What books do you think are essential reading?

[JazzerMcCreary]

I’m turning 29 tomorrow. I’ve decided that as I’ve either done or have no interest in doing the typical ‘pre 30 bucket list’ activities, I’m going to try to read 30 new books over the next year.

So tell me, what books would be on your list?

It's interesting that a few people think Dickens works better on the screen than on the page. I know I do.

The recent David Copperfield film is superb, really really good. I can just about read the book, but I have skipped large chunks and don't feel the need to read it again. He wrote for periodical magazines to be published weekly/monthly and it really really shows - mini cliffhangers and lots of waffle and padding.

Yeah, that's why the BBC adaptation of Bleak House worked so well. Left you on a cliffhanger each week. I've been meaning to watch David Copperfield so must bump it up my list.

@ScribblyBaller

Yeah, that's why the BBC adaptation of Bleak House worked so well. Left you on a cliffhanger each week. I've been meaning to watch David Copperfield so must bump it up my list.

I really loved it. Very vibrant and modern and pacy. Dev Patel is excellent.

Yes to loads of the above and for pure escapism:

• The Godfather

• The Day of the Jackal

Oooh The Secret History as others have said.
Heroes and Villains and Wise Children by Angela Carter
Rebecca

Fingersmith and The Little Stranger Sarah Waters
The Godfather Mario Puzo
The Line of Beauty Alan Hollingshurst
The Revolutionary Road
Dance Dance Dance Murakami
Probably a few others too.

Buchi Emecheeta - Second class citizen and In the ditch.
George Orwell- Down and out in Paris and London
Pat Barker- Union Street
Any Adrian Mole
Roddy Doyle- The woman who walked into doors
These are the books I re-read time and again.

Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (given its length, it counts as three books )
A River Sutra - Gita Mehta
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson
Waterland - Graham Swift
A Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Stand - Stephen King
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Crow Road - Iain Banks
The Red Tent - Anita Diamant

Oh god, I could keep on going for days…! I almost envy people who will read some of those books for the first time.

Terry Pratchett. Man was a genius. Any with Sam Vines. Helps to start at the beginning but they get better as you read.

Pride and Prejudice. My comfort read.

Dracula. Opened my eyes to the whole genre.

Animal Farm. Blew my mind as a teenager. So relevant.

YY to wild swans. Incredible book.

Untamed - Glennon Doyle. Essential reading.

@EmmaStone

1984 Handmaid's Tale Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre Great Gatsby Pride & Prejudice To Kill a Mockingbird some Hardy (my fave is Jude the Obscure, but it's pretty bleak. Actually it's all quite bleak. Maybe Tess?) Lolita Lady Chatterley's Lover The Way We Live Now

And some less 'classic' ones:
Americanah
The Kite Runner
Any Human Heart
My Brilliant Friend
Life After Life

These are incredible choices!! I second.

Happy birthday OP.

@LakieLady

I think at least one Ian McEwan should be on the list, probably Atonement, but Saturday, Enduring Love and Solar are excellent.

Rose Tremain is great, and I'd include Restoration.

For humour, some Wodehouse; I prefer Blandings to Jeeves but if you're not laughing out loud in the first 3 pages of any of them, you've lost your sense of humour imo. My Blandings omnibus is my go-to book when I'm feeling low.

Also Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons, I think)

Also on my list would be:

The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald)

Scoop! (Evelyn Waugh)

The Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)

At least one Graham Greene (my choice would be Brideshead Revisited, but I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, so Brighton Rock or The Honorary Consul)

Middlemarch

1984

Howard's End

Mrs Dalloway

The Buddha of Suburbia

The Tin Drum (this would actually make my top ten, and I wish my German was good enough to read it in its original language)

A John Le Carre, probably Tinker, Tailor etc

White Teeth

Cider With Rosie

And now for my shameful admission: I cannot, just cannot, read Dickens. Great characters, great stories but I lose the will to live during the long descriptive passages. I just can't get beyond the first 50 pages of any of them.

And I suspect that people might either be Hardy fans or Dickens fans. None of my Dickens loving friends can abide Hardy.

Re Dickens: Not even 'Mr. Pickwick's Papers? I always think of it as his version of easy pop fiction.

Great list!

My family and other animals.
The Stephney doorstep society.
Adrain Mole series perhaps.
I enjoyed Little Women series.
Pauline Prescott autobiography

Memoirs of a Geisha
Where the Crawdads sing
When God was a rabbit
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely fine
The Lovely Bones

All fantastic reads

We need to talk about Kevin

Really depends on your taste. Personally found some of these recommendions like Eleanor Oliphant a complete bore.

I’m not an English Literature expert by any means but I’d choose books that have been massively influential because then you have a good reference base for other literature. I’m choosing books from the last few years here. Obv the classics are all important to read as well.

Oranges are not the Only fruit
American Psycho
London Fields
Secret History
No Logo
White Teeth

There’ll be loads more but these came to my mind immediately

Riddle of the Sands
39 Steps
In this house of Brede

The Valley of the Dolls - three best friends living in the city and gradually becoming addicted to pills

The Miniaturist - set in 1600s Amsterdam, spooky and gripping

A Confederacy of Dunces - hands down the most hilarious book I've ever read

Love a bit of Steinbeck.

Also the classics already mentioned including To kill a mockingbird, The Pearl, The old man and the sea etc etc

Also Perfume by Patrick Suskind

@ChainJane

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Came on to recommend this Happy Birthday OP you have some cracking reads ahead of you Can I add Watership Down,Richard Adams The Rules of Seeing, Joe Heap A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak

Happy Birthday .
All the light we cannot see.
A short history of tractors across the Ukraine.
Grapes of Wrath.
Christiane F - diary of a heroine addict
A Place called Winter.

I despise both Hardy and Dickens with an absolute passion.

Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky, Calvino, Hoffman, anyone but bloody Dickens or Hardy...

I'd even read Anne Fine's Interview with a vampire

A Prayer for Owen Meany
The Beach
The Wasp Factory
Catch 22
The Shining
The Kite Runner

5 of the above I read a good twenty odd years ago and are still some of my best reads. I need to have a look at all of the suggestions here to help me make better choices.