What are your 5 favourite books of all time?

[sarah00001]

Hi, I haven't read a book for ages and really want to start getting into reading again. I'd love to know what your 5 favourite books are, those that you just can't put down! Thank you.

[Mama1980]

Absolutely impossible to choose but the 5 I always have to hand are:
Jane eyre
Persuasion
A little love song
Mistress of Rome
Dracula

My copies of all of these have been read and re read to within a inch of their lives.

[EnthusiasmDisturbed]

I forgot to add The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

I love her books shall swap with Of Mice and Men can't we have a top 10

[Robertaquimby]

A Fine Balance
Testament of Youth
Half of a Yellow Sun
A Sara Paretsky - maybe Hardball
A Sound of Chariots

That was difficult.

[southeastdweller]

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Writing Home - Alan Bennett
Notes on a Scandal - Zoë Heller

Strongly recommend the 50 books in a year thread over on adult fiction btw. Read that and your tbr pile will soon be taller than you are.

Yes indeed .

[annandale]

Favourite books of all time - interesting way of putting it. I'm going to go for books that aren't 'the best' but that I go back to again and again just for the pleasure of them.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Flying Finish by Dick Francis
A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
A Small Pinch of Weather by Joan Aiken (particularly The Weather Ship which I think of most days as a metaphor for what I aim to do at work, and The Serial Garden)
Trollope by Victoria Glendinning

A few years ago I would have put a lot of Mitford books in this list but not now. things do change.

[MamaMary]

Jane Eyre - C Bronte
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
The God of Small Things- Arundhati Roy
Little Town on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder


Very hard! - but I based it on books I return to. Which are very few.

[mrsleomcgary]

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lional Shriver
11/23/63 - Stephen King
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets - Eve Rice
King of Torts - John Grisham (actually,ANYTHING by John Grisham)
Valley of the Dolls - Jacqueline Susan

[BeccaMumsnet]

Hi all - we're going to pop this thread over to Adult Fiction so it doesn't disappear.

[CoteDAzur]

SmallLegs - Please read Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" and Philip K Dick's "A Scanner Darkly", if you haven't already.

And come over to the 50-Book Challenge thread. We need more sci-fi fans like you

[Sadik]

First four are easy. In no particular order (and again, favourite, not 'best')

The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin
Mansfield Park
The Diary of a Provincial Lady
Pride and Prejudice

Adding a fifth is harder, probably two of the stories from the collection The Birthday of the World by Ursula le Guin (Solitude, and Paradises Lost).

[SmallLegsOrSmallEggs]

cote I have. They were both contenders for my list. As were several John Courtenay Grimwood's.

A scanner darkly is fab but Valis shades it maybe because it was my first PKD

[ArthurMcAffertyhastwocats]

Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman
Hangover Square
Anne of Green Gables
Jane Eyre
The Stand

I would be suspicious of someone who didn't like any of those books.

[nebulae]

Wuthering Heights
Jamaica Inn
A Short History of Nearly Everything
I Am Pilgrim
His Dark Materials (Yes I'm counting a trilogy as once choice)

[tormentil]

Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham
The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Balkan Trilogy - Olivia Manning
The Silver Darlings - Neil Gunn

[FurryDogMother]

The Lord of the Rings (all of it) (Tolkien)
The Once and Future King (TH.White)
The Darkness is Light Enough (Chris Ferris, nature diary)
The Sunne in Splendour (Sharon Kay Penman)
Good Omens (Gaiman/Pratchett)

[LifeHuh]

Difficult - I used to keep a regular list of my Top Twenty books, maybe I'll update that !
But : Gaudy Night ,DL Sayers
Thud, Terry Pratchett
The Ivy Tree, Mary Stewart.
The Valley of Song,Elizabeth Goudge
The Ready-made Family, Antonia Forest.

Maybe...

[ShakeItOff2000]

Beloved Toni Morrison
The Time Traveller's wife
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Use of Weapons Ian M Banks
The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber

Can't beat a list!

[anneyaramis]

I don't re-read much but books that have stayed with me.

Tess of the D'Urberville, Thomas Hardy (I am still reeling from it and it was over 4 years ago).

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (or similarly titled, the order of the words escape me). It leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy and makes me smile just thinking about it.

The Count of Monte Christo, Alexandre Dumas (I simply loved every single second of the month it took me to read it).

Señor Vivo and the Coco Lord, Louis de Bernieres (vivid memories of being on holiday and sobbing and then snorting with laughter). I was torn for this choice between Señor Vivo and Birds Without Wings.

The Foundation Pit, Andrey Platanov (unexpectedly funny and I will never lose the image of Communist chickens).

Since others have taken liberties when including children's books I will add Black Beauty and concur with those who have mentioned Goodnight Mister Tom.

[LocalEditorMerton]

The Group - Mary McCarthy
My Son My Son - Howard Spring
The Quincunx - Charles Palliser
Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
The Secret History - Donna Tartt

[Quogwinkle]

I'm really struggling to narrow down to just five, but here goes:-

1. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
2. Persuasion - Jane Austen
3. The Woman in Black - Susan Hill
4. Untold Stories - Alan Bennett
5. The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell

(In reserve The Railway Children - E Nesbit, Emma - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen)

[buffymum]

Les Grandes Meaulnes
Decline and Fall
The Go Between
Remains of the Day
Miss Smillas Feeling for Snow

[Winifredgoose]

David Copperfield
The tin drum
The whole Laura ingles wilder series (little house on the prairie)
Half of a yellow sun
Germinal

[Quogwinkle]

If a whole series is allowed to be counted as one, I would have added the Harry Potter series. I loved them (as an adult, and looking forward to sharing them with the DC).

[LisaMumsnet]

Ooooh, I do love a Good List, but can never remember what books/films etc I've actually seen or read. Anyway, here goes:

Midnight's Children
David Copperfield (totally agree with you Womofredgoose)
All the Wombles books
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Bridges of Madison County

[Callmegeoff]

The enchanted wood -it got me into reading and as a child I read it over and over.

Now I only tend to read a book once -too many books too little time.

The best in more recent times have been

The book thief

Life after life

Perfect

Her fearful symmetry.