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

Oh lord I forgot the amazing shopaholic series by the GREAT LATE Sophie Kinsella...amazing books

Great thread op

Jane eyre - Charlotte bronte
Three men in a boat - Jerome k Jerome
The hobbit - JRR Tolkien
All creature great and small - James Herriot
Anything by - John Marrs, Lucy foley, Jennifer hillier.
most but not all by - Riley sager, Karin slaughter.

I couldn't knock one off this list of favourites so have 11!

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Diary of a Nobody by Charles and Weedon Grossmith.
Precious Bane by Mary Webb
I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Yes! All of Sophie kinsella for some feel good reading

Ah someone else here listed Master and Margarita too... it's definitely my favourite.

Others are:
Brideshead revisted
Pride and Prejudice
Sense of an Ending
Poisonwood Bible
The secret history
Hundred years of solitude
The MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood

There's something about a Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes which is just such a pleasure. It's a perfectly crafted novel.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer
3. The Shadow of the Sun, Ryszard Kapuściński
4. Shooting History, Jon Snow
5. Where Children Sleep, James Mollison
6. New Spring, Robert Jordan
7. Dauntless Path, Intisar Khanani
8. A Court of Frost and Starlight, Sarah J. Maas
9. The Queen's Thief, Megan Wheeler Turner

10. Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik

Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë
The Sportswriter Richard Ford
Middlemarch George Eliot
Jazz Toni Morrison
The End of the Affair Graham Greene
Howards End E.M. Forster
Money Martin Amis
A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
Wise Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys

In no particular order and I probably love the authors as much as the individual books

Atonement - Ian McEwan
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Any Human Heart - William Boyd
The Heart's Invisible Furies - John Boyne
Oranges - Jeanette Winterson
Flesh - David Szalay (new entry!)
Shardlake Series - CJ Sansom
Anything by Jeffrey Archer for the great, easy read.

Great list

Eleanor oliphant is completely fine
The girl with the dragon tattoo
The alchemist
The bell jar
The firm
Anything by kl slater or Lisa jewell
Famous five
Magic faraway tree
Wasp factory
Normal people

I am obsessed with books! Mine, in no particular order and most have been stated already:

Strike series
Anything by W Somerset-Maughen
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulkes
Gone with the wind - Margaret Mitchell
The midnight library— Matt Haig
The book thief - Markus Kusak
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Me before you - Jo Jo Moyes
Time traveller’s wife - Audrey Niffenegger
When god was a rabbit - Sarah Winman

What a simply wonderful thread (the unexpected reminders!: The Silver Sword, Georgette Heyer, The Little White Horse, Master and Marguerita, Barbara Pym. Bliss.).
I now have a 2026 reading list, thank you everybody😊
My total cheat (I'm counting it as 10):
All of Jane Austen (except Northanger Abbey 😂)
The whole Aubrey/Maturin series, Patrick O'Brien
LOTR
The Siege of Krishnapur, JG Farrell
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
Tale of Two Cities
Gone with The Wind
Any Kurt Vonnegut (and a big hello to anyone out there who can place my user name 👋👋)
I, Claudius and Claudius the God, Robert Graves
The Wolf Hall trilogy, Hillary Mantel

This thread has made my day.

The Godfather- Mario Puzo
The Book Thief- Markus Zusak
The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini
The Frozen River- Ariel Lawhorn
The Shadow of The Wind- Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Memoirs of a Geisha- Arthur Golden
Gone with the wind- Margaret Mitchell
We need to talk about Kevin- Lionel Schriver
Captain Corellis Mandolin- Louis de Bernieres
The Other Boleyn Girl- Phillippa Gregory

My all time favourite is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

A close second is Whale by Cheon Myeong Kim. If you’ve never read Korean fiction and like something a little bit out there I highly recommend it.

After that in no particular order

The Great Gatsby
The time Keeper by Mitch Albom
Station Eleven
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Green Mile
The Instant by Amy Liptrot
Farenheit 451
He by John Connolly - this is a novel, retelling the story of Laurel and Hardy’s friendship and is beautifully written

I’ve just finished The Scarlet Letter and that is close to a top ten read for me.

Resurrection - Tolstoy
The Magus - John Fowles
His Dark Materials/Book of Dust series - Phillip Pullman
Scarpetta series - Patricia Cornwell
Harry Hole books - Jo Nesbo
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
City of secrets - Patrice Chaplin
Languedoc trilogy - Kate Mosse
Chocolat - Joanne Harris
News of the Dead - James Robertson

Omg, eta as per PP, two of my absolute favourites I forgot!
Captain corellis mandarin
We need to talk about kevin

What do you all love about the Strike series?

My favourite books are those I have no problem reading again and again, so with that in mind (and some of these are on their 2nd or 3rd round now - some years apart mind!) here they are. Top ten for me - but that changes every week!

The Heart's Invisible Furies, John Boyne
Days Without End, Sebastian Barry
Precious Bane, Mary Webb
Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Full Tilt Ireland to India with a bicycle, Dervla Murphy
Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
That They May Face the Rising Sun, John McGahern

The Bernicia Chronicles by Matthew Harffy
The Ravenstow Trilogy by Elizabeth Chadwick
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Penman
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
House of Echoes by Barbara Erskine
Night Song of The Last Tram by Robert Douglas
The Sunne In Splendour by Sharon Penman
The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell

The first two are in order, but the others are not.

As a reader with no objection to.really really long books, i was surprised I mentally edited down the last couple I read. Satisfyingly odd plots, enjoyable "will they/won't they" relationship. But a bit verbose (I just skip the bits describing the full agony every single time the poor chap has to drive a car/goes to Cornwall).

Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
I Know Why The Cadged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Holden
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
Unreliable Memoirs - Clive James
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Some fabulous books here. I'd forgotten about The Silver Sword and Disgrace by Coetzee - completely amazing books.

I can't narrow mine down to 10 though. All of the above.

Small Things Like These Claire Keegan
A Gentleman in Moscow Amor Towles
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
Far from the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
The Heart's Invisible Furies John Boyne
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
The Woman in Black Susan Hill
Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker
A Thousand acres by Jane Smiley
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout
Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
When will there be Good News by Kate Atkinson
South Riding by Winifred Holtby

Hard to narrow down really