To ask what are your top ten favourite books?

O waited too long and read wveryone else’s lists which reminded me of so many books that I have loved!
the top ‘top ten’:

*The little white horse - Elizabeth Goudge
*The Golden Gate - Vikrem Seth
*The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
*The French Lieutenant’s Woman - John Fowles
*Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Tomas Hardy
*Possession - AS Byatt
*Athena - John Banville
*The girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larson
*The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
*All the Rebus books by Ian Rankin

and then there are all the others that are forever stuck in my mind…

All the Marian Keyes books
Energy Medicine - Donna Eden
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
The Collector - John Fowles
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allen
The Nightingale - Kristen Hannah
The Women - Kristen Hannah
The Heather Blazing - Colm Toibin
The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
Behind the Scenes of the Museum - Kate Atkinson
The Seven Sisters series - Lucinda Riley
The Hunger Games series
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Claudine at School - Colette
All of the Harry Potter Series
The Secret History - Donna Tartt

Thanks for the great ideas for books I have never read but need to now!

I don't know anyone who has read Pavane! I read it decades ago, can't remember it well but it must have made a big impression because I don't recall the titles of many books I read back then.

The Blue Castle by L M Montgomery
The Girl in a Swing by Richard Adams
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Old Baggage series by Lissa Evans
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
The Crimson Petal and the White by
Michel Faber
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

All books I could read over and over and the characters still live on in my head.

Depends on my mood! But off the top of my head:

1. The Handmaid's Tale
2. Memoirs of a Geisha
3. Notes from a Big Country
4. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
5. Elantris
6. The Pelican Brief
7. Kiss the Girls
8. The Thursday Murder Club (series)
9. A Simple Act of Violence

In no particular order:
1984 George Orwell
Goodbye to all that by Robert Graves
Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee
Watership Down Richard Adams
Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson
Dream of Fair Horses Patricia Leitch
Fear of Fifty Erica Jong
Rivals Jilly Cooper

It's really hard to choose 10 favourites but these are some of the ones I have read multiple times.

1.Wild - Cheryl Strayed
2.Wintering -Katherine May
3.The Way of the Hermit - Ken Smith
4.English Pastoral - James Rebanks
5.The complete book of self sufficiency - John Seymour.
6.Any Human Heart - William Boyd
7.The Way Home - Mark Boyle
8.Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
9.The Wild Other - Clover Stroud
10. The Once and Future King - TH White

I can’t possibly choose just 10 as it depends if I’m in the mood for a comfort read, a crime , espionage’or a more thoughtful read. Authors I enjoy over and over
Elly Griffiths
Kate Atkinson
Miss Read
David Mitchell
Donna Tartt
Charles Cummings
Alex Gerlis
Philip Kerr
Ken Follet
Mark Dawson
Ruth Rendell
ELizabeth Jane Howard
Jodi Taylor

Re reading my vast collection of childhood books

Plus non fiction…

Sorry is this greedy?

Books are the best!

The Lady vanishes - Ethel Lina White
Pride and Prejudice/ Persuasion - Jane Austen
Travels with my Aunt - Graham Greene
Rivers of London series - Ben Aaronovitch
Things in Jars - Jess Kidd
And then there were none - Agatha Christie
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh
Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes ( Also loved The brightest star in the sky )
Rita Haworth and Shawshank redemption - Stephen King

You’re not misremembering and when I went to the cinema the other day I saw that a film is coming out soon! All those characters. And Dame Washakot and the Slippery Slip.

I read it for A level. It’s a million miles away from most books I read but it captured my heart and I still read it from time to time. It’s a masterpiece. In fact, I haven’t read it for a few years so I think I’ll read it again soon.

Oh the Magic Faraway Tree brings back memories - Silky, Saucepan Man and Moonface, or am I misremembering?!

1. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
2. The Heart’s Invisble Furies by John Boyne

the others, in no particular order…

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Goolden
The Enchanted Wood/Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Me Before you -Jojo Moyes
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

and many other books I love but too hard to prioritise them.

