@Matteo Good topic. But there's a rule that I cannot make a list?!?! Okay... how about if I just type out my thoughts as I go through the process of elimination... or maybe the sequence of favorites throughout my life? I'll come up with my all time favorite... but my interests in stories has changed through experience and age.
James and the Giant Peach was the first fiction that fired my imagination, but it was soon bested by
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Which was beaten by
A Horse and his Boy and
Danny, the Champion of the World. I thought that Roald Dahl and C.S. Lewis were the greatest.
The Hobbit was next, but when my babysitter told me about Frodo, Gollum, and the One Ring... I found my next love,
The Lord of the Rings. After that, I discovered Conan (
Queen of the Black Coast and
Beyond the Black River are my faves), John Carter (I'll always love the first five Barsoom stories), and the Tolkien imitation...
The Sword of Shanarra. I must mention that one of my favorite stories was forced upon me in school...
The Count of Monte Cristo. The next epic that really fired me up was
Shogun. I looked for more political adventures and found
The Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War, and
The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth. Politics, history, and adventure (plus patriotism, romance, family, redemption, and God) all came together in
Les Miserables. The next favorite novel was
Lonesome Dove (selected by Bick as his (current) fave). And then George Martin released
A Game of Thrones. He combined all my favorite aspects of Dahl, Tolkien, Howard, Hugo, Dumas, Forsyth, and Clavell... AGOT and
A Storm of Swords are the two best in that series.
Ilium by Dan Simmons is phenomenal. Currently, Joe Abercrombie revs my engine with his stories of the Circle of the World... maybe
The Heroes is my favorite of them.
So that is a sequential list of favorites...
A Darkness at Sethanon, The Belgariad,
Red Storm Rising, The Bourne Identity, Dragonflight, Pirate Freedom, The Name of the Wind, The Black Cauldron, Watership Down, Peace Child, The Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer, The Three Musketeers, All Creatures Great and Small, and
Hearts in Atlantis did not even get considered as faves.
To finally come to the point... my deepest and most continual love is given to
The Lord of the Rings.
Also, thanks for making this thread about a "favorite" and not a "best" novel... I am not qualified to speak on that.