovich)
Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Master and Commander (AubreyMaturin series) (Patrick O'Brien)
Microserfs (Douglas Coupland)
Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
Moveable Feast, a (Ernest Hemingway)
Name of the Rose, the (Umberto Eco)
Neuromancer (William Gibson)
Oblomov (Ivan Goncharov)
Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham)
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
Of Walking on Ice (Werner Herzog)
On the Black Hill (Bruce Chatwin)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Patrick Süskind)
Pictures of Hollis Woods (Patricia Riley Giff)
Pillars of the Earth, the (Ken Follett)
Power of One, the (Bryce Courtenay)
Prophet, the (Kahlil Gibran)
Revenge of the Lawn (Richard Brautigan)
Road to Wigan Pier, the (George Orwell)
Roots (Alex Haley)
Saigon (Anthony Grey)
Shogun (James Clavell)
Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)
Silver Sword, the (Ian Serraillier)
Six Days of the Condor (James Grady)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Sleepers (Lorenzo Carcaterra)
Starship Troopers (Robert A. Heinlein)
Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlein)
Tale of Two Cities, a (Charles Dickens)
Tandia (Bryce Courtenay)
Tartar Steppe, the (Dino Buzzati)
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)
Things They Carried, the (Tim O'Brien)
This Time Next Week (Leslie Thomas)
Three Musketeers, the (Alexandre Dumas)
Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
Tortilla Curtain, the (T.C. Boyle)
Waves, the (Virginia Woolf)
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the (Haruki Murakami)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)