To ask what are your top ten favourite books?

[Theda13]

I’m looking for recommendations, and thought this thread may be of some help to others too.

Mine are:

1. The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price
2. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
3. The Book Thief by Markus Kusak
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
6. Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
7. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker
8. 1984 by George Orwell
9. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
10. Carol by Patricia Highsmith

Tigana Guy Gavriel Kay
LOTR JRR Tolkien
Wind in the Willows Kenneth Graham
A Song for Arbonne Guy Gavriel Kay
The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
Monstrous Regiment and most of Terry Pratchett
Anne McCaffreys series of books on the Dragons of Pern books
Katherine Kerr;s Deverry novels
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
The Chronicles of Narnia - C S Lewis
Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy Laini Taylor

There are just so many books but those I re-read the most are Kay, Taylor and Kerr

Hmmm I don't know if I could say but here are some contenders (after looking at my shelf):
The poisonwood Bible by Barbara kingsolver
The summer book by Tove Jansen
On the road Jack keruac
The humans Matt Haig
Stoner by john Williams
American gods, Neil gaimen
Good omens terry Pratchett and Neil gaimen
The ocean at the end of the lane Neil gaimen
Life after life by Kate Atkinson
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Warlight by Micheal ondaatje
The cats table by Michael ondaatje
The lion and the unicorn by George orwell
The memory police
The silver sword by Ian seralier
The fifth child
When God was a rabbit by Sarah winman
Day of the triffids john Wyndham
My family and other animals by Gerald Durrell
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

It’s hard to restrict it to 10! But my top list below
1 Persuasion by Jane Austen
2 The tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
3 A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens
4 To Kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
5 No Name by Wilkie Collins
6 Middlemarch by George Eliot
7 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
8 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
9 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10 Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

I love the little white horse and remains of the day. I also love never let me go by kazuo Ishiguro.

Ooh good thread as I’m always looking for book recommendations. I really need to go back and read some more ‘classics’. I tend to read modern fiction. Some of my faves include:

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
1984 by Orwell
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Trainspotting and Maribou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh
All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman
The universe vs Alex Woods by Gavin Extence
The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
Scabby Queen by Kristin Innes

And if I could have 16 (I'm just being greedy now) the Bean Tree trilogy by Barbara Kingsolver.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
The Lord of the Rings
the Harry Potter books (cheating, I know)
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
La Isla Bajo El Mar by Isabel Allende
Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
One of the Jeeves books (hard to choose)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I'm almost as chuffed to see some of the books I hate most on the lists as I am to see the ones I love! It's nice to see a big variety in our favourites.

It's also nice to see so many 'Classics' of English lit still being read and loved.

(My top most hated book ever is The Road by Cormac Macarthy. I will never forgive him for some of those mental images. Never.)

All or most of the Abbey books (I think it’s all) are transcribed on https://www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Dunkerley,%20Elsie%20Jeanette 😀

Aargh I need to add more sorry.
The Last Unicorn, Peter S Beagle
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
Lark Rise to Candle ford, Flora Thompson

Definitely going to check out some things on other people's lists! Good to see the love for Pratchett (especially Night Watch!) Wodehouse and Diana Wynne Jones. Fantast fans, if you haven't read Patrick Rothfuss I'd seriously recommend The Name of the Wind and a Wise Man's Fear, even if he's still nit produced the 3rd in the trilogy!

Love loads of those ones too! Persuasion is my favourite Austen novel, the tine is so different her other works.

I also love No Name - risqué subject back then and very inventive for its time! The Tenant of Wildfell Hall also gets far too little recognition. The only other book around that time that covers domestic abuse that I can think of is, Daniel Derronda, but it's not as explicit as Bronte depicted.

Too many books to choose from!!

I don’t believe the film or TV adaptations are ever as good as the books.

While half of me would love to see my favourite books on the screen, the other half knows it would probably be a bad idea. Although the Strike adaptations aren’t bad.

Dammit I need everything Sarah Waters has ever done as well.

Oh god yes.

I was halfway through Fingersmith & since it was getting late & I had work in the morning, I decided to finish my chapter & go to sleep.

Only it was the chapter that ended in the big twist, so I ended up staying up all night & drinking a lot of coffee the next day.

We need to talk about Kevin

Elenor oliphant is completely fine

The secret dreamworld of a shopaholic

The Shining

This is going to hurt

I'll be gone in the dark

Memoirs of a Geisha

Life of Pie

The boy who was raised as a dog

Maybe you should talk to someone : a therapist, her therapist, and our lives revealed

Ohhh great thread!

Vanity Fair (Thackeray)
Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
The Pursuit of Love (Nancy Mitford)
Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver)
Half Of A Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
The Night Watch (Terry Pratchett)
Little Women/Good Wives (Louisa May Alcott)
The Convenient Marriage (Georgette Heyer)
I Capture The Castle (Dodie Smith)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (David Mitchell)

But tbh if you asked me on another day it could be a completely different list!

I am heartened to see so many of my favourites here (especially Jane Austen's Persuasion) so I must add :
Barbara Pym – often compared to Miss Austen.

Hard to single out one, so I’ll mention three (which would probably make my top ten anyway):

Excellent Women
A Glass of Blessings
Some Tame Gazelle

Great Expectations
Rebecca
Black Butterflies
The Hearts Invisible Furies
Ann Cleeves Vera series
Strike series
Jeeves - just so funny
Foster - Claire Keegan

1. The Real Charlotte Somerville & Ross
2. The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen
3. The Go-Between L.P. Hartley.
4. Fools of Fortune William Trevor.
5. A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh.
6. Quicksands. Sybille Bedford.
7. The Letters of Dora Carrington
8. My Grandmothers and I Diana Holman-Hunt.
9. The Curse of the Wise Woman Edwin Dunsany
10. Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee
11. Rebecca Daphne du Maurier
12. The Leopard Guiseppe di Lampedusa,

You’ll need to prepare yourself for a key plot point being entirely different in the novel Rebecca, because the Hays Code wouldn’t let a film show something that happens in the novel!

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Song of Achilles - Madeleine Miller
Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton
Enlightenment - Sarah Perry
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The House of the Spirits - Isabelle Allende
The Outcast - Sadie Jones
The Subtle Knife - Phillip Pulman

@MerchWill
i completely agree. I adore Barbara Pym. I’d personally also add Crampton Hodnet to your list

Hurray for another fan of The Real Charlotte! I must reread. The Death of the Heart rather than The House in Paris or The Heat of the Day?

Rebecca

The Miss Buncle series

Helen Forrester series ~ Twopence to cross the Mersey etc

Laura Ingalls Wilder series

Sense & Sensibility

Round about a pound a week

Rosanna of the Amish

Howard's End is on the landing

All the Miss Read books particularly the ones about Miss Clare & Emily Davis

The Diary of a Provincial Lady

And I love reading all the recipe books by Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall !!!