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

Remains of the Day!

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.

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

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

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.

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

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...

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.

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 !)

i'm not much of a poetry person, but I like "Birthday Letters" by Ted Hughes.

More Classics for you:-
The Outsider by Albert Camus
The Mysterious Story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Sophies World by Jostein Gardner

my must haves are;
the battle for christabel by margaret forster(glad someone mentioned it)
catcher in the rye
the handmaids tale
the shellseekers by rosamunde pilcher
jane eyre
about a boy and high fidelity by nick hornby.

poetry? collected poems of tony harrison are fab!
wendy cope is fun
carol ann duffy good too.

i find ted hughes really hard going.
i have a collection of poetry called reflecting families and some of the poems, especially the birth and early parenthood ones just make me choke..

Iron Man by Ted Hughes is great tho'

Stevie Smith anyone?

alexsmum- agree wendy cope is great - we had a v. traditional church wedding but had a wendy cope poem in the middle ...

I would suggest a mixed anthology of poems to see who you like (the poetry on the tube books are quite good - we have a couple and give you a taste of lots of different poets).

I've always liked first world war poetry too after doing it at school.....

one of my first tutorials at uni, the task was to find a poem that described you. i somewhat foolishly chose
' i like to get off with people
i like to lie in their arms'
by stevie smith!

and was it stevie smith who did 'not waving but drowning'?

yes, that's her
i like the jungle husband
someone said she's a bit like larkin on oestrogen
pmsl alexmum ( were you a very confident 18 year old?)

just a bit of a tart!
at least it was honest!

persuasion - jane austen
bleak house - dickens
mill on the floss - george eliot (prefer daniel deronda personally tho)
jude the obscure - hardy (beware, brilliant but harrowing)
ethan frome - edith wharton
to the lighthouse - virginia woolf
howard's end - em forster
women in love - dh lawrence
1984 - orwell
brave new world - huxley
wide sargasso sea - jean rhys (you MUST read this if you've read 'jane eyre'. also LOVE 'good morning, midnight')
oranges are not the only fruit - winterson
remains of the day - ishiguro ('the unconsoled' better, but difficult)

ummm, brain blank!

i really enjoyed tipping the velvet and fingersmith by sarah waters too.