What are your top 10 favourite books of all time?

Damn.
I forgot to include The accidental Ali Smith
and The house of sleep Jonathan Coe
I'll take away my top 2 which are non-fiction, add these two, and the non-fiction list can then include Jon Ronson and a bit of a cheat I am, I am, I am Maggie O'Farrell (it is autobiography even if told in her beautiful prose) <gavel>

1. The Nation's Favourite Simon Garfield
2. Bad Show: the quiz, the cough, the millionaire major Bob Woffinden and James Plaskett
3. Special topics in calamity physics Marisha Pessl
4. The three Sarah Lotz
5. Hey Nostradamus! Douglas Copeland
6. An invisible sign of my own Aimee Bender
7. The girls' guide to hunting and fishing Melissa Bank
8. Prep Curtis Sittenfeld
9. A boy of good breeding Miriam Toews
10. Where'd you go, Bernadette? Maria Semple

I also liked Jon Ronson's books, the Bridget Jones series and Marina Lewycka's work. Oh, and After Birth by Elisa Albert was excellent.

Carries War (Nina Baldwin)
Handmaids Tale (Margaret Atwood)
Hamnett (just read) Maggie O’Farrell
Choclat (Joanne Harris)
A Kind of Loving (Stan Barstow)
A sense of Guilt (Andrea Newman)
Rosemary’s Baby - the first ‘adult’ book I ever read
I don’t know how she does it - Alison Pearson
Rivals (Jilly Cooper) - got to have one ‘bonkbuster’ on the list!

Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - all time favourite.

Stoner is one of my favourites, and I love anything by Daphne Du Maurier. After You'd Gone is also the only Maggie O'Farrell book I've enjoyed. I have been putting off The Secret History because I was very underwhelmed with The Goldfinch but you've inspired me to pick it up now :)

I know this thread dates back to 2023, but I just wanted to give a shout out to @StColumbofNavron - you have great taste! Frenchman's Creek and Adam Bede are also in my top 10. 🙌

Mine change all the time too, but off the top of my head I'd say:

The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Stoner – John Williams
Frenchman’s Creek – Daphne Du Maurier
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Adam Bede – George Eliot
An Evil Cradling – Brian Keenan
Rachel’s Holiday – Marian Keyes
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
After You'd Gone - Maggie O'Farrell
The Diary of St Faustina – St Faustina

I'm getting back into reading at the minute and this thread has inspired me to go off and rediscover so many great books I'd forgotten about.

Ha! I've just realised this is an old thread that I replied to in May 2023, and only 5 of the 10 are the same. I also said then that if you asked tomorrow the list would be different!

The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Human Croquet - Kate Atkinson
The God of Small Things - Arundati Roy
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis (I find it a bit problematic now but loved it so much as a child)
A Man Called Ove - Frederik Backmann
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseni
The Book Thief - Marcus zusak
Empire of the Sun - JG Ballard

In no particular order, and if you asked me tomorrow I could very well have a completely different 10.

Pride and Prejudice
Day of the Triffids
Trainspotting
Reaper Man
The Plague Dogs
Jurassic Park
Eaters of the Dead
Fatal Shore (non fiction)
Moll Flanders
The Portrait of Dorian Gray

Glad to see someone above mentioned A Town Like Alice. The prose is a bit clunky and the novel convoluted, but Jean Padgett is one of my favourite ever literary heroines: an ordinary, unprepossessing woman who on five separate occasions in her life does truly extraordinary things.

I also like Trustee from the Toolroom - an ordinary, unassuming man who takes on an exceptional challenge because he sees it as his duty, without seeming to realise he has done anything extraordinary.

Persuasion before Pride and Prejudice.

And Yes to Gaudy Night.

I couldn't pick ten. LOTR and Lymond would have been on my list at different points in my life, not sure if they would be now.

The Shack - Wm Paul Young

Jane Eyre - CB

The five people you meet in Heaven - Mitch Alborn

Atlas - Lucinda Riley

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak

Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
.
The diary of Anne Frank

Vox - Ben Elton

Life after Life - Kate Atkinson.

I could list hundreds more that I love!

Glad to see someone above mentioned A Town Like Alice. The prose is a bit clunky and the novel convoluted, but Jean Padgett is one of my favourite ever literary heroines: an ordinary, unprepossessing woman who on five separate occasions in her life does truly extraordinary things. The context is fascinating and the story compelling. Jean is fantastic!

