Top Five Books Ever?

[Charlieboo30]

I'm an avid book worm - I read one a week, more if I'm on holiday - so get through a fair few books. It got me thinking, what would be my top five list.

I think (I will probably change my mind tomorrow) it would be:

'Chocolat' by Joanne Harris - the woman is a genius. I read this at least once a year. It's just magical.

'Just what kind of mother are you?' by Paula Daly. Only read this recently but I loved it. I'm very jealous of anyone who hasn't picked it up.

'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks. Had to read this for my A-levels and really didn't want to. In fact, I threw the mother of all strops and said it was a book for boys. I looked stupid when I admitted I had raced through it!

'Cross Stitch' by Diana Gabaldon. Not my genre at all but recommended by a friend. I couldn't put it down. Sadly the rest in the series are no-where near as good.

'The love of her life' by Harriet Evans. Not the most literary of books but a great easy read.

So not the most high brow of lists, but there you go! What would yours be?

I very much like Joanne Harris too. Top 5 would probably be:

On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin. One of the most beautiful books ever written.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Russian satire with a talking cat.

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. Ukrainian satire with a ....penguin.

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart. Started a life ling passion for all things Arthurian.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Well, anything by MA really.

Just going by the "books I wish everyone loved as much as I do" and books I read over and over again and still love just as much, and the ones where I wish I could have a "book amnesia pill" so I could forget them and read them for the first time all over again I would say
On the Beach by Nevil Shute,
A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
The Farseer Trilogy I know, I know by Robin Hobb.
Taken by the Hand by O. Douglas
and the fifth one changes by the second

Oh Come On, PomBear! You are just baiting me now

Stephen King's Dark Tower (the last one)

A Jane Austen - this varies according to the moon, but today I'll say, 'Sense and Sensibility'

Lolita

A Clockwork Orange

Erm...can't choose number five, so I'll have another Austen - Persuasion probs.

Five on a Treasure Island . Enid Blyton. It got me absorbed in reading from a young age. This book blew me away. Reading and enjoying reading was a whole new world.

Jane Eyre. As a young teenager I could read reasonably high brow fiction. Yay!

War and Peace. See above.

Dick Francis. Each and every one of them.

Agatha Christie/Harriet Evans (you sanctified that, OP, and have you read any sinead Moriarty?)/Winston Graham/and I've just scared myself rigid reading Alex Scarrow Armageddon scenario book which has scared me senseless-not the best of literary masterpieces but it will stay with me!!

The colour purple
To kill a mockingbird
Winnie the Pooh
Schindlers Arc
1984

all shaped my view of the world and helped set my moral compass.

The Harry potter books. Okay there is 7 but they are all brilliant

A lot of Hardy but if I had to choose:

Jude the Obscure

and then something like:

Middlemarch
Dombey and Son or Tale of Two Cities

Dubliners
Heart of Darkness

Five??? Not sure I can whittle them down to that! However, I'll have a go.

The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy. As a poster above, I could choose many of them but this is probably my favourite.

Another vote for On The Black Hill.

The Grapes of Wrath.

To Kill a Mockingbird.

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun. Far too little read imo, it's really good, I read it about once a year.

But, no Dickens, no Elizabeth Gaskell, no Arthur Ransome, no .......

Little Women
Good Wives
War and Peace
Gone With The Wind
Any of the Just William books

No honestly Cote it is one of my all time favourites. I have a hardback early edition, with dust jacket, and someone who shall remain nameless but was either DH or one of the children left it on the landing windowsill once after being asked to take it upstairs, and hid it behind something so I didn't notice, and it got condensation on it and went all wrinkled" and "mouldy a bit and I cried :(

The Bell Jar
Looking for Alaska (I often read YA. Some is very well written and I dislike the snobbiness of adults towards it)
1984
(Do plays count?) Arcadia by Stoppard
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
followed by the next 4 books in the series. love them

If plays count. I need to whack some Ibsen in here too. 'The Master Builder' is probably my favourite, but 'A Doll's House' and 'Hedda Gabler' are both works of genius too.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

The Secret History

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Tender is the Night

The Catcher in the Rye

(Currently reading, and adoring, the Goldfinch, which might easily usurp one of the above)

I've been lurking in the books section for ages so i thought i'd make my first post on this thread - it seemed fitting. Just five books has made me really think...

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

After you'd gone - Maggie o'Farrell - moved me like no other book ever has,cried my eyes out on a a very busy tube reading this. Was given a tissue by someone else who'd read it

Atonement - Ian McEwan

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

opps hit post too soon...

Love all - Elizabeth howard

betty is Love All the one with Persephone?

Pride and prejudice
Jane eyre
Forever Amber - anyone not read this, MUST
We have to talk about Kevin
Birdsong

Books I have read over and over.

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

Nice to see some norwegian authors even though not keen on Ibsen. Do like Hamsun. What about Sigrid undset's Kristin Lavransdatter?

Lord of the ring

Daphne du Maurier, but not sure which one?

OK have sat in front of the computer for a while now and can't really decide. There are some that would be among 5 top books on first read but when re-read, not that "wow". Will have a think later

L'Assomoir by Emile Zola
Vanity Fair by Thackery
The Netherworld by George Gissing
Twenty Thousand Streets under the sky - Patrick Hamilton
Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham or They were sisters by Dorothy Whipple

Treaclepot - you have read my mind with your first 3! I would also have The Colour Purple, To Kill a Mockingbird and Winnie the Pooh. Then perhaps Persuasion and Flowers for Algernon.

I'll change my mind tomorrow - I'd probably want Charlottes Web in there or Mrs Frisby.