What is the best book you've ever read?

Hollowed out version of Science of Running by Steve Magness.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Who else could ever write so seriously and informatively about inner lives, personal struggles, addiction, and sports while also writing some of the funniest and creepiest sections of any book?

nods to other favorites as well: Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche; Republic, Plato; "The Dead," Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce; The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov; The Death of Ivan Ilych and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy; Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky; The Bridge of San Luis Rey; Labyrinths, Borges; The Gift of Death, Derrida; Blood Meridian, McCarthy; The Garden of Eden and A Moveable Feast, Hemingway; Being and Time, Heidegger; Doctor Faustus, Mann; Foucault's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose, Eco; As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Go Down, Moses, Faulkner.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, or any book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I second the Gabriel Garcia Marquez reco. Love in the Time of Cholera and Love and Other Demons are fantastic.I also recommend Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb, anything by E. Annie Proulx, and Long Walk to Freedom.I'm currently reading Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis, which is really interesting, both for the content and the fact that he obviously wrote it all himself (i.e. no ghost writer and barely an editor).

No One Writes to the Colonel wrote:

One Hundred Years of Solitude, or any book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Rosy Crucifixion, by Henry Miller, a wonderful overview of life at 40 from a romantic reprobate. I tried to read it when I was 25, and I was bored to tears. At 30, I picked it up. It made perfect sense to me. F'ing gorgeous book.

Like Miller, I was involved with a career femme fatale who was both my muse, and my undoing. How sweet it is, how sweet is was.

Non-Fiction: Food of the Gods, Terence McKenna. OK, so Terence was completely nuts. No matter, He was smart as hell, and I love him. You have to read this book, and you must eat some magic mushrooms.

Shocked it made it to page four without anyone suggesting "Once a Runner"

Hey Black Med Student --

I can't recommend any investment book, but I do encourage you to buy real estate instead of renting. Build equity, instead of throw your $$$ to a landlord.

Look into loans with low/no fees, no pre-payment penalty, and decent interest rates. Do your homework on loans.

Also, if you have good credit and some capital, consider investing in rental properties. Again, do your research. Look at Zillow and the other real estate sites. There are areas where you can buy a rental property for a good price and charge a rent that covers your overhead and delivers profit.

We bought a rental property in Portland OR, and the wife and I are realizing a profit. But it's not the most profitable market. We bought in Portland because we love the town, having lived there, and may live there again.

Some markets will deliver more value, for example Des Moines, Iowa. This town has good prospects with a range of industries such as health care and insurance building infrastructure, and a good return on investment for your rental property dollar. OK, I'm done, just telling you what worked well for my family. Good luck! Wishing you well.

try The Canon of Medicine by Avicenna, if you can find it

Also surprised to see so many votes for 'Brothers Karamazov' and 'Crime and Punishment' with almost no mention of Dostoyevsky's other great works. Here's my list (with my absolute favorites starred):

Novels:

Notes from the Underground - Dostoyevsky

The Idiot* - Dostoyevsky

The Unbearable Lightness of Being* - Kundera

Invisible Man - Ellison

A Prayer for Owen Meany* - Irving

The Sun Also Rises* - Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemingway

The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald

Death of a Salesman - Miller

Collections of Short Stories:

The Elephant Vanishes* - Murakami

You Do Understand* - Blatnik

Viennese Short Stories - Veza Canetti

The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel - Babel

The Overcoat - Gogol (okay, this isn't a collection, but I couldn't resist...)

I'm currently reading 'Identity' by Kundera and 'Love and Obstacles' by Hemon, so I'll bump this thread if either of those turn out to be great...

Dune