To ask what are your top ten favourite books?

• The Sun also rises - Hemingway
• Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier
• Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
• Villette - Charlotte Bronte
• The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
• The Secret History - Donna Tartt
• Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
• How I live now - Meg Rosoff
• His dark materials trilogy
• Any Human Heart - William Boyd

In no particular order;

Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
The Cormac Reilly series by Dervla Mc Tiernan
The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa
When All Is Said by Anne Griffin
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham

Should I not read The Road? I have it and was thinking of starting it @BeaAndBen

The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
On The Beach by Neville Shute
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis
Watership Down by Richard Adams

Oh god.

A Month In The Country.
Beyond Black.
A Christmas Carol.
Candide.
Great Expectations.
The Fortnight In September.
Fingersmith.
1984
Leonard And Hungry Paul.
Wuthering Heights.

Right Ho, Jeeves!
Wolf Hall.
Bring Up The Bodies.
Piranesi.
Persuasion.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4.
The Haunting of Hill House.
Kindred.
Cold Comfort Farm.
The Stand.

Oooh, Under the Skin and Fortnight in September!! Loved them both!

my 10 is:

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Goldfinch - Donna Taart
11.22.63 - Stephen King
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
1984 - George Orwell
Wolf Hall (trilogy) - Hilary Mantell
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
The girl with the dragon tattoo - Steig Larrson

The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Yes, the first one is the best. It’s the one most like a novel. To me, Burgess is more of a poet than a novelist, and the Enderby books are explosions of language - firework displays of brilliance. It’s no coincidence that he was a great Joyce scholar.

I tend to think of trilogies as just one book though - as with Waugh’s Sword of Honour or Ford’s Parade’s End. I even think of Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time as a single book.

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Magic Toy Shop - Angela Carter
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
The Magic Faraway Tree books - Enid B
Wuthering Heights - EB
Anne of Green Gables
Please Kill Me - Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - Orwell

1. A Far Cry From Kensington - Muriel Spark
2. Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford
3. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
4. Flights - Olga Tocarczuk
5. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
6. Damon Runyan's short stories
7. The Door - Magda Szabo
8. Emma - Jane Austen
9. Manhattan Beach - Jennifer Egan
10. Lady Eustace's Diamond - Anthony Trollope

I love lots of book series and authors mentioned here - Kinsey Millhone, Barbara Pym, Poirot, etc but these are the single books I'd choose

Inside Mr Enderby? The first one in the series?

Pride and prejudice - Jane austen
emma - Jane Austen
pursuit of love - Nancy Mitford
rebecca - Daphne du maurier
jamaica inn - Daphne du Maurier
a tale of two cities - Charles dickens
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
far from the madding crowd - hardy
the blind assassin - Margaret Atwood
Age of innocence Edith Wharton

I’m cheating and coming back with an extra.

All my Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews.

Oh can we have more than 10? I also adore Rachel’s Holiday
also The Godfather

I studied I know why the caged bird sings for a level, amazing book

Dickens: David Copperfield
Evelyn Waugh: The Sword of Honour
Patrick Fermor: A Time of Gifts
Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That
P. G. Wodehouse: Right Ho Jeeves
Anthony Burgess: Enderby
Iris Murdoch: The Sea, The Sea
Aldous Huxley: Point Counter Point
Virginia Woolf: Orlando
Oscar Wilde: Dorian Gray

Ah - I forgot to add my eleventh: Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes. I don’t like all her books but that one is head and shoulders above the rest. An extraordinarily well written novel.

A Little Princess was one of my childhood favourites - gorgeous book! Nice choice

In no particular order:
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
The Magus - John Fowles
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
The Passage - Justin Cronin
A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Shadow of the Moon - MM Kaye
An Infamous Army - Georgette Heyer
Tom's Midnight Garden - Philippa Pearce

In no particular order:
A Year in Provence
The boy in the striped pyjamas
Call Me Elizabeth
Black Beauty
The Greek Village series
The midnight library
The handmaid's tale
The testaments

So many but these came first in random order. I used to be a voracious reader from a young age. Now I struggle to concentrate at times which makes me sad.