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

Sorry for any repeats but.. off the top of my head

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
Catcher in the rye - J D Salinger
Great Gatsby- F Scott Fitzgeraldn
Three men in a boat/ three men on a bummel - Jerome K Jerome
A suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (v. long but worth it !)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Cider House Rules - John Irving
I captured the castle
Anne of Green Gables
Ballet shoes
Roald Dahl
Paddington Books (v. funny for adults !)

Here's another Thomas Hardy fan. (But don't read Jude until your children are grown up ? I'd forgotten all about the horrible bit until I saw the film a few years ago).

I like Dickens, too ? esp. Bleak House.

These are the books I read at least once a year:
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin
To Kill a Mockingbird -Harper Lee
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Winter Solstice - Rosamunde Pilcher
Coming Home - Rosamunde Pilcher
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

for (older) kids:
My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George
The Million Dollar Night - Laurie B Clifford
The Trumpet of the Swan - EB WHite
Incident at Hawk's Hill - Alan W Eckert

I am loving this thread by the way...

The Periodic Table and If this is a Man by Primo Levi
If on a Winters Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
Tender Is the Night F Scott Fiztgerald
The Bell - Iris Murcdoch

All of Jane Austin
Anna Karenina
War and Peace is good (well I loved the peace but found the war heavy going and dull in places)
Lord of the Rings
Birdsong
Jane Eyre

As a child I read just about everything ever published by Enid Blyton several times over.
Roald Dahl - we've just started on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with DS and I think he is following it better because he has seen the film.

I loved
What Katy did
Little women

But I will read just about anything so may be best to ignore me.

A more modern classic I just finished was "Girl with a Pearl Earring". Absolutely wonderful and very sexy, recommended for Mr. Rochester / Jane Eyre fans

Great thanks! Loved the film, will check out the book.

Franny - I agree with your ! Thomas Hardy is wonderful.

Has anyone mentioned Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks?) The most evocative descriptions of both sex and the WW1 trenches I have ever read.

In a similar vein (WW1), Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy. (I'm not a WW1 nut, honestly).

I love Margaret Atwood, but it takes me ages to get into.

Other faves - anything by Barbara Trapido - Brother of the More Famous Jack, the Travelling Hornpipe Player etc.

I also love Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Talk To The Hand. Not novels but great rants about grammar and manners respectively.

Remains of the Day!

Thanks Lockets.
Sorry mummytosteven, but I still say harumph to James. Would like to read Ishiguro but never have - what is best to start with?

Swan's Way
Shakespeare's plays . . . all of them
East of Eden
The Great Gatsby
Jane Eyre
The Bible

maybe I is just a pleb who doesn't appreciate it. and I thought his poetry was fab!

"slow and plodding"

I'm actually upset about this, I feel like someone has kicked my favourite kitten or something

rofl at "Henry James to renew your dislike of the man". He's not that bad in small doses!!

Passage to India by E.M.Forster
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Primo Levi - If this is a man/The Truce (heavy going though, as about his imprisonment in Auschwitz during the war, then return home after liberation)

"Classic Classics"
Vanity Fair by Thackeray
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Emma or Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Franny - did some Thomas Hardy poetry at GCSE - thought it was great - but never could get my head round the novels - a bit too slow and plodding for me

More contemporary classics:-
Truman Capote - In Cold Blood (very good true crime type book)
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Anything by Kazuo Ishiguro (except the Unconsoled - but again maybe I am just a pleb and completely not getting it....)
Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

What is the Battle for Christabel like?

Yellow Wallpaper was Charlotte Perkins Gilman (but I did have to go to the shelf to find out!)
David Copperfield
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins for an engaging read
The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas for a cracking good story
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo for pathos
Hardy for depression
Henry James to renew your dislike of the man
Roald Dahl for nostalgia
Jane Eyre, of course (oh Mr. Rochester!)
For children:
books by Max Velthujis (Frog in Love, etc)
Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein - silly poems, great illustrations
Dr. Seuss - Yertle the Turtle
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
Arnold Loebel -Frog and Toad stories
Shirley Hughes - anything
Richard Scarry - Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, and others
Books illustrated by Korky Paul (Winnie the Witch and others)
Just found a good one at the library the other day - Alphabets are Amazing Animals by Ravishankar and Pieper. Great woodcut illustrations and fun text.
(whispers) Quite like the books by Madonna - The Adventures of Abdi and others.
Somebody stop me! I could go on..

at Thomas Hardy getting slated! Jude is one of my all time favourites, as are all the others on my list, not just stuff I was made to read at school...

Read othello last year, first ever Shakespeare and I loved it. Am I odd?

Great site here - list of classic novels together with cheats guide irreverent plot summaries
novels in a nutshell