1. The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris
2. The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese
3. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
4. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
5. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khalled Hosseini
6. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
7. the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
8. Animal Farm - George Orwell
9. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doer
10. Lessons in Chemistry - can’t remember author

In no particular order:
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - couldn't put it down
Mr Loverman - Bernardine Evaristo
Man's search for meaning - Victor Frankl
Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
The Shuttle - Frances Hodgkin Burnett
Anything by Enid Blyton - pure escapism from a terrible childhood.
Midnight Library - Matt Haig
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell - should be on the GCSE syllabus
Any Human Heart - William Boyd

Virginia Woolf: The Waves
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
May Sinclair, The Tree of Heaven
Penelope Farmer, Charlotte Sometimes
James Joyce, Ulysses
P D James, Devices and Desires
Helen Zenna Smith, Not So Quiet
Octavia Butler, The Testaments
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

So many others I might have mentioned, but these were the first that sprang to mind.

Harry Potter 1-7
Twilight 1-4
50 shades 1-3

I just love them!!

Any Bill Bryson
Memoirs of a Geisha
Secret life of bees
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tess of the D Urbervilles
Pride and Prejudice
Any Martina Cole
The Shopaholics Series
The boy who harnessed the wind
Chocolat

Eclectic reading- and I've got some good recommendations from this thread

In no particular order

The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
101 Dalmations - Dodie Smith
Restoration - Rose Tremain
A Dark Adapted Eye - Ruth Rendell
Puffball - Faye Weldon
Capricorn One - Bernard L Ross
Kenneth Williams diaries
Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson
How To Eat - Nigella Lawson

And to kill a mockingbird

So tricky -

Heidi
What Katy did
Little Women
Mary Ann series
When hitler stole pink rabbit
The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane
Flowers in the attic
Little fires everywhere
The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Follow you home
To the end

Ooh hard!

The Sunne in Spendor
The Pursuit of Love/Love in a Cold Climate
Heart's Invisible Furies
The Godfather
Goodnight Mr Tom
We Begin at the End
The Thorn Birds
One Day
11/22/63
Nora Loft's House Trilogy

Anything that makes me feel bereft to have finished. I could probably do a separate list of more classical novels. Everyone hates One Day and I should replace with Wolf Hall - but I am the same age as the protagonists and it's stayed with me.

I'd say there's too many good books in the world to narrow it down to 10 so I've picked from the books I've rated amongst the best that I've read from the last five years or so:

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
Hearts Invisible Furies, John Boyne
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O'Nan
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
Nightwebs, Cornell Woolrich
A Redbird Christmas, Fannie Flagg
Tom's Midnight Garden, Phillipa Pearce
Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart
The Woman in Black, Susan Hill

Today's top ten, in no particular order. May be different tomorrow.

Piranesi (Susannah Clarke)
Tom's Midnight Garden (Phillippa Pearce)
The Midwich Cuckoos ( John Wyndham)
Night Watch (Terry Pratchett)
Gaudy Night (Dorothy Sayers)
Fire and Hemlock (Diana Wynne Jones)
Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
The Horse and his Boy (CS Lewis)
The 39 Steps (John Buchan)
Buried for Pleasure (Edmund Crispin)

Some books are from.my childhood but all of these I would still return to and read again and again

On the Banks of Plum Creek - Laura Ingalls Wilder

Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery

Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild

Eucalyptus - Murray Bail

All the Rivers Run - Nancy Cato

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Lark Rise to Candleford - Flora Thompson

Circle of Friends - Maeve Binchy

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg

The Dreaming Suburb - R.F. Delderfield

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

2001 by Arthur C. Clarke

The City and the City by China Mieville

The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Babbit by Sinclair Lewis

The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Guernica by Dave Boling

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

In no particular orde, such a difficult choice!

The Shell Seekers- Rosamunde Pilcher
The Long Winter- Laura Ingalls Wilder
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell
A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Townes
Family - Susan Hill
The Magic Apple Tree- Susan Hill
The Barchester Chronicles (not really one, but I love them all)- Anthony Trollope
Shirley- Charlotte Brontë
Fifteen Wild Decembers - Karen Powell