What are your top 10 favourite books of all time?

[ChocolateConnoisseur]

Here are mine:
10. The Outsiders
9: Heidi
8: Northern Lights
7: Matilda
6: Anne of Green Gables
5: The Queen of Dirt Island- Donal Ryan
4: The Thursday Murder Club
3: Bridget Jones
2: Foster Claire Keegan
1: Small things like these Claire Keegan

A lot of comfort reads in there from when I was a child

God - my head! I can't even remember The Kite Runner even though I know I loved it. I am envious of people being able to come up with these lists.

@MamaNewtNewt I was struggling to narrow down my final book and The Crow Road was a very strong contender. For the opening line if nothing else!

@TattiePants it looks like we have similar tastes as The Color Purple and The Secret History were both contenders for me.

And totally agree about that being one of the great opening lines!

I will obviously immediately regret this list the minute I hit 'post' as I will remember something I loved even more, but...

Beloved. - Toni Morrison
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
A God in Ruins - Kate Atkinson
Restless - William Boyd
11.22.66 - Stephen King
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
1984 - George Orwell
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

Honorable Mentions:
Atonement
100 Years of Solitude
Lessons in Chemistry

I love A God in Ruins and Life After Life but didn't want three Kate Atkinson's on my list but I so could have put them there.

I love how she writes such layered books with some characters who are so unlikeable but not in a one dimensional way and with dark reveals. And of course A God in Ruins is Teddy's book. Lovely golden, but probably a bit dull Teddy. I want to read it again now. I re-read most of them every few years.

Pride and Prejudice
Tess of the d'Urbevilles
The Pursuit of Love
The Power and the Glory
Ducks, Newburyport
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Poisonwood Bible
Cloud Atlas
The Power of Three
The Tsar of Love and Techno
The Waves

Oops... that's 11

It's hard to come up with ten, but I'd be happy if these were the only books I could ever keep.😀

The Outsiders
Underworld by Don Delilo
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Saree by Su Dharmapala
The Thread by Victoria Hislop
The Heart's Invisible Furies
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
The House At Pooh Corner
City Of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
We Need To Talk About Kevin

There's only two I've read in the last year so most of the list would probably stay the same for a while yet!

Jane Eyre
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Hearts Invisible Furies
Remains of the Day
Wide Sargasso Sea
Great Expectations
Bridget Jones' Diary
Godnight Mr Tom
Pride and Prejudice
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Diary of a Nobody, G and W Grossmith
Cats Eye, Margaret Atwood
The Queen and I, Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years: Sue Townsend
The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
The Rain Before It Falls, Jonathan Coe
Youth, JM Coetzee
Street Style, Ted Polhemus (non fiction)

The French Lieutenant’s Woman - John Fowles
Middlemarch - George Elliot
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Persian Boy - Mary Renault
The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
A Spell of Winter - Helen Dunmore
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Small Island - Andrea Levy
The Walled Orchard - Tom Holt

So, the constraints on Victorian women, and ancient history, are mostly what do it for me…

Rebecca - du Maurier
East of Eden - Steinbeck
A Passage to India - E M Forster
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
No More Meadows - M Dickens
The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

@Marsyas I love that someone else has Wise Children on their list too. It's on mine but no one in my circles has ever heard of it.

The others ...

1. Watership Down

3 . Lord of the Rings

1. Jayne Eyre
2. Rivals
3. A Town like Alice
4. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
5. Pride and Prejudice
6. Tender is the Night

10. Nights at the Circus

Not in any particular order:

Crime and Punishment, Dost

Cloud Atlas,
Circe
Arcadia (Iain Pears)
Dream of Scipio
Station Eleven (though read that at a resonant time!)
The Bear and The Nightingale (trilogy)
The Secret Life of Addie La Rue
The Starless Sea
Babel
Ghost Written (David Mitchell)

I spent way too many years studying the classics and they just don’t get a look in for me! Also ran: Naomi Novak’s Spinning Silver and Uprooted

Posted too soon :(

Not in any particular order:

Crime and Punishment
Stoner
The Remains of the Day
To Kill a Mockingbird
Rebecca
A Man Called Ove
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Pillars of the Earth
David Copperfield
The Complete Sherlock Holmes

Loads of great books here. I'm placemarking for future reads!

@Hellohah Stoner was another one that almost made it into my list.

The Book Thief
the Poisonwood Bible
the Lord of the Rings
The God of Small things
Chocolat
The Secret History
Tess of the Durbervilles
The Handmaids Tale
The hunger games
The fault in our stars

Although if you asked me tomorrow the list might be different

Brought this list up again as I am in need of a new book to kindle. Just finished the superb Yellowface by Rebecca Kuang. Prior to that I read three David Nicholls back to back - the latest one being You are Here, which I found weaker than the excellent Us and Sweet Sorrow of his.

What can I read next?

I've just finished reading The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and it completely captivated me. Two sisters living in France during the occupation of WW2 - really good story. Would recommend

Reading everyone's lists has reminded me of so many books I've enjoyed. Here's my list, from childhood onwards.

I am David - Anne Holm
The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
Hotel Du Lac - Anita Brookner
Nice Work - David Lodge
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
Any Human Heart - William Boyd
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

I would agree

@SlightlyJaded - thanks for that. Will give it a try.

I've not seen the wonderful Rose Tremain mentioned (but I must confess I've not read every post, just a quick scan). I think she is a superb writer, especially Restoration. It was shortlisted for the Booker but don't let that put you off. It's very readable (I do find some of the prize winners a bit too "meaningful", iykwim.

I agree, I also enjoyed Four Winds by her.