Your View: What is the Best Book Ever Written?

I realize that we haven’t had a week go by yet, but I want to test the new “Your View” category to ensure that it really is worth pursuing. Therefore, we have our second installment of “Your View” a mere two days after the last. This time our question relates to literature – one of the more popular categories on the site.

As I mentioned in the comments on the previous “Your View” list, these posts are meant to help us all get to know each other better and to promote the brilliant community spirit that the site has developed.

What is the best book ever written?

I think the best book ever written is The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles.

Paul Bowles was a beat writer and I was really torn between this book and Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. I opted to exclude Burroughs because I read Naked Lunch at a time in my life that was very up and down and I am not sure if the emotions evoked by the book were from the writing or my own life.

However, The Sheltering Sky really managed to take me to a place I had never been before – I felt the heat of the desert and the struggles in the relationship described. Bowles managed to retain the spirit of the Beat generation whilst writing in a fairly conventional manner.

There are so many books I would dearly have loved to have put here, but I had to pick one. If you want to know the runners up, you can view my very self-indulgent list the Top 10 Favorite Books of JFrater (it was my birthday – I was allowed!)

So – tell me – what is the best book ever written and why?