Top 3 "must read before you die" books please!

[McDreamy]

I am going to give up the tv (except for The Apprentice and Brothers and Sisters ) and i want to read more - I love reading but just don't get the time (because I watch too much tv in the evenings )

Anyway I digress - I want to know which books I MUST read. What would you say are the must read books of a life time?

Will need to think about this but my first choice would be East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

The Book Thief Mark Zusak
the Road home Rose Tremain
the Moonstone Wilkie Collins

What's Bred in the Bone - Robertson Davies
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

What interests you ? Fiction? Autobiographies?

As long as you are enjoying the books !

Opinion on what is a 'must read' book is so divided and life is too short and there are too many books in the world to be ploughing through a book because it is a so-called 'must read'..

I totally agree with you Itsjustafleshwound, I'm not suggesting I'm about to plough through every single book mentioned, I just want to know what others feel are there must read books and hopefully I can pick out a few to read and feel "better read" - whatever that means

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

Persuasion - Jane Austin

Kim - Rudyard Kipling

ooh and can I add a fourth one?

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

Will be keeping a close eye on this thread - am currently compiling a must-read list for myself and need some more suggestions!

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

Have you looked in the Books section of this website - many suggestions ...

Catch-22
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Wuthering Heights

Well if I knew I was going to die next week I would spend all of this week reading:

• the complete works of Jane Austen
• The Green Mile
• Ballet Shoes
• Charlotte Sometimes
• Daddy Longlegs
• Tom's Midnight Garden
• Waiting For Godot and Endgame
• The complete works of Larkin and Ibsen
• Isable Allende's 'Paula'
• Of Mice And Men
• and I'd finish with some Bill Bryson.

But I am a VERY fast reader!

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Girls by Lori Lansen
The House of Spirits by Isabelle Allende

How could I forget - Music and Silence by Rose Tremain.

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

The Northern Lights Trilogy by Phillip Pullman

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

The Crimson and The White by Michel Faber

This Human Season by Louise Dean

If This Is A Man/The Truce by Primo Levi

The Deptford Trilogy, Robertson Davies

Persuasion, Jane Austen

good to see another Robertson Davies fan. He is woefully overlooked.

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes

Yes to 'A Handful Of Dust' - genius!

To Kill A Mocking Bird

Everything by Wilkie Collins

Captain Corelli's Mandolin - I stayed up all night to finish it.

A Town Like Alice

Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels

Silk by Alessandro Baricco

Also if you're at all interested in football All Played Out by Pete Davies is fab.