What are YOUR bookshelf must haves........? I need educating........................

brilliatn

thanks marina I have been meaning to read that eric newby book for ages

Redmond O'Hanlon - In Trouble Again
Eric Newby - Love and War in the Apennines
Gerald Durrell - My Family and Other Animals (CK reminded me with a mention of big brother Larry)
How could I have forgotten Gabriel Garcia Marquez!
Albert Camus: The Plague

Paul Theroux (for travel books), daddy to Louis Theroux.
Madame Bovary.
Zola - say Germinal
All Quiet on the Western Front by Karl Maria Remarque

Beetlejuice, you've reminded me of the Just William stories too, which I used to love love love

I have been offline for a few days.... Here are some boys books/authors:

Pat Barker, Regeneration Trilogy
Julian Barnes
AS Byatt, Possession
Peter Carey
Bruce Chatwin
Roddy Doyle
Lawrence Durrell, Alexandria Quartet
William Goldin
Graham Greene
Thomas Hardy
Joseph Heller, Catch 22
Primo Levi
Ian McEwan
John McGahern
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Brian Moore
Patrick O'Brian, Aubrey-Maturin series
Anthony Powell, A Dance to the music of time
Graham Swift
Evelyn Waugh

I love everything by Primo Levi, V S Naipul and A day in the life of Ivan Denosvich by Solyshentizin (sp) - has the advantage of being super slender so you can read in one sitting.

A good modern read is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - a semi auto biographical tale of growing up in an African mission.

1984, Animal Farm - George Orwell - must reads
To kill a mockingbird

More suggestions for your daughter:-
Flambards series(well a girl has to have some pony books!)
Charles and Mary Lamb kiddie version of shakespeare stories ?Tales from Shakespeare
Anne of Green Gables
Alan Garner books (especially Elidor and Owl Service)

Has anyone mentioned the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge for your DD? They used to make me cry laughing as a child.

I haven't seen the film vvv but, from what I've heard its completely different - the film I hear is a love story - the book isn't really.

don't think these have been mentioned... for kids:
Just So stories (and other stuff by R Kipling), and Charlotte's web (terrific).

catcher in the rye
couple of shakespeare
a Chaucer
volume of C20th poetry
wasteland
Story of Art
pride & prejudice
suitable boy
an Ian McEwan
Grapes of Wrath
Brave New World
an Oscar Wilde
a really good dictionary
some fun books - comic/Trollope whatever to taste

These aren't all "classics", but here is my list (will remember 100 others as soon as I post I'm sure...)

Any/all Jane Austen
Lord of the Rings
My family & other animals (Gerald Durrell)
Tale of 2 Cities (Dickens) I think it's the only book to make me cry (though Black Beauty I'm sure came close)
Any of the Barchester Chronicles (Trollope)
Anything by Vikram Seth
Any Mapp & Lucia books (EF Benson)
Any PG Wodehouse
Any Walter Scott - loved Ivanhoe

Children:
Narnia
What Katy Did
Chalet School
Milly Molly Mandy (DD just 3 loves this already)
Gruffalo if not already a classic will be I'm sure
Noel Streatfield books
Dr Seuss

has anyone mentioned Little House on the Prairie?

For adults and children.

otherwise, agree with Marina's list.

All of Evelyn Waugh (esp Decline and Fall)
Emma - Jane Austen
Complicity - Iain Banks
Perfume - Patrick Suskind (?)
1984 - George Orwell
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
The Alchemist - Paul Coelho
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Love in the Time of Cholera -
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer

Children's books:
The Lion the Witch and the wardrobe
Danny (Champion of the world)
What Katy Did
Little Women
The Borrowers
Five Children and It
The Secret Garden

I see someone mentioned Mrs Pepperpot too - I loved these - The Book People were doing a cheap set at christmas and I forgot to get it for dd... might see if they still have it !!

Am loving this thread ...

