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

my 10 is:

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Goldfinch - Donna Taart
11.22.63 - Stephen King
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
1984 - George Orwell
Wolf Hall (trilogy) - Hilary Mantell
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
The girl with the dragon tattoo - Steig Larrson

Oooh, Under the Skin and Fortnight in September!! Loved them both!

Right Ho, Jeeves!
Wolf Hall.
Bring Up The Bodies.
Piranesi.
Persuasion.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4.
The Haunting of Hill House.
Kindred.
Cold Comfort Farm.
The Stand.

Oh god.

A Month In The Country.
Beyond Black.
A Christmas Carol.
Candide.
Great Expectations.
The Fortnight In September.
Fingersmith.
1984
Leonard And Hungry Paul.
Wuthering Heights.

The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
On The Beach by Neville Shute
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis
Watership Down by Richard Adams

Should I not read The Road? I have it and was thinking of starting it @BeaAndBen

In no particular order;

Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
The Cormac Reilly series by Dervla Mc Tiernan
The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa
When All Is Said by Anne Griffin
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham

• The Sun also rises - Hemingway
• Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier
• Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
• Villette - Charlotte Bronte
• The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
• The Secret History - Donna Tartt
• Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
• How I live now - Meg Rosoff
• His dark materials trilogy
• Any Human Heart - William Boyd

I need an 11th - just saw Life after Life on someone’s list and need to add that to mine and if i’m allowed a twelfth - Behind the scenes at the museum

Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier

Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott

Witch Light - Susan Fletcher

Pride and Predjudice - Jane Austen

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Age 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend

The Book Thief - Marcus Zusask

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Frank L Baum

Misery - Stephen King

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh

Maybe not in that order, and the list changes from time to time. Daphne du Maurier is always at the top though.

It's post apocalyptic. There is a scene with a marauding band with a pregnant women dragged along with them.

Not long after, we see the the same band. The pregnant woman is missing and there's a small body being roasted on a spit to feed them all.

The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
The Master and Margherita, Bulgakov
The Reader, Schlink
Opinions of a Clown, Boll
Raised from the Ground, Saramago
Teresa Batista: Home from the Wars, Amado
The name of the Rose, Eco
Alias Grace, Atwood
Metello, Pratolini

Brighton Rock by Graham Green
To Serve Them all my Days by RF Delderfield
The Citadel by AJ Cronin
A Bouquet of Barbed Wire by Andrea Newman

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Have made a note of so many books from this thread!

In no particular order:
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Circe by Madeleine Miller
A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill
Anne of Green Gables series
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Marie Antoinette by Stefan Zweig
Colette’s short stories
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley

Pride and Prejudice
To kill a mockingbird
One flew over the Cukoo’s nest
The Joy Luck Club
The Bell Jar
Oranges are not the only fruit
Brooklyn
The Beach
The Women

And When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

Hilary Mantel – A place of greater safety
Sebastian Faulks – Birdsong
Madeleine Miller – Circe
Amin Maalouf – Samerkand and Leo the African
Bill Bryson - A short history of nearly everything
Ken Follet – Pillars of the earth
Falling Angels – Tracy Chevalier
Coetzee - Disgrace
Elizabeth Kostova the Historian - changing to Isabel Allende - house of the spirits.
Harry Potter books
Into that Darkness – Gitta Sereny.
Yeah but no – Patrick Rothfuss because he’s never going to finish it.
I do read a lot of fantasy but it hasn’t really made my list.

Wuthering Heights
Agnes Grey
Jane Eyre
Rebecca
The List of Suspicious Things
None of this is true
All of the books in The Seven Sisters Series
Hidden Pictures
The Strange Adventures of H
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Goodnight Mr Tom and 1984 are my two favourite books! You've reminded me to reread. Thanks 😀

Adding some books to my to-read list from here!

Some books I love; in approx order

My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
Crow Lake - Mary Lawson
Amy and Isabelle - Elizabeth Strout (anything by her is great also love her short stories)
Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
Every Last One - Anna Quindlen
Blackbird House - Alice Hoffman (this is actually short stories but they are linked)
The Other Side of the Bridge - Mary Lawson
Desperation Road - Michael Farris
All the Wicked Girls & We Begin at the End - Chris Whitaker (roughly equal)

There are lots of other books I really like, but to get on the favs list it has to be something I enjoy enough to read again.

Ah Flowers for Algernon too!

Great thread!

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The God of Small Things
Jane Eyre
Emma
Fingersmith
His Dark Materials
The Kingkiller Chronicles
The Book Thief
The Secret History
A Mexican Gothic

@FKAT
Thank you for reminding me of A Far Cry from Kensington. I’m going to reread it. I also enjoyed Muriel Spark’s short stories.

I'm re-reading Miss Jean Brodie at the moment but that is definitely AFCFK is the favourite. I first read it five years ago in the height of publishing's cancellation era and it felt very relevant.

I also want to do a big shout out for The Door - about a Budapest cleaning lady in the 50s/60s. It's so good and gothic.