What are your 5 favourite books of all time?

84 replies

sarah00001 · 30/11/2015 08:48

Hi, I haven't read a book for ages and really want to start getting into reading again. I'd love to know what your 5 favourite books are, those that you just can't put down! Thank you.

OP posts:

CharlieAustinsMagicHat · 30/11/2015 10:50

To Kill A Mockingbird
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
The Secret Stranger - Sarah Walters
The Secret Friend - Donna Tartt

Thaisa · 30/11/2015 10:50

As other people have said it isn't a fixed list but, as you're asking today, it would go:
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Brother of the More Famous Jack - Barbara Trapido
Five Red Herrings - Dorothy L Sayers
Winter Solstice - Rosamunde Pilcher

And I know it's cheating because you asked for five I also always read The Thirteen Days of Christmas by Jenny Overton during December. I didn't include it because it's a children's book but I have loved it for years.

Sunnymeg · 30/11/2015 10:35

The Ladies Paradise - Emille Zola (100 times better than the BBC series The Paradise).

Persuasion Jane Austen
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
The Bronze Horseman - Paulinna Simons
Remember Me - Sophie Kinsella (my had a c**p day, book and chocolate book).

Honorable mention to Cross stitch by Diana Gabaldon, but as it is first in a series of eight novels with more to come, it doesn't really count as a stand alone book anymore.

Preciousxbane · 30/11/2015 09:52

Preciousbane, hence user name
Little Women
Year of Wonders
The Grapes of Wrath
A Cargo of Women

Stratter5 · 30/11/2015 09:43

Dracula
Pride & Prejudice
Jane Eyre
My Family & Other Animals (Geral Durrell)
Rivals (Jilly Cooper)

lurkingfromhome · 30/11/2015 09:38

Impossible to give a top 5, really, as it constantly changes, but these are 5 favourites that I would always come back to:

Bad Blood - Lorna Sage
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Life: A User's Manual - Georges Perec
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

SheHasAWildHeart · 30/11/2015 09:24

Kartography - Kamila Shamsie
To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Oh, I have an MA in Literature so should probably have mentioned something more 'highbrow' but these are the books that no matter what mood I'm in I can pick up & read, and instantly feel comforted.

FarticCircle · 30/11/2015 09:23

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magimedi · 30/11/2015 09:18

I'd find that very hard to do - they change over time.

I am not being thread police but if you go over to the Adult Fiction topic there are loads of recommendations & many of them by style of book.

The Cazalet Chronicles - Elizabeth Jane Howard are a great read & probably really good for getting back into books again.

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