A Novel You Love

[Extollager]

Seventeen years ago, before I joined Chrons, I asked some people:

What's a novel you love? What comes to mind?

Interpret the question as you like -- though I will say that it doesn't have to be sff or horror.

 

[AlexH]

I haven't read many novels, but Replay by Ken Grimwood usually comes to mind first. I loved Wolf's Brother by Megan Lindholm too. I was very invested in the main character in both.

What novel do you love?

 

[Extollager]

I started this thread with one in mind -- one I am reading for the 8th or 9th time now -- but I think I'll wait to say for a little bit, lest the original poster commenting this early might somehow influence things. I hope a lot more people will send in theirs. Thanks for being the first!

 

[BAYLOR]

The Star Rover by Jack London. Of all the books ive ever read , I love this one best of all.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Komarr

 

[Foxbat]

Two novels that stand above all others for me.

In The Skin Of A Lion. It’s dreamlike and nostalgic in a manner that leaves you reminiscing over your own earlier years. If ever there was prose made poetry, this book is an example.


Moby Dick. It’s not perfect but it’s one that I keep returning to. I find the language evocative and its themes always leave me thinking.

Rip out the middle hundred or so pages and you might have one if the best novels ever written.

 

[hitmouse]

This is a really hard question. Distinct from favourite or greatest novel. Has to have associations, I think.

Finn Family Moomintroll or one of its sequels, by Tove Jansson.

 

[Droflet]

Ender's Game, To Kill a Mockingbird and Uncommon Purpose.

 

[HareBrain]

The Grey King by Susan Cooper.

 

[CupofJoe]

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Came to it through the film and then having to read it at school. Nothing kills a book faster than 30 bored school kids droning through a book they couldn't care less about, but as soon as we got through the first few pages I was hooked and was reading ahead as fast as I could.
It and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam are the only two books I have given as presents to people.
In genre and it has to be The Hobbit. I cannot really remember a time when I didn't love the book. I think I have 5 different versions it. some very well thumbed and read.

 

[Toby Frost]

For sheer good consistent fun, I'd choose Homunculus, by James P Blaylock. I'd also choose The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler, which I think is brilliant both as a conventional novel and a crime story. I love Count Zero by William Gibson, too.

 

[Bick]

Hmm, not sure. I love a few perhaps, but maybe I’ll name just one: Foundation.

 

[tinkerdan]

When I was small it was one of the Dr. Suess books
Early school years it was the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron
Middle school it was The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas
High School it was The Atlas Shrugged by Ann Rand until I read her Fountainhead.

For a brief time in collage it was Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Fariña
About the same time The Great Divorce by CS Lewis.

I wanted so much to make it The Odyssey a Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis However, that went the same way as Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes into the stacks of books I didn't have the stamina to finish(possibly with both I have had poor translations).

Recently it was The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hašek
Translation from the Slovak--a book suggested to me by a friend when they discovered that my granddad came from Czech Republic.

As you can see the novels I love are part of an easily changeable feast.

At the moment,
having recently finished,
Cordwainer Smith's
The Rediscovery of Man,
an Omnibus of his shorts ,
all in the same universe,
that read like a novel,
so there you have it.

 

[Toby Frost]

That last paragraph was very nearly a poem!

 

[Randy M.]

First title that came to mind, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

Then the mind flooded: Absalom,Absalom;Moby Dick;Labyrinths;The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn;The Maltese Falcon;The Wind's Twelve Quarters;The Big Sleep;The Circus of Dr. Lao;The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes;Something Wicked This Way Comes;At the Mountains of Madness;The Course of the Heart;Men, Martians and Machines;Cane;Winesburg, Ohio;The Things They Carried;The Land of Laughs;...

Darn mind.

 

[TWErvin2]

My top three are:

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

 

[luriantimetraveler]

Without fail, I go back to Cannery Row by Steinbeck. I had the great pleasure of teaching it to 9th graders, and I loved hearing them pull their own truths and connections out of the story.

 

[tinkerdan]

That last paragraph was very nearly a poem!

Yes my rather feeble nod,
to Cordwainer,
whose stories tend to wax poetic.

 

[Phyrebrat]

It's torture to give only one, as there a more than a handful I have read many times.

However, the OP said one, so: The Elementals by Michael McDowell is the one I choose. It's a 1980s pulp Southern Gothic horror from the man who brought us Beetlejuice. It's written in Omni so is of that period but it's a cracking story (only around 250 pages) and at times laugh-out-loud funny.

If I can just be a little sycophantic and wax lyrical about Dan Jones' upcoming novel - I'm expecting it to become one of my all-time favourites when it finds a publishing home. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say but I was privileged to Beta it and actually cried at the end. And it stayed with me for days afterwards. /endgush

pH

 

[AlexH]

Moby Dick. It’s not perfect but it’s one that I keep returning to. I find the language evocative and its themes always leave me thinking.

Rip out the middle hundred or so pages and you might have one if the best novels ever written.

Have you read the abridged version? I've thought I should, but it seems wrong!