Favourite novel?

'Illusions perdues' - or 'Lost Illusions' - by Honoré de Balzac is one that I frequently read. It is, perhaps, not my favourite but one of them. It was a book much revered by Oscar Wilde who considered it almost as his 'bible' paralleling the detail of Shakespeare's dramatic works and the wrangles of human existence; altough, not with the rich poetic metre that Shakespeare used. Today, in France, Balzac has thesame reverence as he had during the nineteenth century.