What are your top 10 favourite books of all time?

The French Lieutenant’s Woman - John Fowles
Middlemarch - George Elliot
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Persian Boy - Mary Renault
The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
A Spell of Winter - Helen Dunmore
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Small Island - Andrea Levy
The Walled Orchard - Tom Holt

So, the constraints on Victorian women, and ancient history, are mostly what do it for me…

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Diary of a Nobody, G and W Grossmith
Cats Eye, Margaret Atwood
The Queen and I, Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years: Sue Townsend
The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
The Rain Before It Falls, Jonathan Coe
Youth, JM Coetzee
Street Style, Ted Polhemus (non fiction)

Jane Eyre
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Hearts Invisible Furies
Remains of the Day
Wide Sargasso Sea
Great Expectations
Bridget Jones' Diary
Godnight Mr Tom
Pride and Prejudice
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

It's hard to come up with ten, but I'd be happy if these were the only books I could ever keep.😀

The Outsiders
Underworld by Don Delilo
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Saree by Su Dharmapala
The Thread by Victoria Hislop
The Heart's Invisible Furies
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
The House At Pooh Corner
City Of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
We Need To Talk About Kevin

There's only two I've read in the last year so most of the list would probably stay the same for a while yet!

Pride and Prejudice
Tess of the d'Urbevilles
The Pursuit of Love
The Power and the Glory
Ducks, Newburyport
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Poisonwood Bible
Cloud Atlas
The Power of Three
The Tsar of Love and Techno
The Waves

Oops... that's 11

I love A God in Ruins and Life After Life but didn't want three Kate Atkinson's on my list but I so could have put them there.

I love how she writes such layered books with some characters who are so unlikeable but not in a one dimensional way and with dark reveals. And of course A God in Ruins is Teddy's book. Lovely golden, but probably a bit dull Teddy. I want to read it again now. I re-read most of them every few years.

I will obviously immediately regret this list the minute I hit 'post' as I will remember something I loved even more, but...

Beloved. - Toni Morrison
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
A God in Ruins - Kate Atkinson
Restless - William Boyd
11.22.66 - Stephen King
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
1984 - George Orwell
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

Honorable Mentions:
Atonement
100 Years of Solitude
Lessons in Chemistry

And totally agree about that being one of the great opening lines!

@TattiePants it looks like we have similar tastes as The Color Purple and The Secret History were both contenders for me.

@MamaNewtNewt I was struggling to narrow down my final book and The Crow Road was a very strong contender. For the opening line if nothing else!

God - my head! I can't even remember The Kite Runner even though I know I loved it. I am envious of people being able to come up with these lists.

Not the best of all time necessarily but those that have a very special place in my heart and save first in a fire!

Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Talisman- Stephen King & Peter Straub
Starlight and Storm- Gaston Rebuffat
A Time of Gifts - Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Man In The High Castle- Philip K Dick
Wolf Hall trilogy - Hilary Mantel
Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
From Hell - Alan Moore

1: News from Tartary by Peter Fleming
2: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
3: A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara
4: A Widow For One Year by John Irving
5: Under The Net by Iris Murdoch
6: Larry’s Party by Carol Shields
7: The Amateur Marriage by Ann Tyler
8: The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
9: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
10: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood

There are so many more! But these are books that have stayed with me, stories I still think about and have read many times and that came into my life at different stages.

Oh gosh, how to narrow it down...
To Kill A Mockingbird
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Wuthering Heights
The Song of Achilles
The Handmaid's Tale
Great Expectations
American Gods
Brave New World
The Kite Runner
Klara and the Sun

But ask me again tomorrow and I'll probably come up with a totally different list.

This is HARD. I agree with many on others lists!!
In no real order, the 10 that came to mind:

I capture the castle - Dodie Smith
Goodnight, Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Neapolitan Quartet - Elena Ferrante

Hamnet - Maggie O Farrell
A confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Cazelet Chronicles - Elizabeth Jane Howard
Circe - Madeline Millar.

could have been so many more!

Possession was an also ran for me too. Used to love it. Also
The Famished Road by Ben Okri.

The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Secret History
Rebecca
We Need To Talk About Kevin
The Handmaid's Tale
Oryx and Crake
Fingersmith
Night Waking
Emotionally Weird
The Hand That First Held Mine

@Rae36 I did exactly the same as @TattiePants - great minds and all that!

In no particular order mine are:

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Just Kids by Patti Smith
The Crow Road by Iain Banks
The Outsider by Albert Camus
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Actually I am going to swap Adam Bede for Wuthering Heights. I read it regularly and differently each time.

Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Middlemarch by George Elliot
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (TBH any of his big four)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Neopolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante

Also rans:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Possession by AS Byatt

The Darkness is Light Enough - Chris Ferris
The Lord of the Rings (all three parts) - J.R.R. Tolkien
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
The Third Policeman - Brian O'Nolan
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Virgin and the Gypsy - D.H. Lawrence
1984 - George Orwell

@Rae36 mine's pretty much in my head but I record all the books I've read on Goodreads so I looked over the books I'd given a 5 star rating to in case I'd missed anything.

Are you guys all coming up with these lists really quickly or have you thought about them for ages? I've been thinking about my top 10 since I first saw this thread but still can't decide. I thought there might be some that just come straight to mind but actually I'm struggling. I'll keep thinking

In no particular order...
Behind The Scenes At The Museum - Kate Atkinson
Still Life - Sarah Winman
Circe - Madeline Millar
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (although not sure I can bear to read it again)
The Offing - Benjamin Myers
Great Circle - Maggie Shipstead
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson

And from my childhood...
The Earthsea Trilogy - Ursula K Le Guin

So many good ones I’d forgotten about!

I’d have to jiggle my list because Rebecca and The Great Gatsby are definitely high up.