As a youth, for me it was, "Where The Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls

As an adult there are a few:
"Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose
"A Brief History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
"A Walk In The Woods" by Bill Bryson

I highly recommend these non fiction books. What are your recommendations?

__________________
"The Dude abides"

Although they are long and intricate reading some of my favorites have been Theodore Ayrault Dodge series on what he called the great captains of military commanders. He named six, three ancient: Alexander, Hannibal and Julius Caesar and three modern: Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. Dodge was a Civil War veteran and visited the sites of all the actions.

__________________
KM
S&WCA 3110 S&WHF 625

Way too many favorites to list. Clancy, Thor, DeMille, Flynn, and Hemmingway are my most loved writers. Plus anything History.

__________________
No baby we aint

I can't do it. It's like literary "Whack-a-Mole". Every time I think of a good example another one pops up.

__________________
Music/Sports/Beer fan

Not one book, but Robert Heinlein rings a bell with me, with his themes, thoughts and described actions.
'Stranger In a Strange Land', and 'Starship Troopers' have interesting political actions in the future as well as interesting dialogue among the characters. Both have situations in them that can make you think twice about what is being said before continuing on and both can be dark.

* Definitely not the Hollywood film Starship Troopers, which was like a Disney cartoon version of the novel.

__________________
Wherever my mind isn't
Jim

"The Runner" by Christopher Reich

__________________
John

Atlas Shrugged

__________________
SWCA #2817

Very hard to pick one book but a series by any of these people is my favorite, Baldacci, Box, Connelly, Cussler, Sanford, Woods and the list goes on. John Sanford would have to be the top of the list with his Lucas Davenport series of Prey books. Good reads.

The Prairie Years and The War Years—Carl Sandburg.

Lee’s Lieutents—Douglas Southhall Freeman.

Blood Meridian—Cormac McCarthy.

The Dog of the South—Charles Portis.

The Western Canon—Harold Bloom.

__________________
Possum—The other white meat!

1984 by George Orwell

Before I opened the thread I was already thinking “Where the Red Fern Grows”.

Also the “Big Red”, “Irish Red”, etc. books by Jim Kjelgaard.

Difficult choice, for the classic authors James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Later and maybe my favorite would be J. R. R. Tolkien, followed by Frank Herbert.

So many great books, and so little time. But one of the very best that always comes to mind is Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. Great story about the owner, trainer, jockey and of course the horse.

As a child it was "Ferdinand the Bull".
"The Bounty Trilogy" is a favorite.
Now mostly WWII non fiction.

__________________
"from my cold dead hands" C.H.

Les Miserables, Killer Angels

__________________
Just hanging with my dogs

"Away All Boats" or "A Year in a Yawl".
I'm surprised nobody said the Bible.

__________________
Foster Positivity.

Of its 66 books, Psalms is my favorite.

__________________
Music/Sports/Beer fan

As a child Jack London's "Call of the Wild" made a big impression on me.

I learned a lot from Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor".

I loved Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" and "Streets of Laredo". John Ross's "Unintended Consequences" kept me turning the pages as did another doom porn book , "One Second After".

James Alexander Thom's "Long Knife" is a historical novel about the settling of Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio area and is worth the time to read more than once. I like John Sanford and Carl Hiassen, also the guy that writes the Reacher novels and the guy that wrote "Dirty White Boys" has written several I like.

__________________
God spelled backwards is dog.

Not surprisingly, my non-fiction choice would be the Bible.

Early in my recreational reading endeavors I was captured by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's charming descriptions of Victorian era London and the impeccable logic and amazing observational powers of S. Holmes.

There's too many to choose just one . . . unless . . . it's the Bible. The only book I read some of nearly every day. But it's got an unfair advantage over those penned by mere mortals.

__________________
Or something like that . . .

The Bible for me, too, with Proverbs being my favorite book.

After that, "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis.

