What's Veeky Forums's unironically favorite book? Now, I'm not talking about the best, but your favorite...

It can hardly be said that The Count of Monte Cristo is a shitty book. One might say it's not particularly ambitious prose-wise or that it doesn't go in depth with interesting themes. But shitty, that's a very stupid opinion, in my opinion.

Good taste

Mine is probably Witz or The Recognitions

The Leopard.

A confederacy of dunces, forever.

I know it sounds euphoric but it feels like reading myself, except smarter.

The Ender's Game saga, XenoVerse being my favorite.

Cannery Row.

I find it beautiful.

Siddhartha, sadly. I need to read more...

Candide

The book that really made me emotional, is Proust's Sodom and Gomorrah. When the narrator finds out that his grandmother was suffering when they were at balbec, and that her last words were "goodbye forever" that really got to me

No book has had me as captivated from start to finish as this, I remember not wanting to finish it because I was worried he would ruin the end and thus make the book imperfect to me. But luckily I didn't have to worry about that :)

The Legacy Of Totalitarianism In A Tundra

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

I really liked Atlas Shrugged too, but only because it presented things in ways which had never been presented to me before

>your emotional favorite
I have a thing for cheap genre fiction settings, so not a good criterion.
Overall, Cyberiad.

A hero of our time by Lermontov. It culminates when he's riding his horse towards one of his women at the end there and the horse just gives out and he's stranded in the countryside and starts crying. That character is so cold and manipulative, so seemingly immoral, but here his basic psychology emerges, which is that he simply has no idea what he's doing, he doesn't understand his life or motives, all he can do is leverage his abilities into controlling others for short term fulfillment. It reminds me of the Russian archetype of the Demon, which Lermontov actually wrote a poem about, this kind of tormented, isolated individual, who by merit of his power/beauty travels around causing havoc and leaving ruins behind him, but is always completely confused and agonized. He can understand other people, and he can treat life as a game, but he can't find anything worth pursuing, and on some level existence itself is just baffling to him. He says near the end something along the lines of 'Am I meant to be only a side character in other people's stories', which is absurd because he is always the central actor in his exploits, what he's really showing is that he's incapable of finding anything worthwhile in whatever he does.

The use of an extremely competent/successful person in this role makes it all the more compelling to me, because it shows the completely ambiguous nature of purpose, of the direction in life that matters, fulfillment, etc. I don't see it as a commentary on the human condition in general, but more a particular type of existential affliction some people deal with.

It's not the most original idea but the way he shows it never fails to make emotional, and I've read that book an uncountable number of times.

There are a lot of other themes going on in the book, especially to do with the social politics of Russia at the time, but that is the one that always affects me.

The uncreated conscience of my race.

>that part when Proust realises her grandmother had had a stroke for the first time during their outing

Ender's Game