What are your golden books?

[Cooper77]

Oscar Wilde used the phrase ‘golden books’ to describe the books that meant the most to him - the ones he’d lived with, and constantly re-read. I think in his case it was Walter Pater’s Renaissance, Keats’ poems, and Plato’s dialogues.
He meant books that you will re-read for the rest of your life, books that have changed you, books you turn to when you feel sad.

Stig Abel, the editor of the TLS, said Pride and Prejudice was his go-to book, that he’d read it so many times he knew it word for word, and that when he was ill it was the first thing he picked up. M. R. James, the ghost writer, spent his final years reading and re-reading nothing but Dickens and P. G. Wodehouse.

If I was trying to impress, I’d go for Kafka, Proust or Virginia Woolf. But here is my honest list. These are my real golden books:

Patrick Fermor: A Time of Gifts
Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That
C. S. Lewis: Narnia books
Dickens: David Copperfield
P. G. Wodehouse: Jeeves and Wooster novels
Evelyn Waugh: The Sword of Honour
Bill Bryson: A Short History of Everything
Aldous Huxley: Crome Yellow
Oscar Wilde: Dorian Gray
Roald Dahl: Boy and Going Solo
Anthony Burgess: Enderby
Kipling: The Jungle Book

I’d also add the collected popular essays of Bertrand Russell, plus his autobiographies. Funny, wise, cheerful, crystal clear and just a joy to read. The minute I pick him up I feel better. His voice is so distinct it’s like meeting an old friend. I also love the non-fiction of George Orwell, Robert Graves and Aldous Huxley. I’m only just getting into Douglas Adams as well. In fact, I’m working my way through his complete works. For sure he will be a writer I’ll return to again and again.

Gilead
Home
Lila
Jack
all by Marilynne Robinson

You gave an impressive list. Not sure I have any books I frequently re- read.

The novels and poetry collections I read frequently enough to be able to recite considerable chunks of them would be along the lines of

all of Jane Austen, bar Northanger Abbey
Kate O’ Brien, As Music and Splendour and The Land of Spices
JL Carr, A Month in the Country
Molly Keane, The Rising Tide and Good Behaviour
Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows and its sequels
Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, her diaries and essays
Yeats, Responsibilities
Everything by Antonia Forest bar The Thursday Kidnapping
Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir
Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie
Somerville and Ross, The Real Charlotte
Dervla Murphy’s earlier travel writing
Charlotte Bronte, Villette and Jane Eyre
Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
Marguerite Duras, L’amant
Ted Hughes, Lupercal
Everything Laurie Colwin ever wrote
Shakespeare’s sonnets
Annie Ernaux’s Une simple passion

Oh, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall! And Beyond Black!

Rebecca
The Paying Guests
Life Class

Children's literature:

Charlotte Sometimes
Cold Christmas
The Silver Chair
All About the Bullerby Children

I probably re read plays more than novels; classic 20th Century: GBS, Chekov, Coward Rattigan etc stuff I chose to do for my degree.

Harry potter series
Snapper Roddy Doyle
Midlife Mysteries & Magic Brenda Trim
The Immortality Trials Complete Collection Eliza Raine
Lemony Snickett series of unfortunate events
Think I'm not the target audience for this tread!

The Magic Apple Tree / Family - Susan Hill
All of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books
The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
Fifteen Wild Decembers - Karen Powell
All of the Brontës except Charlotte’s The Professor (too much French!)
All of Angela Thirkell’s and Dorothy Whipple’s books

The James Herriot Books. 🌝

Definitely Euripides for looking all intelligent 🤣 but genuinely my hands down favourites are H.P Lovecraft and Stephen King😁

Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield

LM Montgomery - all of the Anne and Emily books, but essentially with the Anne books it's all about Anne of the Island for me.
KM Peyton - The Edge of the Cloud
Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle
Elizabeth Goudge - The Little White Horse
Alison Uttley - A Traveller in Time
LM Boston - The Children of Green Knowe

Mine are mostly shorter and children's books (apart from David Copperfield) as I find that if I want to re-read a book for comfort then it is generally one I want to inhale in one or two sittings, possibly even reading some bits very quickly, or even skipping some parts and then reading my favourite passages at leisure.

That's a very interesting list. OK, so I'm going to put you on the spot here. Imagine you're going to be imprisoned on a desert island for a year, with no TV or internet access. Food and shelter will be provided, but you'll want something to comfort and entertain you. I will let you take five of those books. You can have a poetry collection, but not a complete works (so, for example, you could take Yeats' The Tower, but not his collected poems). And you can only take individual novels. Which five would you choose – and why?

