The ninety-second book: #627 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
I've gotten back to the occasional book, as I felt I needed something to occupy me in the morning, and it seemed like time to get to a book I really loved.
2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as, to some extent, Dune, show how some stories are difficult to film and easier to write, to the point where I feel both are better as a visual companion to the book than a work in their own right. For Dune, of course, this has resulted in a generally less liked movie, but the movie version of 2001 is still acclaimed. Its cinematography is spectacular and the core parts of the story work really well - the confrontation with HAL having a tension you can't get in the books - but the more esoteric opening and closing parts make perfect sense in the book but are more vague in the film.
The book, through this, creates a rich world - whether it's the insight into the minds of apes as they develop higher brain functions, the description of life on a long spaceship journey or the visions left by long-dead aliens, it's all engaging and described so well. Clarke isn't necessarily the best at describing action scenes, staying quite clinical, but the interest is in the internal monologue and interactions with the world that stay engaging, even if the date for many predictions have long come and gone, prescient enough to still apply to us even as you ignore the dates mentioned in the story.