How about:

Room with a view - EM Forster
Gone with the wind

Marina, you added some I am ashamed I forgot, esp I Claudius, The Secret History and The Twelve Caesars (which I actually carried around with me in my bag/pocket along with Ovid for about five years until my copy disintegrated and I had to buy another). I also forgot the plays of Aristophanes and Aeschylus.

I also remembered enjoying the Milly Molly Mandy books as a child, wish I had hung on to them.

I forgot! 'A Tale of Two Cities' - 'tis a far, far better rest . . .

And 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'

Also 'The Scarlet Letter' and 'Moby Dick'.

I have a lot of poetry on my shelves, too.

And a few series, Sister Fidelma, Rebus (he rocks!) and Harry Potter .

For YOU, VVVQV (eek sorry have just seen how long this is :

All of Jane Austen
Great Expectations
David Copperfield
Oliver Twist
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Great Gatsby
Bonfire of the Vanities
I Claudius and Claudius the God (Robert Graves)
The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
A Place of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel)
Eight Months in Ghazzah Street (also Mantel)
War and Peace (Tolstoy)
Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Far from the Madding Crowd (Hardy)
North and South (Mrs Gaskell)
1984 (Orwell)
The Group (Mary McCarthy)
The Deptford, Salterton and Cornish Trilogies (all Robertson Davies)
The Balkan and Levant Trilogies (Olivia Manning)
The Golden Gate (Vikram Seth)
all of the Tales of the City series (Armistead Maupin)
The History Man (Malcolm Bradbury)
Brick Lane (Monica Ali)
House of Sleep, What a Carve-Up!, The Rotters' Club and Closed Circle (all Jonathan Coe)
Edited highlights of Samuel Pepys' Diary
The End of the Affair and Brighton Rock (Graham Greene)
The Twelve Caesars (Suetonius, Graves translation)
All of Alison Weir's excellent historical biographies
Collected Poems of John Donne
Seamus Heaney & Ted Hughes: The Rattlebag
Cider with Rosie (Laurie Lee)
Testament of Youth (Vera Brittain)
Goodbye to All That (Robert Graves)

For your dd, at some point in her reading career!:

The Narnia Chronicles
Katie Morag stories
Hairy Mclary stories
Milly-Molly-Mandy
Just William
Atticus the Story-teller
Britannia - stories from Britain's history
The King of the Copper Mountains (Biegel)
The Land of Green Ginger (Langley)
The Eagle of the Ninth/Brother Dusty-Feet (Rosemary Sutcliff)
Roger Lancelyn Green's volumes of myths, legends and fairy-story retellings
All of Noel Streatfeild
Anne of Green Gables novels
Finn Family Moonintroll series
High Wind in Jamaica (Hughes)
Emil and the Detectives, Lotte and Lisa (both Erich Kastner)
Dark Materials Trilogy
Diary of Anne Frank
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Elizabeth George Speare)
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (Kerr)
Charlotte Sometimes (penelope Lively)
Carrie's War (Nina Bawden)
Green Knowe stories (Lucy M Boston)
A Traveller in Time and A Country Child (Alison Uttley)
All of Philippa Pearce
The Secret Garden and A Little Princess (F Hodgson Burnett)

All books beside bed for easy access:
Dark Materials Trilogy
Wild Swans
Tom Jones
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Ovid
Moll Flanders/Roxana/Journal of the Plague Year
Pamela-Richardson
Les Liasons Dangereuses
Adam Bede
North and South
The Wanderer-Fanny Burney (currently neglecting my daughter as I am desperate to know what happens)

Pride and Prejudice - Austen
Persuasion - Austen
To kill a mocking bird - Lee
The Woman in White - Collins
The Woman in Black - Hill
Rebecca - Du Maurier
The Hobbit - Tolkein
His Dark Materials - Pullman
The Earthsea Trilogy - La Guin
Left Hand of Darkness La Guin
Margret Atwood - almost anything...
Wind in the Willows