Give me your top 5

[Cindy87]

Give me your top 5 novels of all time based purely on how much you enjoyed reading them.

Also the last book you read and enjoyed.

Mine, off the top of my head:

1. The End of the Affair
2. This is Life
3. The Bell Jar
4. The Secret History
5. Only Ever Yours

The Paper Lovers

Great thread, it’s hard to remember! I’m going to say (in no specific order):

1. The thorn birds
2. Lion / a long way home
3. Pride and prejudice
4. Little women
5. All the Harry Potter books! Not sure if this counts but you did say purely based on enjoyment so I have to include them as they were such fun to read and I read them as an adult

Any Human Heart - William Boyd
Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Artemis File - Adam Loxley
Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
On The Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin

An Equal Music - Vikram Seth

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
These Old Shades - Georgette Heyer
Absolute Beginners - Compton Mackenzie
Diary of a Provincial Lady - EM Delafield

Most recent highlight book is The World for Sale by Javier Blas & Jack Farchy but non-fic, most recent highlight novel is (more Regency!) The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles

Absolute beginners is of course by Colin MacInnes Brain melt moment, there are also several novels I love by Mackenzie!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. Giver of Stars - JoJo Moyes
3. Venus Envy - Louise Bagshawe
4. The One Plus One - JoJo Moyes
5. The Family Upstairs - Lisa Jewell

So many of these I've not heard of! Will take a look.

I always hear good things about Boyd but tried one and didn't like it - maybe I picked a dud.

I'm reading The Guest List which is good fun and Slammerkin which is bloody harrowing but compulsive reading

1. Lord of the Rings
2. The Mists of Avalon
3. The Heart's Invisible Furies
4. Here Be Dragons
5. The Underground Railroad

Ooh this is hard... In no particular order:

• The Secret History - Donna Tartt
• The Collector - John Fowles
• The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
• Betty - Tiffany McDaniel
• The Girl with the Louding Voice - Abi Daré

The last book I read and enjoyed was Things in Jars by Jess Kidd.

I’ve not read the thread so that I won’t be influenced or spend too long thinking about this.

In no particular order:

1. Senor Vivo and the Coco Lord, Louis de Bernieres
2. Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne du Maurier
3. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles (a recent read for me)
4. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Lisa See (cannot make a cup of tea without thinking of this book)
5. The Idiot, Elif Batuman (read last year in first lockdown)

Argh so hard, I could easily add: Sashenka - Simon Sebag Montefiore, Adam Bede - George Eliot, Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte, To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee which I am currently rereading, Persuasion - Jane Austen.

O M G how could I forget The Count of Monte Christo! I’m going to need 6. I can’t put it in the second list.

Rebecca - du Maurier
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Path
No More Meadows - Monica Dickens
East of Eden - Steinbeck
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch

Currently reading The Portrait of a Lady and it's also an old favourite.

The Secret History
We Need To Talk About Kevin
The Hand That First Held Mine
Anna Karenina
À Thousand Splendid Suns

Oh the pressure, I'm sure I've forgotten something I love

Oh @pangolina I am reading Anna Karenina. I decided to read a chapter a day and started on 27 December. I have read it before (or at least some of it) as the bookmarks I am finding every so often demonstrate. I really like it but I have an affection for the adaptations anyway. Oddly though, finding I found War and Peace last year significantly more enjoyable.

@HuntingoftheSnark

Rebecca - du Maurier The Bell Jar - Sylvia Path No More Meadows - Monica Dickens East of Eden - Steinbeck The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch

Currently reading The Portrait of a Lady and it's also an old favourite.

I was so close to putting The Sea, The Sea on my list, so I am glad to see it getting love.

@StColumbofNavron

O M G how could I forget The Count of Monte Christo! I’m going to need 6. I can’t put it in the second list.

I think it would be my desert island book.

In no particular order (and I could give you five different ones tomorrow):

1. Bring Up The Bodies
2. Cold Comfort Farm
3. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
4. Olive, Again
5. Mr Loverman

Leonard and Hungry Paul.

I'm like LunaNorth, todays five might change tomorrow!

The Goldfinch
Shuggie Bain
A Little Life
Little Dorritt
The Woman in White

Impossible! This pretty much sums up my answer.

The Heart's Invisible Furies
The Goldfinch
All the Light We Cannot See
A Little Life
A Prayer for Owen Meany

Recent book I've enjoyed, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell.

Oooh, this is hard!
Off the top of my head...

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Also Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke “, Middlemarch by George Eliot and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (cheating I know, but it’s too difficult to choose!)

The Bell Jar
Middlemarch
Germinal
Jane Eyre
The L Shaped Room

I'll think of others at around 3am but here goes:

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
A Dark-Adapted Eye - Barbara Vine
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Miss Pym Disposes - Josephine Tey
84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff

Jane Eyre
The Hearts Invisible Furies
Jude the Obscure
Wide Sargasso Sea
Bridget Jones's Diary

Harry Potter series
Pillars of the Earth
Mists of Avalon
Hearts Invisible Furies
A Prayer for Owen meany

It's so hard to only chose 5 but here it goes...

1. To kill a mocking bird
2. Circe
3. Here be dragons
4. The murder of Roger Ackroyd
5. The Red Tent

The Octopus Man by Jasper Gibson