Unless youve just read a handful of books in your life it is impossible to give a good answer to the question.
Books are not oranges.
Books are not oranges.
As an aside, what do you mean by this? I would have an even harder time giving and answer to the best orange I've eaten.
The Hobbit. My brother read it to me when I was just starting to read. When he was done I asked him to read it again. he said no and I learned to read in earnest. I was often shooed out of the adult section of the library. I have read lots of books by now.
That books are not a commodity.
That said, as the author alluded to, 'best' in this context is vague and can mean what we want it to, eg., person a may consider best to mean the book that has had the widest influence, where person b may consider it to mean the book that they personally found the most insightful, etc.
It's a damn shame we haven't figured out how to coerce citrus like we do tomatoes.
I was a ridiculously voracious reader (if I saw it, I wouldn’t put it down until I’d read it) and my answer was always “hard to say, no favorite.”
But then one day you read that book that stands out from everything else (to you, for various personal reasons that might not translate the same for the next person) and suddenly, just like that, you have a favorite book.
I wish you will discover this feeling one day!
And who ranks their oranges?
Some are soups made by your grandmother while you sat in a high-chair and your parents laughed and talked with your uncles in the living room.
Some are the smell of coffee and bacon and eggs and a little more smoke than usual in the air in the morning when your dad cooked breakfast.
It's okay to have a special and favorite book, just like it is okay to have a special and favorite food.
And yet, there are many answers to that question in this thread.