> What would you say are the best fiction books ever written?

I wouldn't presume to make a list of the *best*, but I can tell you some of my favourites. My definition of that is any book that I can happily read six million times, year after year, even when I just about know it all by heart, and STILL want to read it again. Some of them I can read numerous times a year, others need to settle in and be semi-forgotten before I come back to them like old friends. These aren't in any particular order.

The Lord of the Rings
Treasure Island
King Solomon's Mines
Kidnapped
Any of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple or Poirot stories
Shogun (James Clavell)
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
Herodotus's "History" (all right, all right, he didn't intend it as fiction, but it is one awesomely entertaining read)
The Guns of Navarone (Alistair Maclean)
The Golden Rendezvous (Alistair Maclean)
Moby Dick (I'm probably the only person in the *world* who reads *that* for pleasure)
My Family and Other Animals (Gerald Durrell)
Hmm, most of Gerald Durrell's other books, too
The Ladies of Mandrigyn (a heroic fantasy thing whose author I can't remember)
Innumerable books by Terry Pratchett
Les Miserables
The Wind in the Willows
The first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant trilogy
Le Morte D'Arthur (Malory)
The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
Beowulf
Njal's Saga (not quite sure if that qualifies as fiction, but what the heck)
Huckleberry Finn
Under the Mountain (a children's book by NZ author Maurice Gee)
The Odyssey

I think I'd better stop there or I'll end up with a list longer than the Adventures With Dave story. Besides, I know as soon as I hit "post" I'll think of another 20 books that should have been right at the top of the list.

Brunnen-"does this reveal anything about my personality?"G