Aww! Hello! 👋

You're absolutely right, so many people don't know about it at all. And it is honestly amazing. I generally love Hardy anyway, but this is such a standout book, it's so layered and has brilliant symmetry that just makes it feel like a fait accompli if that makes sense? Love, fate and the human condition. My original copy is so dog-eared now that I probably need to buy a new one before it falls apart completely - which is almost a metaphor for the marriages in the book!!

It’s impossible to choose just ten! In no particular order:

The Murmur of Bees - Sofia Segovia
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
Room - Emma Donoghue
Animal’s People - Indra Sinha
The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler
Take What You Can Carry - Gian Sardar
Emma - Jane Austen
Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell

Plus the Strike series, anything by Bill Bryson and also Jilly Cooper

You are the first person I’ve ever come across who has The return of the Native as their favourite book. Its mine too. So many people have never heard of of it!

1. Pride and prejudice - Jane Austen
2. Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
3. Then she was gone - Lisa Jewell
4. The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer
5. Mr Mercedes - Stephen King
6. Trespasses - Louise Kennedy
7. Perfume - Patrick Suskind
8. Shuggie Bain - Douglas Bain
9. TKAMB - Harper Lee
10. The woman in white - Wilkie Collins

Got the title wrong. Not “After The Party” but “Last One at the Party” - read it over two days last summer. Loved it.

Agree with so many of the books already mentioned, including Rebecca, Name of the rose and Precious bane.

Would also include any of the trilogies by Robertson Davies, HG Wells Anna Veronica and Elizabeth Strout's Tell me everything.

I find most books a bit meh. I love a proper story, an epic, an adventure, something that really works the imagination… I’m not sure about a top ten but here are some titles that I’ve enjoyed:

1. Jane Eyre
2. Memoirs of a Geisha
3. The Time Traveller’s Wife
4. Piranesi
5. The Bone Clocks (generally anything by David Mitchell as I love the worlds he creates)
6. I am I am I am - Seventeen Brushes with Death (generally anything by Maggie O’Farrell as she writes so beautifully)
7. A Gentleman in Moscow (but currently reading The Lincoln Highway which a PP included up thread so maybe it will push A Gentleman in Moscow off the list)
8. The Heart’s Invisible Furies
9. After The Party
10. The Gold Finch

I like a lot of the early Ian McEwan novels too.

• The Foxes of Harrow - Frank Yerby
• The Willowpool - Elizabeth Elgin
• Rebecca - Daphne de Maurier
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernier
• The Nightingale- Kristin Hannah
• Where the Crawdads Sing - Delis Owen’s
• The Hanging of Hettie Gale - Tess Burnett
• The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
• Enigma - Robert Harris

Nightingale Wood, Stella Gibbons
The Fancy, Monica Dickens
Experience, Martin Amis
The Satsuma Complex, Bob Mortimer
Hotel Avocado, Bob Mortimer
The Happy Prisoner, Monica Dickens
Lionel Asbo, Martin Amis
Anything by Hilary Mantel
The Happy Death of the General, short story by Louis de Bernieres
Anything by Stella Gibbons

FajitaQueen · Today 20:02
As an English Literature student 30 years ago, there was quite a lot of discussion about which modern authors would be the Classics of tomorrow. The same discussion probably still continues today.

That’s interesting - can you remember any of the other modern authors - apart from John Le Carre & Graham Greene (I agree about The End of the Affair) - that would be the classics of the future?
I guess Kingsley Amis isn’t considered appropriate nowadays but maybe Martin?

The works of Nancy Mitford and Daphne du Maurier remain stubbornly in print 😂 and they’ve been on quite a few of the lists on this thread though I don’t suppose they’re mentioned in books on 20th century literature.

Some of my favourites are:

Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
The Girls by Lori Lansens
Carnavale by M R Lovric
The Rose Grower by Michelle de Kretser
The Lady and The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
Precious Bane by Mary Webb
That Bonesetter Woman by Frances Quinn
Cats Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Raging Quiet by Sherryl Jordan
Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers
Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid

I know that’s more than 10, I could go on….😁