I have asked other people this question, and it's funny how often David Copperfield comes up (rather than, say, Bleak House, which many, including Nabokov and Harold Bloom, consider his masterpiece). I would also choose David Copperfield. If he put his talent into Bleak House, he put his soul into David Copperfield. All of life is there – the whole range of human experience, from grief and love to loyalty and betrayal. The range of characters is also astonishing.

I know a lot of people dislike Dickens, but it's because they approach him in the wrong way. He isn't a conventional novelist. If you read him as you'd read, say, Jane Austen or George Eliot, you'll be disappointed. Martin Amis said that his novels are best thought of as fairy tales – but fairy tales blended with social realism. Because of that strange mix, you never quite know where you are. One moment he is describing people with painful accuracy, and you're thinking "god, yes, that just how people do behave in situations like that." Then a page later he's in fairy land, having people behave in ways they they never would. Micawber, for example, is nothing but a conman. No way would such a man risk himself to save Agnes. That's pure fairy tale. Yet the depiction of Murdstone, and his pleasure in bullying and thrashing David, is painfully realistic. No one else quite does that – mix those two genres in such a way.

It's often said that Dickens created a world. But before you enter that world, you have to know what to expect. If you expect just realism, or just fairy tale, you'll be frustrated and annoyed.

I guess another question is what makes a book 'golden'. For those of you who've chosen a list, what was it that made you select those works? The older I get, the more I admire cheerful and life-affirming writers. There is a place for misery and gloom, of course. We all enjoy a blast of rage and disgust now and then! In fact, it can be weirdly comforting to read Philip Larkin or Thomas Hardy and realise that you're not alone in thinking life's a pretty grim business. But that's easy. It's easier to write something bleak and despairing than something joyful and uplifting.

The writers and books that would make it into my top ten are all uplifting in some way. Either they are full of curiosity and wonder (like Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything) or they're simply full of joy (like Wodehouse and Leigh Fermor). I've just realised that that's why I'm so loving Douglas Adams. He was a huge Wodehouse fan, and his books are what you'd imagine Wodehouse to have written if he'd been a fan of popular science.

Then again, some writers are grim, but produce such exquisite prose (or poetry) that the beauty of their writing alone can be uplifting. Eliot's Wasteland, for example, is a depressing work, but it's so beautiful that I never feel sad after reading it.

This is why I get palpitations even listening to Desert Island Discs!

You cruel person.

Ok, Villette, Mansfield Park, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Le rouge et le noir, and (wasn’t on my list, but your suggestion), Yeats’ The Tower rather than Responsibilities.

Ny blood pressure is spiking at the mere thought..

haha.

Ah, Mansfield Park. Interesting – was curious which Austen you'd choose.

OK, to share your pain, here are my five desert island books:

Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything (the hardback, illustrated edition)
P. G. Wodehouse: Right Ho Jeeves (Wodehouse reached the summit of his genius in this work)

Patrick Fermor: A Time of Gifts (just for the sheer pleasure of Fermor's company)
Bertrand Russell: Collected Essays (again, just for the pleasure of his company – witty, wise, cheerful, and written in crystal clear prose)
T. S. Eliot: The Four Quartets

If I was alone on an island, I would read them all out loud. It would pain me to leave Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh behind, however. Actually, since this is my game, it's my rules. So though you, and anyone who wants to join in, can only take five, I'm allowed ten. I'll also take the collected essays of Aldous Huxley, Robert Graves and George Orwell, plus Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide and Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour novels (yes, I'm aware that's a trilogy, but like I said, my game, my rules😛)

The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld
The Snow Goose - Paul Gallico
The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal

A children's book, but Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian.
Read it as a child and thought it was a good book but I think a lot of it went over my head. Read it as an adult (after I'd had my children) and my god - what an emotional rollercoaster. It's just lovely.

I'm re-reading The Hobbit at the moment - and really enjoying it. I might go the whole hog and do Lord of the Rings after.

Interesting thread - I'd have to say Bleak House is my all time favourite Dickens.

Thanks for starting this thread, as giving me a few ideas of which authors to try.

I am not even sure why but I reread Italo Calvino's Il Barone Rampante (The Baron in the Trees) a lot. I get something out of it each time and still don't really understand it!