5 ONLY books that MUST be read.

[Hullygully]

Any era, any genre.

No crap.

Go.

Come on Hully - we are all waiting for your five.

Especially as your ruddy thread has lead me to putting more books on my wish list than I am likely to be able to buy in the next 2 years.

AND East Sussex on line library service (may it live for ever) is down until at least 2/12/13 and possibly a bit longer.

(Bit longer is according to the lovely woman who runs my local library).

May libraries flourish for ever - please join yours & take out lots & lots of books. It doesn't matter if you don't read 'em - libraries are rated on their borrowing numbers.

Pride and Prejudice
The Grapes Of Wrath
1984
A Fine Balance
The End Of The Affair

I hated To Kill A Mockingbird

Is that true magimedi?

I always thought the local library must curse me with the number of books I order and request on inter lending!

PointyFangs
Louis De Bernières The Latin Trilogy are amazing books and should be in my top five too. I didn't like his later books half as much and I was positively about Captain Corellis Manderin.

I love Mario Vargas Llosa too. Aunt Julia and the Sciptwriter and The GreenHouse are my favourites and I would need these in my top 20 5 books.

...and then there is Gabriel García Márquez's books, I really enjoyed One Hundred Years of Solitude even if I did get a bit confused with all those names beginning with A

No very they will love you

First choice: The Five People You Meet in Heaven.... 4 more to go......

Excellent! I must be giving it a go to single- handedly keep our library going!

Aghhh, I had forgotten about A Fine Balance . I love every one of Rohinton Mistrys books. They are so moving, sad but funny too. Absolutely brilliant.

My list is getting very long.

Catch 22 - just the best, funniest and saddest book ever
If This Is A Man - heartbreaking
Of Mice And Men - small but perfectly formed
Nineteen Eighty-Four - gripping and terrifying
The Lord Of The Rings - for some classic escapism after all that lot!

I had to put aside loads of books that I love but know not everyone else would. Absolutely everyone should read these five.

Mockingbird

Gatsby

King Lear

Pride & prejudice

Die Panne (The Breakdown)

heartichoke!! have not read the whole thread but thought I was the only person in the world who'd read archy and mehitabel

100% true, Very.

I choose my books &then always make a point of taking out at least 4 other random ones that I know I won't read, but that will bump up the figures for my lovely local library.

Second choice.... Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and third choice Perfume (crap film, fab book!)

Oh no, I can't stop...

Jonny Steinbergs THE NUMBER. It's about the gangs that operate in Cape Town prisons. It is an incredible book. I was literally the whole time I was reading it. His other books are v.v. interesting too.

And

The Good Surgeon of Crowthorne. It's another incredible book

Summary - Cut and pasted from Amazon
The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the OED's editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language

I better stop now or I will be in trouble.

Fourth choice: The Periodic Table by Primo Levi and the fifth - I can't decide! I'll sleep on it!

I don't need to take out random books magi ! I always have my maximum number out (I like non-fiction that I can dip in and out of a lot)

It's like a sweetie shop!

Gawd it's hard, innit??

Drat again.

I forgot to mention John Steinbeck's 'The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights'. It's the best retelling of the Arthur myth ever and the only thing I don't like about it is that Steinbeck didn't finish it. It's a beautiful story about flawed human beings.
Can I swap it for Night Watch and have everyone take it as read that I really like Terry Pratchett?

I'm thinking ...

So many books, how can I pick only five?

Definitely got to have The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, because I hadn't read anything like it before and it shocked me, I was pregnant at the time, so it scared me, but I was also fascinated .

I loved, loved, loved The Magician's Nephew by C S Lewis, because it made everything in TLTWATW fall into place.

One of the Bill Bryson books - not sure which is my favourite ... probably Neither Here Nor There.

A Brave New World, I loved the concept of this book, we read it at school and I'd hated everything we'd been given up to that point, but this was completely different and the first scifi/futuristic thing I read.

Anne Frank's diary - my heart aches every time I read it.

To Kill A Mockingbird (seems a given - for obvious reasons)

The Great Gatsby (I love a bit of tragic love, but it's a wonderfully written book.)

I Capture the Castle (because it made me understand unrequited love at a time I really needed to when growing up and introduced me to a heroine who I wanted to be.)

His Dark Materials (Just captivating and thought provoking and exciting and moving. Everything a book/s should be).

Harry Potter (Because yes, they got swathes of children reading and are just wonderful, immersive and exciting reads, even if technically not great, but who cares?)

ps, everyone should read Jilly Cooper because she's amazerous.

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
Sublime writing, wonderful images and strong female characters. Fairy tales rewritten for today, just fantastic.

The world according to Garp - John Irving because it's hilarious and touching and eccentric.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen No explanation or justification required.

Maus - Art Spiegelman Devastating, unforgettable, immense. This is one of the books I urge everyone I know to read.

How to be a woman - Caitlin Moran This takes my closely-fought last spot simply because it's a funny, chatty reminder that feminism is important. It's not perfect but it's a much easier read for my nieces (& nephews) and children than a more academic study of feminism.