Like most of you they are too numerous and difficult to rate, but a friend gave me a book last spring that I thoroughly enjoyed, “ News of the
World “ by Paulette Jiles. It was nominated for a National Book Award. It’s set in post Civil War Texas, the two main characters are well drawn and compelling and the story is wonderful. It’s not a long book but it’s a great one.
Regards,
turnerriver

__________________
turnerriver

I love the Master and Commander series by Patrick O'Brian. Most of my reading is history and my favorite history book is To the Shores of Tripoli by A.B. Whipple. Is an excellent history of the Barbery Wars and is great reading.

__________________
AL
Pax Per Potens

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Richard Adam’s Watership Down ...

In particular, Tolkien and Lewis. I have been rereading those every decade or so since I was about ten years old. Bought e-copies of both to keep in my iPad for hospital stays. Comfort reading.

Also, bought used but nice editions of them for my bookshelf when furnishing my second home in Oregon a couple of years ago. I like having my favorite books close at hand.

Life on the Mississippi ~ Mark Twain.

__________________
and what his trumpet saith

This book occupies a place of honor in my gun safe. It is a construction album that my aunt made of the building of my house, starting with the bare lot and going through settlement and my welcoming party for my neighbors and everybody who helped me move in and get settled in the house. She came by the job site every day to take pictures and assembled them into an album with dates and descriptions of everything that went on. The fringe benefit was that when I refinanced it showed the appraisers what went into my house.

I grew up reading Louis Lamour and still re-read then today. There are to many to name.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I've always been partial to Dr. Suess. Particularly, 'Go Dog, Go'......

The Subject and Structure of Scientific Revolution. Ya buddy, a great read.

Many favorites, but one that I always keep a copy of and reread from time to time is “Alas Babylon” by Pat Frank.

I’m pleased to see Heinlein and Herbert mentioned. Two of my favorites. I reread “Farnham’s Freehold” by the former not too long ago and I’m looking for a copy of “The White Plague” by the latter to read again.

__________________
USS Brewton FF1086
SWCA#3597

Holy Bible for me too. And I agree Proverbs is a great read worth repeating every so often.

Though written in very similar style, 'Go Dog, Go' was written by P.D. Eastman. I love that one too. It actually belonged to my almost 10 years younger brother, I loved it then and I love it now. Great fun to read and the illustrations are great.

My favorite Dr. Suess was easily 'One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish" though 'Green Eggs and Ham' is up there.

"My shoe is off, my foot is cold

I have a bird I like to hold

Now my story has all been told"


"Green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam I Am"


And "Go Dog Go"

"Do you like my hat?"

"I do not like your hat!"

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

For me it's "Atlas Shrugged" and "Stranger in a Strange Land".

As an aside, about 15 years ago I did some work at Paul Allen's estate on Lopez Island. I had to be in his bedroom as a part of my (legitimate) work, and was very impressed with the custom made book case that made up his headboard. About 6' high x 12' wide & filled with pristine copies of all the old paperback science fiction standards. Heinlein, Asimov, all the greats. I admit, I had to check out some of the copies, mostly to see if my favorites were there (and the they were). Absolutely amazing. I was later told that, of course, I was observed on the security cameras. I had only perused his library in a respectful manner, with no harm done, and nothing more was said - luckily. But I still remember the occasion fondly.

__________________
Mitch
SWCA 2438

I never read fiction, it's always some sort of history book.
But the first thing I thought of is
"a sand county almanac"
by Aldo Leopold

Robert R. McCammon's Swan Song and Stephen King's The Stand.

Mike


P.S. Anything by WEB Griffin, Harry Turtledove, Robert Conroy, amd Robert Ludlum.

__________________
NRA Benefactor
GCA

I believe that was Steven Hunter. He’s written several good books including the Bobby Lee Swager series.

__________________
"Your other right........."

There are so many, but I think Armor by John Steakley stands out as my all time favorite.

Asking a reader which is his favorite book is much like asking a parent which is their favorite child.
I'll need to come back to this....

I'm an avid reader and keep at least two or three books going at once. I read everything from cheap western paperbacks to thousand page tomes. My favorite author by a lot is Ron Chernow. His biographies are superb...as evenhanded as anything I've read. I still have The Warburgs and Grant to do.

I'm currently reading The Apache Wars by Hutton, The Collapse of the Old Order and a Baldacci book. I dote on Sandford.

