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

Good to meet another Pym fan. And if we include Crampton Hodnet we have to sneak in Jane and Prudence as well.

Happy to see Grahame Greene get a look in on another list too.

Pride and Prejudice
A Little Life
Bridget Jones
All the Henry Pratt books
Hamnet
All the Light We Cannot See
The Handmaids Tale
The Girl With the Louding Voice
White Teeth
The Tales of the City Series

I could name another 50, I read a book a week and many I enjoy but forget.
These are picked because they’ve moved me, stayed with me or remind me of good times.

Some of my faves that haven't been said:

Charlotte Grey Sebastian Faulks
Cranford Mrs Gaskell
Moon Tiger Penelope Lively
The UnDomestic Goddess Sophie Kinsella RIP
Crime & Punishment Dostoevsky
English Passengers Matthew Kneale
Room with a View EM Forster

And these have been said and are just brilliant:
Any Human Heart William Boyd
A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
After You'd Gone Maggie O'Farrell.

What a fun thing to do on a Saturday night, thank you OP 🙂

I'm not a big reader. I was in my teens, fell out of it, got back into books then had dc! Now doing a OU degree so not much fiction reading time but these are books which I've gone back to again and again:

The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
White Teeth Zadie Smith
The Sisters Brothers Patrick DeWitt
The Catcher in the Rye J D Salinger
1984 George Orwell
The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding
Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
Maddaddam series Margaret Attwood

Ooh, I forgot Cranford when I listed my favourites . . . it's an absolutely brilliant book

Thanks for reminding me

The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
The Book Theif - Marcus Zusak
Any of the Milliennium Trilogy - Steig Larsson
Conclave - Robert Harris (despite the unnecessary and crap twist at the end)
His Bloody Project - Graeme McCrae Burnet
Riders - Jilly Cooper

Anyone else on this thread struggled to think like an adult and not just list the children's books they've never forgotten? I saw Black Beauty turn up earlier 😍- I really should have owned up to A Little Princess and What Katy Did. Tbh they probably knock Dickens off my list 🙄

• The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
• The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
• White Teeth, Zadie Smith
• The Only Story, Julian Barnes
• Behind The Scenes of the Museum, Kate Atkinson
• The Last Thing to Burn, Will Dean
• Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen
• The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst
• The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman

…so many more

1 East of Eden - John Steinbeck
2 Grapes of wrath - John Steinbeck
3 One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4 Darkness at noon - Arthur Koestler
5 A fine balance - Rohinton Mistry
6 The gathering - Anne Enright
7 Four letters of love - Niall Williams
8 Happiness - Aminatta Forna
9 Play it as it lays - Joan Didion
10 We are all completely beside ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler

I love knowing other people’s favourite novels - mine change, as I forget about books and sometimes I re-visit a book and realise it was right for me for the time, but it’s not right for me now (or perhaps not as great as I thought it was).

eta: catching up on other posts also want to include A suitable boy, The secret history and Anna Karenina… ten is not enough …

I’d also forgotten about Captain Corelli! Though it was sort of spoiled for me by an ex partner who pointed out LdB’s politics which explained the ‘communist’ character. Still enjoyed the book though.

I haven't read all the lists but I second the recommendation for Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan trilogy.

Also if it hasn't been mentioned, the book I was most recently deeply surprised by was Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Equally light and dark, brilliantly funny and also devastating. Just brilliant.

Sense of an ending is perfect.
Loving this thread for reminders of lots of beautiful novels. Thanks, OP!

I forgot The Goldfinch.
I wish Donna Tartt wrote books a bit more often - I’m going to be reading her next novel on a celestial kindle.

Great thread, OP. My top ten are:

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption - Stephen King
My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie
1984 - George Orwell
Double Indemnity - James M Cain
Strangers on a Train - Patricia Highsmith
Gallowglass - Barbara Vine
Wuthering Heights - Charlotte Bronte
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch - Alexander Soljenytsn

Not much modern stuff I'm afraid.

Also love the Goldfinch. It's the best of her brilliant books. I agree I wish they came quicker, but you can't rush genius I guess.

Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
Endurance - Alfred Lassing
Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier
The Hobbit and LoTR - Tolkien
Night Watch and the Tiffany Aching series - Terry Pratchett

In no particular order....
Tara Road by Maeve Binchey.
Divided Loyalties by Patricia Scanlan.
One Hit Wonder by Lisa Jewell.
The Tent, the Bucket and me by Emma Kennedy.
I left my Tent in San Francisco by Emma Kennedy.
Confessions of a Met PC by Matt Delito.
The Harry Potter books.
My Family and other Animals trilogy, by Gerald Durrell.
The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas.
Evergreen Galent by Jean Plaidy.

In no particular order-

Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
Midwives - Chris Bohjalian
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
The Island - Victoria Hislop
1984 - George Orwell
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
A Song for Summer - Eva Ibbotson
The Husband’s Secret - Liane Moriarty
Salem Falls - Jodi Picoult
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor

Oooooooh love these threads: off the top of my head right now:

The Knightingale
A thousand Splendid Suns
The Time travellers wife
A little life
I who have never known men
Thornbirds
Pride & Prejudice
Never let me go
How to kill your friends
we need to talk about Kevin

and it doesn’t really fit my list but I devoured the Rizzolli & Isles series by Tess Gerritson

Ive also just finished Victorian Psycho which I enjoyed a lot!

Totally agree with this! I would love to add Pollyanna, Heidi and all the Noel Streatfield and Enid Blyton books

Plus all my DB's Arthur Ransome books ~ I absolutely loved "We didn't mean to go to sea"

I've just remembered the Milly-Molly-Mandy books ~ I liked looking at the map of the village she lived in!

And don't get me started on the Chalet School books . . .

The telling of lies - Timothy Findley
I capture the castle - Dodie Smith
Secret history - Donna Tartt
The winter ghost - Kate Mosse
Cold comfort farm - Stella Gibbons
The aspern papers - Henry James
Still life - Sarah Winman
Dept of speculation - Jenny Offill
The master - Colm Toibin
A theatre for dreamers - Polly Samson

To be honest, there are at least 5 more that could be added but I've stuck to those that I'd happily reread again any time.

Yes I probably should have put the Chalet School in Exile in my top 10 and maybe The School at the Chalet toi

I think all of these have been said a hundred times already. Isn’t it amazing we all have our own relationships with all these characters and worlds! Thanks for the great thread, OP.

1. Trainspotting
2. 1984
3. Homage to Catalonia
4. Down and Out in Paris and London
5. A Moveable Feast
6. The Sun Also Rises
7. For Whom the Bell Tolls
8. Regeneration
9. Song of Solomon
10. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
11. Rebecca
12. Wuthering Heights
13. Lord of the Flies
14. Carry On, Jeeves

What a great list.

I find these lists fascinating - quite a few I'm nodding along then there will be one book I didn't like at all. I'm sure mine will be similar for others - it's so personal isn't it?

I think mine (not in order)-

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
East of Eden, Steinbeck
House of Mirth, Wharton
Perfume, Patrick Suskind
Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes
Dune, Frank Herbert
Gaudy Night, Sayers
Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass