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Ask HN: What is the best fiction book you've ever read?

12 points by jborden13 ↗ HN
I've been suffering from burnout lately and one of the things I read was that reading books unrelated to work/productivity is supposed to help. I'm headed in vacation in a couple of weeks and I'm curious what the best fiction book you ever read was? If your book is already in the comments below please just upvote it.

51 comments

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tjr
To Kill a Mockingbird
zlbrooks
Slaughterhouse 5, Snowcrash, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
david927
Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, War and Peace
stevekemp
Since you're going with "classics" I'd add:

* Les Liaisons dangereuses

* The Count of Monte Cristo

Plus my personal picks; Taltos the assassin, Chronicles of Amber, Dune & LoTR.

jtbigwoo
All the nerds I know (which is basically everybody I know) like the Vlad Taltos books. As long as you're OK with dragons, sarcasm, and crime you should like them, too.
stevekemp
I just hope he comes back to the Lady Teldra plot sometime soon. The last few books have left me hanging for almost as long as I can bear.
leephillips
Some favorites:

Pale Fire by Nabokov

Ulysses by Joyce

Et Tu, Babe by Leyner

Metamorphosis by Kafka (more a long story)

Things Fall Apart by Achebe

Hamlet and Coriolanus by Shakespeare

The Code of the Woosters by Wodehouse

The Doorbell Rang by Stout

wj
Using best and favorite interchangeably as literature is a pretty subjective subject:

As a kid: Where the Red Fern Grows As an adult: The Dharma Bums

joe8756438
a couple favorites: classic: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian recent scifi: Stories of your life and others (short stories) by Ted Chiang
thesash
A few on my "re-read every few years" list: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Speaker for the Dead, Infinite Jest, Watchmen, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
agilecoder
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother both by Mark Haddon

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

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makerops
Reamde by Neal Stephenson,

Daniel Surez freedom (tm), deamon, and kill decision.

ready player one

anything by mark twain

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smuss77
It's been mentioned, but gotta second Crime and Punishment. Great.
papul1993
I haven't read many books but till date I have never read a book better than The Godfather.
latch
Dune

1984

Would greatly help if you told us what type (or examples) of books you like.

jborden13
I purposely left it open-ended. I probably haven't read a fiction book in 15 years. I've been so heavy on business/marketing/tech/startup/biography books that I'm not even sure what fiction I would enjoy anymore.

Books I've enjoyed recently are Titan, Outliers, Blue Ocean Strategy. I think a portion of my burnout is losing my sense of fun - hence my general attitude towards fiction over the last decade+ has been it's fake and thus a waste of time. While I know that's not true (the waste of time part), it just hasn't been 'productive' to read a fiction book.

So I was just curious which fiction books everyone else enjoyed, and I was going to pick a couple from the list that was created.

jtbigwoo
Look for page-turners rather than literature as you're getting back into fiction. Business and popular non-fiction books these days are written in a very elementary style. I take nothing away from Malcolm Gladwell, but his writing style is very easy to read compared to many of the books we're suggesting.
nicwolff
Top three: Mockingbird, by Walter Tevis; Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban; Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton

Some other favorites: The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller; To Reign In Hell, by Steven Brust; Machine Man, by Max Barry; The Dawn Patrol, by Don Winslow; The Woman, by Hank Ketchum

leephillips
Read Machine Man this year: very effective, really chilling.
fizzbar
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, while maybe not the "best" book ever written, is highly entertaining...
jtbigwoo
All of Neal Stephenson's books have a breezy sense of wonder and adventure with a dash of science-y cleverness.
saturdayplace
If the OP is looking for a page turner, then Stephenson's Snow Crash is another great recommendation. Anathem was slower to me, and Reamde was good. But if I was to pick up Stephenson's stuff again I go to Snow Crash, then Cryptonomicon as my one, two.
tqh
The Baroque cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World is awesome as well. Who doesn't want to read fiction about The Royal Society, Isaac Newton and Liebniz mixed in with phrases in the line with "In memory of Englands greatest swordsman, beaten to death with a club by an Irishman". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle
meerita
I seriously recommend the Riverworld series, written by the excellent Philip José Farmer. I think after The Foundation from Asimov I cannot find anything good or exciting for fiction.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Jos%C3%A9_Farmer

PD: I've read a lot, guys. Those were my favs :D

mast
It's so hard to recommend something without a frame of reference. Personally, I've found myself re-reading The Lord of the Rings lately.

But, if I had to pick one book that was my favourite, I might say Moby Dick. (I'll admit that I actually read it first after seeing the Wrath of Khan as a kid)

meerita
I agree with this. "Fiction" is a really broad term and may lead to many different and, probably, meaningless suggestions to the OP. If he can specify wich kind of fictions he likes maybe he will get better recommendations, I've read so many fiction books from different genres that it's really hard to choose one in particular.
tptacek
Catch 22.
saturdayplace
Catch 22 is a fantastic read. I don't think I've read anything else where everything in the book is such a great illustration of its main theme. Plus, it's just plain entertaining.
wglb
My daughter first read this in high school, and I think she still rereads it every year.
foobarqux
> When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, "Who has?" -- Heller, author of Catch-22
jtbigwoo
Neuromancer by William Gibson
saturdayplace
Contact by Carl Sagan. I first read it as an adult and it took my breath away. The movie was a fair adaptation.

Also, I like to read Ender's Game once a year or so.