__________________
Bob.
SWCA 1821

My favorite book? There are so many. Favorite author? Lots of them too. It’s wonderful when the two of them come together.

__________________
"Your other right........."

Being an avid reader since I started I have a lot of favorites I'll try not to be boring.....

My older sister had the set of "Reader's Digest Teenage Treasury" with stories on nearly everything from the Hindenburg, WWII and Korean War stories, land mark medical events and each included a 'book section' with stories like "Buddy of the Seeing Eye" and The Edward's family in Alaska. These were so important to me I bought a new set off Amazon a few years ago.

My staple since I was about 6-8 years old was Tom Swift Jr. I had nearly every book and and my brother had the ones I didn't have.

I had a large well written and beautifully illustrated Ergenmeyer Bible story book that covered about the whole she-bang.

I constantly read our old World Book Encyclopedias and the yearly supplements all though the 50's and 60's.

We had a box set of novels with Mark Twain, Dickens, and other classics I kept my nose in.

Some of my favorite biographies were Rickenbacker and Jefferson.

My lord, history? Mostly the Roman Empire forward, especially the Civil and World Wars.

Books that have changed my life and how I look at things. Siddhartha, Catch 22, Moby Dick, All the King's Men, The Art of War, Clockwork Orange, Slaughterhouse Five, 1984.

I liked science fiction and fantasy but not anything by Tolkein. Ray Bradbury and Asimov were good. In the 60's I was a Space Cadet and anything weird, futuristic or far out appealed to me. HG Wells and Jules Verne. "Pet Sematary"

Mysteries, Simone's "Maigret" books, Alfred Hitchcock, Sherlock Holmes. Edgar Allen Poe.


Favorites in general. "Islands In the Stream" and about any other Hemingway. Anything by Shakespeare, especially 'Macbeth'. Richard Feynman's books. "Grapes of Wrath", "Call of the Wild", "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Hondo". I think that 'Moby Dick' is about my favorite.

Anything on science, technology and medicine.

LOTS of short stories.

I like the Harry Potter books for whimsical and creative imagination up until the time Cedric died. After that, no more fun.

I fell off of deep reading a few years back, but now I'm trying to make up by reading the greatest books that I missed. I've read:

Atlas Shrugged
The Jungle
The Sound and the Fury
Portrait of Dorian Gray
Lolita
Brave New World
Crime and Punishment
Of Human Bondage
Some Proust



Funny:

Confederacy of Dunces


Overrated:

Gone With the Wind (The movie was fantastic)
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Da Vinci Code (WAY disappointing)
The Riders of the Purple Sage


Book that I felt like I needed to take a bath after reading it:
Tobacco Road.

Surprisingly good:

1000 Splendid Suns (an Afghan woman author and women in a hostile culture)

Children's books I still enjoy:

Charlotte's Web
Where the Sidewalk Ends
A Light in the Attic

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

There are way too many. It is easier to fix on authors, because if an author is worth reading, I will read a lot of their books. Way too many of them, too.

Nabokov, particularly Pale Fire and Lolita
Pynchon, V and Gravity’s Rainbow. Trouble with Pynchon is he’s unreadable unless I am in the right frame of mind. I hear Mason and Dixon is his best; I’ll have to give it another try when I’m in the mood.
Ian McEwan, the Comfort of Strangers, Atonement
Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, the Border Trilogy
James Lee Burke, Dave Robicheaux series
Raymond Chandler, the Big Sleep, etc., etc. etc.
Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
Paul Bowles, the Sheltering Sky
Vonnegut, esp. Cat’s Cradle and Sirens of Titan
William Gibson
Harlan Ellison
Philip K. Dick
Philip Jose Farmer
Ray Bradbury
Bukowski
John le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; the Honourable Schoolboy; a Perfect Spy
Graham Greene, not just fot The Quiet American, but for his whole body of work. Thanks to Cardboard Killer for the reminder. Greene was a huge, looming presence for Le Carre, both literary and personal.
Anthony Burgess, for A Clockwork Orange, and most especially for Earthly Powers, which sports the best opening line in all fiction, no contest.
Pete Dexter, for The Paperboy. The movie almost did it justice, but not quite. Like Winter’s Bone, it is worth reading three or four or five times.

