What are your "must read" books?

The only books that I love that I haven't seen mentioned here (Time Travellers wife, To Kill a Mockingbird and anything by Phillipa Gregory or Anne Weir my favourites) are

The Secret Life of Bees
One Day
When God was a Rabbit
Water for Elephants

Just seen this thread so thought I'd add my list of 'must reads'

• Possession by A S Byatt
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Germinal by Emile Zola
• The Kite runner by Khalid Hoseini
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Walters
• Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

Loving this!

Thousand splendid suns
Kite runner
Handmaids Tale
red Tent
Oryx and Crake
we nee to talk about Kevin
a Suitable Boy
The other Boleyn girl
Jude the Obscure
moll Flanders
the Woman in White

There's probably a lot more!

Hi all. This is my first post here.

My additions to this thread are-
To Kill A Mockingbird
Rebecca
His Dark Materials trilogy
A Song of Ice and Fire collection
A Clockwork Orange
Any Sherlock Holmes

Deffo going to read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies after seeing recommendations on here.

Many of my favourite books have been mentioned already, so as to not duplicate (unless this is a massive x-post) I'll add:-

Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. In fact, anything by him.
The Black Angel by John Connolly. Or start with Every Dead Thing and work your way through the series.
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Club by Ludovic Kennedy.
Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh.
All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

Ooh like this ...

The Magic Toyshop Angela Carter
Anything by Margaret Atwood
Mara and Dan by Doris Lessing
Five People You Meet in Heaven Mitch Albom
How I Live Now Meg Rosoff (now a film)
Lord of the Flies
To Kill a Mockingbird
All of the Shadow of the Wind books (in fact anything by Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
Northern Lights Trilogy
Lovely Bones
Through a Glass Darkly Jostein Gaarder (sobbed in a plane reading this!!)

My list is endless!! Good job I am an English teacher ...

The Memory Keepers Daughter
The Light in the Window
The Help
An Evil Cradling
Forget you had a daughter
Memoirs of a Geisha also

Currently reding The Professor and the Housekeeper. Enjoying it.

Whoops . Don't think I need to explain that my post was meant for another thread.

Forgot to say, if you think she oral thrush, a pharmacist should be able to diagnose and sell you something. Might be worth seeing if there is a pharmacy open in your area today

A Fine Balance
The God of Small Things
The Kite Runner
The Long Song
Alias Grace

snow child was a lovely book: would really recommend it even though its summer!

oooooh and some John Irving esp A prayer for Owen meany, and Garp. And to kill a mocking bird. On a roll but must sleep ..

The deletion was because of spamming. Several old book threads got bombed.

I'm glad anybody's cried Zombie yet, I'm going to enjoy reading this thread!

My must-reads are:
Sleep it off, Lady (Jean Rhys)
Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)
The Cement Garden (Ian McEwan)
Mythologies (Roland Barthes)
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (MR James)
The Haunting (Shirley Jackson)
In Praise of Older Women (Stephen Wiesnewski)

I second the Steinbeck books also..

Since I bumped it: the Book Thief, we need to talk about Kevin, Margaret Attwood cat's eye/handmaids tale, Cormack McCarthy The Road, The Personhood Bible. Classics: Lord of the Flies, 1984, Mayor of Casterbridge. So much more but these are the first round that spring to mind.

"One hundred years of solitude" and "Love in times of cholera", Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In fact, most of his books.

"Blindness", Jose Saramago

Most of Wodehouse.

Well since its being bumped...

Of mice and men
The Grapes of wrath (both John Steinbeck)

bump

Two not too

Quite a few of my 'must reads' have already been mentioned -
The Stand
Lord of the Rings
The War of Don Emmuels Nether Parts ( and the other too in the trilogy)
Cold Comfort Farm

I would like to add -
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Terms of Endearment ( or anything by Larry McMurtry)
Excession - Iain M Banks
Eon - Greg Bear
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Red, Green and Blue Mars ( trilogy) - Kim Stanley Robinson

Now I'm intrigued as to why Ioanna revived such an old thread and what she must have said the get deleted...

Books I have enjoyed recently include Song For Achilles, the Help and Tiger Hills but wouldn't say that any of them are must reads

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
A History Of Love- Nicole Krauss
The Famished Road- Ben Okri
Capital- John Lanchester
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemerovsky
The Black Path- Åsa Larsson
The Leopard - Jo Nesbø
Stasiland- Anna Funder
The Red and The Black- Stendhal
The English Patient- Michael Ondaatje
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
Sarah's key- Tatiana De Rosnay
Essays in Love- Alain De Botton
So much for That- Lionel Shriver
And yes The Book Thief

What exactly do we mean by "Must Read"?

Just not sure after I saw someone nominate Sherlock Holmes stories as "must reads".