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

Placemarking for ideas

@DailyMaui It would be interesting to re-read A God in Ruins. The ending completely undid me. Big snotty tears. Although it wouldn't be a shock this time, I suspect it would be even more poignant reading his story, knowing the ending. A different experience altogether.

I never re-read books. I know lots of people do, but I've never done that. I am always too panicked that there are so many books to read and so little time... but then I also waste time finishing every book I ever start - even if it's dire - with only a handful of exceptions in my entire life.

And never more than two books at a time - usually one. And only if one is on audible and one is a physical copy.

Funny how we might all be avid readers but 'read' very differently.

Just coming back to the list after a whole year haha!

To say, I have only one book to add and that's The Count of Monte Cristo.

My list stays the same, I can see a few people thought theirs might change as time moves on.

Goodness so tough. Ask me tomorrow and you’d probably get 10 different answers!

1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (because even in my 50s I still check a wardrobe. Just in case….)
2. Bleak House (because I sobbed)
3. Remains of the Day (sheer simple perfection)
4. His Dark Materials (3 in one!)
5. Half of a Yellow Sun
6. A Gentleman in Moscow
7. Room with A View (can exchange with any EM Forster)
8. The Handmaid’s Tale (blown away as a teenager)
9. Far from the Madding Crowd (I know not his best but I did it for O Level and loved it)
10. The Woman in White

Close runners would be The Poisonwood Bible/Purple Hibiscus/ Emma/

Changes all the time but ... (in no particular order)

1. Remains of the Day
2. Thousand Splendid Suns
3. Kite Runner
4. To Kill a Mockingbird
5. Violeta
6. 1984
7. All the Light We Cannot See
8. Piranesi
9. The House on the Cerulean Sea
10. Of Mice and Men

I love this list. I’m not a Christian believer, but I still love the Narnia books. Lewis was a superb writer. Please tell me you’ve seen the film adaptation of A Room with a View as well. Very few adaptations are as good as the book. The only ones I can think of are the TV adaptations of Cranfield, I Claudius and Brideshead Revisited. In fact, I would say the BBC adaptation of I Claudius is better than the book.

These are fascinating lists. So many of my all time favourites.

.

I can't do ten!

But the four that have stayed with me are:

A suitable boy (didn't like the TV series though) : Vikram Seth

An evil cradling : Brian Keenan

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine : Gail honeyman

All at Sea : Decca Aitkinhead

Oh 2 more.

Lessons in chemistry : Bonnie Garmus

and

Simple Pleasures by Claire Chambers

@Cooper77 : yes I loved the film of Room with a View. Agree I Claudius superb. I also loved A Passage to India film. Did the book for A level and had a wonderful wonderful teacher (to whom I am still eternally grateful) and thought the film was excellent.

In no particular orde, such a difficult choice!

The Shell Seekers- Rosamunde Pilcher
The Long Winter- Laura Ingalls Wilder
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell
A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Townes
Family - Susan Hill
The Magic Apple Tree- Susan Hill
The Barchester Chronicles (not really one, but I love them all)- Anthony Trollope
Shirley- Charlotte Brontë
Fifteen Wild Decembers - Karen Powell

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

2001 by Arthur C. Clarke

The City and the City by China Mieville

The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Babbit by Sinclair Lewis

The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Guernica by Dave Boling

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Some books are from.my childhood but all of these I would still return to and read again and again

On the Banks of Plum Creek - Laura Ingalls Wilder

Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery

Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild

Eucalyptus - Murray Bail

All the Rivers Run - Nancy Cato

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Lark Rise to Candleford - Flora Thompson

Circle of Friends - Maeve Binchy

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg

The Dreaming Suburb - R.F. Delderfield

Today's top ten, in no particular order. May be different tomorrow.

Piranesi (Susannah Clarke)
Tom's Midnight Garden (Phillippa Pearce)
The Midwich Cuckoos ( John Wyndham)
Night Watch (Terry Pratchett)
Gaudy Night (Dorothy Sayers)
Fire and Hemlock (Diana Wynne Jones)
Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
The Horse and his Boy (CS Lewis)
The 39 Steps (John Buchan)
Buried for Pleasure (Edmund Crispin)

I'd say there's too many good books in the world to narrow it down to 10 so I've picked from the books I've rated amongst the best that I've read from the last five years or so:

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
Hearts Invisible Furies, John Boyne
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O'Nan
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
Nightwebs, Cornell Woolrich
A Redbird Christmas, Fannie Flagg
Tom's Midnight Garden, Phillipa Pearce
Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart
The Woman in Black, Susan Hill

Ooh hard!

The Sunne in Spendor
The Pursuit of Love/Love in a Cold Climate
Heart's Invisible Furies
The Godfather
Goodnight Mr Tom
We Begin at the End
The Thorn Birds
One Day
11/22/63
Nora Loft's House Trilogy

Anything that makes me feel bereft to have finished. I could probably do a separate list of more classical novels. Everyone hates One Day and I should replace with Wolf Hall - but I am the same age as the protagonists and it's stayed with me.

So tricky -

Heidi
What Katy did
Little Women
Mary Ann series
When hitler stole pink rabbit
The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane
Flowers in the attic
Little fires everywhere
The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Follow you home
To the end

And to kill a mockingbird

In no particular order

The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
101 Dalmations - Dodie Smith
Restoration - Rose Tremain
A Dark Adapted Eye - Ruth Rendell
Puffball - Faye Weldon
Capricorn One - Bernard L Ross
Kenneth Williams diaries
Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson
How To Eat - Nigella Lawson

Any Bill Bryson
Memoirs of a Geisha
Secret life of bees
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tess of the D Urbervilles
Pride and Prejudice
Any Martina Cole
The Shopaholics Series
The boy who harnessed the wind
Chocolat

Eclectic reading- and I've got some good recommendations from this thread

Harry Potter 1-7
Twilight 1-4
50 shades 1-3

I just love them!!

Virginia Woolf: The Waves
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
May Sinclair, The Tree of Heaven
Penelope Farmer, Charlotte Sometimes
James Joyce, Ulysses
P D James, Devices and Desires
Helen Zenna Smith, Not So Quiet
Octavia Butler, The Testaments
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

So many others I might have mentioned, but these were the first that sprang to mind.

In no particular order:
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - couldn't put it down
Mr Loverman - Bernardine Evaristo
Man's search for meaning - Victor Frankl
Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
The Shuttle - Frances Hodgkin Burnett
Anything by Enid Blyton - pure escapism from a terrible childhood.
Midnight Library - Matt Haig
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell - should be on the GCSE syllabus
Any Human Heart - William Boyd

1. The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris
2. The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese
3. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
4. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
5. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khalled Hosseini
6. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
7. the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
8. Animal Farm - George Orwell
9. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doer
10. Lessons in Chemistry - can’t remember author