Best Book I Ever Read

It wasn't even hard to decide that the best book I have ever read, and that includes my childhood favorites like Caddy Woodlawn, and Heidi, Alice in Wonderland, and all the self help books that took the place of having a mother, and Nabokov and Tolstoy and Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Dostoevsky. This is it, The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Too finely done, too full of cliches that only the "in group" could relate to, too much like listening to music. He has my vote and the Nobel people liked him too and now he is to be made a knight, and his photograph in the back of Satanic Verses when he must have been the same age as my grandson Jon Mikael, looks just like my grandson Jon Mikael who just graduated, by the way, from University of Chicago. This book must be owned. My son Richard who is the book man, (current and priceless books) has a first edition copy. For me it could be used as is the bible, dipped into a chapter here and there, not as a life guide but comparable to finest art and finest music. It is difficult. Don't say I didn't warn you.