To ask what are your top ten favourite books?

Oh, I have The Silver Sword saved on my kindle app. I loved the series so much when it was on television many, many years ago. I was very young and it was the first story to make me cry!

Oh yes, I loved that one too. And I Capture the Castle and Cold Comfort Farm. keep seeing things on other people's lists that I want to add to mine.

Currently, in no particular order:

Lolita - Nabokov
The Sound & The Fury - Faulkner
Lincoln in the Bardo - Saunders
And the Ass Saw the Angel - Cave
Geek Love - Dunn
Great Expectations - Dickens
A Tale for the Time Being - Ozeki
Klara and the Sun - Ishiguro
Beloved - Morrison
The Little Prince - De Saint-Exupery

Extras (cause I don’t like rules):
Child of God - McCarthy
Hangasman - Jackson

Bonus: short story collections:
What I Talk About When I Talk About Love - Carver
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed - Enriquez

I loved we are all completely besides ourselves! Great shout. If you liked that a lot I'd recommend trying I'm thinking of ending things. I thought it had a similar vibe.

So nice to see We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves on someone else's list. I just adored that novel but no one I know has quite the same passion for it.

@busybusybusy2015

Oh definitely!

My children’s book list would include:

The Hobbit, Watership Down & Tiffany Aching series (already mentioned)
The Dark is Rising series
Harry Potter
Goodnight Mr Tom 😭😭
A Monster Calls
The Chronicles of Prydain
How I Live Now
The Secret Garden

I keep seeing other peoples lists and changing my mind!

Great thread for recommendations!

Current favourites - some classics and some I just love

The Great Gatsy
Jekyll & Hyde
Pride & Prejudice
The Beesting
Demon Copperhead
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Of Mice And Men
The End of the Affair
The Comedians
The Third Man
The Kite Runner

I find these lists fascinating - quite a few I'm nodding along then there will be one book I didn't like at all. I'm sure mine will be similar for others - it's so personal isn't it?

I think mine (not in order)-

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
East of Eden, Steinbeck
House of Mirth, Wharton
Perfume, Patrick Suskind
Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes
Dune, Frank Herbert
Gaudy Night, Sayers
Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass

What a great list.

I think all of these have been said a hundred times already. Isn’t it amazing we all have our own relationships with all these characters and worlds! Thanks for the great thread, OP.

1. Trainspotting
2. 1984
3. Homage to Catalonia
4. Down and Out in Paris and London
5. A Moveable Feast
6. The Sun Also Rises
7. For Whom the Bell Tolls
8. Regeneration
9. Song of Solomon
10. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
11. Rebecca
12. Wuthering Heights
13. Lord of the Flies
14. Carry On, Jeeves

Yes I probably should have put the Chalet School in Exile in my top 10 and maybe The School at the Chalet toi

The telling of lies - Timothy Findley
I capture the castle - Dodie Smith
Secret history - Donna Tartt
The winter ghost - Kate Mosse
Cold comfort farm - Stella Gibbons
The aspern papers - Henry James
Still life - Sarah Winman
Dept of speculation - Jenny Offill
The master - Colm Toibin
A theatre for dreamers - Polly Samson

To be honest, there are at least 5 more that could be added but I've stuck to those that I'd happily reread again any time.

Totally agree with this! I would love to add Pollyanna, Heidi and all the Noel Streatfield and Enid Blyton books

Plus all my DB's Arthur Ransome books ~ I absolutely loved "We didn't mean to go to sea"

I've just remembered the Milly-Molly-Mandy books ~ I liked looking at the map of the village she lived in!

And don't get me started on the Chalet School books . . .

Oooooooh love these threads: off the top of my head right now:

The Knightingale
A thousand Splendid Suns
The Time travellers wife
A little life
I who have never known men
Thornbirds
Pride & Prejudice
Never let me go
How to kill your friends
we need to talk about Kevin

and it doesn’t really fit my list but I devoured the Rizzolli & Isles series by Tess Gerritson

Ive also just finished Victorian Psycho which I enjoyed a lot!

In no particular order-

Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
Midwives - Chris Bohjalian
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
The Island - Victoria Hislop
1984 - George Orwell
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
A Song for Summer - Eva Ibbotson
The Husband’s Secret - Liane Moriarty
Salem Falls - Jodi Picoult
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor

In no particular order....
Tara Road by Maeve Binchey.
Divided Loyalties by Patricia Scanlan.
One Hit Wonder by Lisa Jewell.
The Tent, the Bucket and me by Emma Kennedy.
I left my Tent in San Francisco by Emma Kennedy.
Confessions of a Met PC by Matt Delito.
The Harry Potter books.
My Family and other Animals trilogy, by Gerald Durrell.
The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas.
Evergreen Galent by Jean Plaidy.

Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
Endurance - Alfred Lassing
Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier
The Hobbit and LoTR - Tolkien
Night Watch and the Tiffany Aching series - Terry Pratchett

Also love the Goldfinch. It's the best of her brilliant books. I agree I wish they came quicker, but you can't rush genius I guess.

Great thread, OP. My top ten are:

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption - Stephen King
My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie
1984 - George Orwell
Double Indemnity - James M Cain
Strangers on a Train - Patricia Highsmith
Gallowglass - Barbara Vine
Wuthering Heights - Charlotte Bronte
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch - Alexander Soljenytsn

Not much modern stuff I'm afraid.

I forgot The Goldfinch.
I wish Donna Tartt wrote books a bit more often - I’m going to be reading her next novel on a celestial kindle.

Sense of an ending is perfect.
Loving this thread for reminders of lots of beautiful novels. Thanks, OP!

I haven't read all the lists but I second the recommendation for Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan trilogy.

Also if it hasn't been mentioned, the book I was most recently deeply surprised by was Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Equally light and dark, brilliantly funny and also devastating. Just brilliant.

I’d also forgotten about Captain Corelli! Though it was sort of spoiled for me by an ex partner who pointed out LdB’s politics which explained the ‘communist’ character. Still enjoyed the book though.

1 East of Eden - John Steinbeck
2 Grapes of wrath - John Steinbeck
3 One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4 Darkness at noon - Arthur Koestler
5 A fine balance - Rohinton Mistry
6 The gathering - Anne Enright
7 Four letters of love - Niall Williams
8 Happiness - Aminatta Forna
9 Play it as it lays - Joan Didion
10 We are all completely beside ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler

I love knowing other people’s favourite novels - mine change, as I forget about books and sometimes I re-visit a book and realise it was right for me for the time, but it’s not right for me now (or perhaps not as great as I thought it was).

eta: catching up on other posts also want to include A suitable boy, The secret history and Anna Karenina… ten is not enough …