__________________
Not in jail.

But it had Denise Richards. I can forgive much in a film if it let me see the young Denise. She's still attractive at 47, but back when she made that movie and, Wild Things, she was really hot.

As for other Heinlein books, I liked, Tunnel in the Sky, Between Planets, and Friday, among others.
A major boyhood favorite was Chad Oliver's, Mists of Dawn, about a lad who went back 50,000 years in his uncle's time machine. He had a Colt .45 automatic, which he found to be quite effective against enemies. This was before it was PC to admire Neanderthals, so they were the villains.

I also like Jim Corbett's books about man-eaters in India, Robert C. Ruark's novels, especially, Something of Value, and read widely in detective and adventure fiction. I was a fan of James Bond before the first movie arrived, Dr. No.

I read Wilbur Smith's books and was glad to see interviews with him from his home in Cape Town and elsewhere. Check YouTube.

John Sandford is an author whom I follow, and I'm glad to see him and his star character, Lucas Davenport, leave MN.

In non-fiction, I read a lot of military history books. I especially like first person battle accounts, like the late Donald R. Burgett wrote. And I have three bookcases full of books on animals and hunting adventure. I've read the works of men like J.A. Hunter and Kenneth Anderson as well as Corbett's. And a lot of real stuff about sharks, bears, snakes, and big cats. Yes, I read, Jaws, too, and Benchley's other titles.

When I read fiction, I like to learn real new facts. For instance, I had not heard of gazpacho, or Le Montrachet white Burgundy, or the secret to knowing if you're eating real scallops until I read, Jaws.

Admittedly, that was in 1975 and I was just beginning to learn seriously about wine.

Oh: I was a total fan of Peter O'Donnell's, Modesty Blaise novels and the comic strip, when I could find any of the comics, not widely seen in the USA. But the strips ran in 57 countries in all, and bound volumes are now available. US newspapers avoided the comic, as it was too adult for US family reading.
And it wasn't American, always a big thing with US audiences. James Bond was an exception to that rule.

Besides the Bible?
Couldn't name just one book.
Or even one author.
Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, Herbert, Niven, Robinson, Crichton.
Sci-Fi has been my thing since I read 2001 a Space Odyssey in 5th grade.

The books of the Bible are by far my favorite historical/poetical/non-fiction, but I would be lying if I said they were the most fun to read.

Hands down my favorite is the Hobbit.

Quoting from memory:
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

That is the first sentence in the book and I've never read another opening as good. I must have read this book at least 25 times and it never gets old for me.

Without exaggeration I've read a couple thousand books. I read every night. Now I have an Amazon Kindle and keep it with me constantly. I have at least a hundred books on it and am constantly getting more. Even so, when I saw the title of this thread, I didn't hesitate, the Hobbit is still the best.

The second is like unto it; the Lord of the Rings. Here is a quote from that book that I found very profound and it often comes to mind especially in these times:
"He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace."

-Samwise: of a fallen soldier (The Two Towers)

__________________
Freedom isn't free.

The Greatest Story Yet Told, El Biblia.

Too many to list, but my first favorite was The Hobbit, followed closely by The Martian Chronicles and anything Hemingway or Jack London. As to contemporary writers, I like Ken Follet’s work.

Way too many to list. One book that made an impact on me in my youth was "Atlas Shrugged". It helped me focus.

William Manchester was a good author. He wrote "Goodbye Darkness" which was about his life as a Marine during WWII. It is a must read for any WWII history buff.

Other than that, my favorite book is usually the one I am reading.

As others have said, too many to list here. A few fiction favorites,
The "Prey" series by John Sanford.
"The Godfather" by Mario Puzo.
"The Blue of Capricorn" by Eugene Burdick. A book of short stories about the South Pacific. Read it several times. Helps me get thru Michigan winters.

Too many favourite books to even try to list them. And no "favourite book" on it's own.

And I do have and read "The Bible".

__________________
Expect the unexpected