5 ONLY books that MUST be read.

Drat again.

I forgot to mention John Steinbeck's 'The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights'. It's the best retelling of the Arthur myth ever and the only thing I don't like about it is that Steinbeck didn't finish it. It's a beautiful story about flawed human beings.
Can I swap it for Night Watch and have everyone take it as read that I really like Terry Pratchett?

I don't need to take out random books magi ! I always have my maximum number out (I like non-fiction that I can dip in and out of a lot)

It's like a sweetie shop!

Fourth choice: The Periodic Table by Primo Levi and the fifth - I can't decide! I'll sleep on it!

Oh no, I can't stop...

Jonny Steinbergs THE NUMBER. It's about the gangs that operate in Cape Town prisons. It is an incredible book. I was literally the whole time I was reading it. His other books are v.v. interesting too.

And

The Good Surgeon of Crowthorne. It's another incredible book

Summary - Cut and pasted from Amazon
The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the OED's editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language

I better stop now or I will be in trouble.

Second choice.... Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and third choice Perfume (crap film, fab book!)

100% true, Very.

I choose my books &then always make a point of taking out at least 4 other random ones that I know I won't read, but that will bump up the figures for my lovely local library.

heartichoke!! have not read the whole thread but thought I was the only person in the world who'd read archy and mehitabel

Mockingbird

Gatsby

King Lear

Pride & prejudice

Die Panne (The Breakdown)

Catch 22 - just the best, funniest and saddest book ever
If This Is A Man - heartbreaking
Of Mice And Men - small but perfectly formed
Nineteen Eighty-Four - gripping and terrifying
The Lord Of The Rings - for some classic escapism after all that lot!

I had to put aside loads of books that I love but know not everyone else would. Absolutely everyone should read these five.

Aghhh, I had forgotten about A Fine Balance . I love every one of Rohinton Mistrys books. They are so moving, sad but funny too. Absolutely brilliant.

My list is getting very long.

Excellent! I must be giving it a go to single- handedly keep our library going!

First choice: The Five People You Meet in Heaven.... 4 more to go......

No very they will love you

PointyFangs
Louis De Bernières The Latin Trilogy are amazing books and should be in my top five too. I didn't like his later books half as much and I was positively about Captain Corellis Manderin.

I love Mario Vargas Llosa too. Aunt Julia and the Sciptwriter and The GreenHouse are my favourites and I would need these in my top 20 5 books.

...and then there is Gabriel García Márquez's books, I really enjoyed One Hundred Years of Solitude even if I did get a bit confused with all those names beginning with A

Is that true magimedi?

I always thought the local library must curse me with the number of books I order and request on inter lending!

Pride and Prejudice
The Grapes Of Wrath
1984
A Fine Balance
The End Of The Affair

I hated To Kill A Mockingbird

Come on Hully - we are all waiting for your five.

Especially as your ruddy thread has lead me to putting more books on my wish list than I am likely to be able to buy in the next 2 years.

AND East Sussex on line library service (may it live for ever) is down until at least 2/12/13 and possibly a bit longer.

(Bit longer is according to the lovely woman who runs my local library).

May libraries flourish for ever - please join yours & take out lots & lots of books. It doesn't matter if you don't read 'em - libraries are rated on their borrowing numbers.

Rebecca
The Stand
Pride and Prejudice
Lolita
The Goldfinch

Vanity Fair - a massive panorama of life lived in society.
When We Were Orphans - because when you work out just why he's using the 'unreliable narrator' device, you will weep for all that you've lost, just by being born at the time you were.
The Master and Margarita - big subjects in the hands of an, erm, master. It will draw you in, take up all of your imagination and spit you out again, and you'll love it for that.
Lights Out For The Capital - if you don't love London, you don't get it, and that makes you spiritually impoverished.
And echoing so many on here - To Kill A Mockingbird, because Atticus Finch is the father that we all should have had.

The Quincunx - Charles Palliser
The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Barsetshire Chronicles - Anthony Trollope
............... still honing.

Crap. I haven't managed to fit any Louis de Bernieres in there.

Can I break the rules and add the entire Latin American Trilogy in as my sixth?

No, didn't think so...

Fabulous thread concept, by the way!

Keith Roberts - Pavane - because it's beautiful, because it's a ground-breaking example of alternative reality fiction, because I will never stop re-reading it, because of its subtle Celtic mythology.

Diana Wynne Jones - The Homeward Bounders. Quite possibly her most underrated book. Beautiful use of mythology and human tragedy

Tim Powers - The Anubis Gates. Because I love the time travel aspect of it, because he really knows his fencing and because he interweaves poetry and Egyptian mythology.

L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt - The Roaring Trumpet. Yes, Norse mythology. It's also very witty and clever, and I just love the cockroach racing scene in the fire giants' jail between Heimdall and the protagonist. Cracks me up every time.

Terry Pratchett - Night Watch. The best Vimes book of the lot, although all the Vimes ones are stunning.