Top Five Books Ever?

The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett, they are magnificent.

Also Chocolat, you can read it in one big gulp, love this book.

Vanity Fair, read it once a year, it's like an old friend.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I've had a copy for thirty years and it's my most thumbed book.

Anything else Dorothy Dunnett ever wrote, seriously, the woman was a genius.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles ~ Hardy
Clara ~ Janice Galloway
Wolf Hall ~ Hilary Mantel
Our Mutual Friend ~ Dickens
Ulysses ~ Joyce

Also love A Confederacy of Dunces by JK Toole, anything by Patrick Leigh Fermor, and am enjoying Goldfinch ATM.

Rebecca
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn -Betty Smith
P&P
The Common Years by Jilly Cooper (or Imogen or Rivals)
Asta's Book -Barbara Vine

The bookseller of Kabul. It really helped me understand what life is like for women in Afghanistan.
The time travellers wife, really enjoyable and engrossing.
The 100 year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared. Funny
Anything by Bill Bryson, he is a legend.

Forgot The Kite Runner - can't possibly just pick 5 books!

The Grapes of Wrath

Emma

To Kill a Mockingbird

Bleak House

Love in The Time of Cholera

The Lacuna

The Beach, Alex Garland (I loved that book so much I nearly burnt it when they made that horrific film and changed everything that was great about it, grrrr!!!!)

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce (was recommended by a friend and just loved the quiet subtle build up, beautiful to read, could not put down!)

The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night time, Mark Haddon (was so well written, totally different and made you think in his mind, laugh out loud funny too)

His Dark materials, Phillip Pullman (read as an adult, and could not move till I read all three books, again another fantastic author destroyed by a terrible film!!!!!, which is why they didn't make all three!!)

Wizards first rule, Terry Goodkind (only read first book in series, but fab so far, old book, think written over 25 years ago? but I'm a sucker for a charity shop pick up and read!)

Oooh, read alot of John Grisham too, wouldn't put him in my top 5 I think, but will read anything by him ever - I'm a reader, death to the kindle lol, nothing like reading a good book in the quiet!! x

Today's pick would be:

Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer

and I can't decide between Emma and Tess of the D'Urbervilles: both A Level texts which I have a lingering and deep-rooted affection for.

Treaclepot - you have read my mind with your first 3! I would also have The Colour Purple, To Kill a Mockingbird and Winnie the Pooh. Then perhaps Persuasion and Flowers for Algernon.

I'll change my mind tomorrow - I'd probably want Charlottes Web in there or Mrs Frisby.

L'Assomoir by Emile Zola
Vanity Fair by Thackery
The Netherworld by George Gissing
Twenty Thousand Streets under the sky - Patrick Hamilton
Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham or They were sisters by Dorothy Whipple

Nice to see some norwegian authors even though not keen on Ibsen. Do like Hamsun. What about Sigrid undset's Kristin Lavransdatter?

Lord of the ring

Daphne du Maurier, but not sure which one?

OK have sat in front of the computer for a while now and can't really decide. There are some that would be among 5 top books on first read but when re-read, not that "wow". Will have a think later

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

Pride and prejudice
Jane eyre
Forever Amber - anyone not read this, MUST
We have to talk about Kevin
Birdsong

Books I have read over and over.

betty is Love All the one with Persephone?

opps hit post too soon...

Love all - Elizabeth howard

I've been lurking in the books section for ages so i thought i'd make my first post on this thread - it seemed fitting. Just five books has made me really think...

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

After you'd gone - Maggie o'Farrell - moved me like no other book ever has,cried my eyes out on a a very busy tube reading this. Was given a tissue by someone else who'd read it

Atonement - Ian McEwan

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

A Prayer for Owen Meany

The Secret History

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Tender is the Night

The Catcher in the Rye

(Currently reading, and adoring, the Goldfinch, which might easily usurp one of the above)

If plays count. I need to whack some Ibsen in here too. 'The Master Builder' is probably my favourite, but 'A Doll's House' and 'Hedda Gabler' are both works of genius too.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
followed by the next 4 books in the series. love them

The Bell Jar
Looking for Alaska (I often read YA. Some is very well written and I dislike the snobbiness of adults towards it)
1984
(Do plays count?) Arcadia by Stoppard
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

No honestly Cote it is one of my all time favourites. I have a hardback early edition, with dust jacket, and someone who shall remain nameless but was either DH or one of the children left it on the landing windowsill once after being asked to take it upstairs, and hid it behind something so I didn't notice, and it got condensation on it and went all wrinkled" and "mouldy a bit and I cried :(

Little Women
Good Wives
War and Peace
Gone With The Wind
Any of the Just William books

Five??? Not sure I can whittle them down to that! However, I'll have a go.

The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy. As a poster above, I could choose many of them but this is probably my favourite.

Another vote for On The Black Hill.

The Grapes of Wrath.

To Kill a Mockingbird.

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun. Far too little read imo, it's really good, I read it about once a year.

But, no Dickens, no Elizabeth Gaskell, no Arthur Ransome, no .......

A lot of Hardy but if I had to choose:

Jude the Obscure

and then something like:

Middlemarch
Dombey and Son or Tale of Two Cities

Dubliners
Heart of Darkness