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?

Dusty Answer
Madame Bovary
I Capture the Castle

The Remains of the Day
The Road Home
Wuthering Heights

if this is a man - Primo Levi

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Last Chance To See - Douglas Adams

Magician - Raymond E Fiest

The Naked Jape - Jimmy Carr

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby

Three? Three?
Actually, I don't really like lists like this. If you like reading Dick Francis or Harlequin Romance then that's fine by me, there's no such thing as 'must reads', just enjoyable reading.

But if I had only read good novels in my life, I think I would rather they had been:

For Whom The Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
Watership Down (why is that book so addictive?)
Pigtopia (Kitty Fitzgerald)

The bible

The koran

The torah

Just in case

I second your 'Slaughterhouse 5' by Kurt Vonnegut RetiredGoth.

I love 'Tender is the Night' by Fitzgerald.

I'd probably finish with a Philip Roth. Maybe 'Everyman'.

Life of Pi - Yann Martel
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

Highly reccomended:
The Road Home - Rose Tremain
Any Human Heart - William Boyd

tough one,not very good with lists but probably
grapes of wrath- J Steinbeck

good bones - Margaret Attwood- short stories some v v short

accordian crimes -Annie Proulx

and the first chapter of Underworld by Don Delillo - its a huge book and good but the first chapter is great

Madame Bovary
Brideshead Revisited
The Great Gatsby

1984
grass is singing
grapes of wrath

ooh lots I would have said already here, but from the leftfield, how about "The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living" by the Dalai Lama?

Although having just re-read the thread title it might be a bit late in that case

Victory
Return of the Native
Lord Jim

Plenty of pathos!
And The Balkan Trilogy for light relief if allowed. All the above are books I can read again and again.

lol at your list BigBella

The Pillars of The Earth... Ken Follet
The Long Walk... Slavomir Rawicz
Watermelon... Marion Keyes

All very different but equally superb.

His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman) is essential reading.
Atonement (Ian McEwan)
The Twilight series [not ashamed to admit it emoticon ] Really loved them.

Hurray so glad to see the twilight series. Just in the middle of 'breaking dawn' and loving it!
And to lower the tone even more.....
try 'The death and life of Charlie St Cloud' by Ben Sherwood. I am a strident atheist and don't believe in anything after death BUT on reading this lovely book if I was about to pop my clogs this book will be in my top theee to give a 'warm glow'!

To Kill a Mocking Bird
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
Schindler's List

ooh gosh sooo tough to just choose 3!!

I am a mad reader and its about the only thing barable about getting the tube every morning getting to escape into a different world for 20 mins

Hmm

1. Time travellers Wife - love love love it!!

1. The Outcast - I found this so touching!

hmmmmmmm

1. Just for sheer escapism... any Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic range / remember me etc)

(I would say that some other faves of mine are The Lovely bones and Boy in stiped Pj's - but as we are all approaching / recently had or already have young children prob not best time to read!)

x

Pinkcaz I got over that one by reading to dd (when she was still babe-in-arms) what I wanted to read so bedtime had me sat in her room reading aloud A Pin to see the Peepshow (F Tennyson Jesse - one of my fave books . She didn't care - they just want to hear your voice!
Of course had to progress to picture books eventually...

Would also have Madame Bovary, A Handful of Dust and no one should go to their grave without having read a P G Wodehouse (or several), preferably a Jeeves/Wooster.

I'm happy to see so many votes for Prayer for Owen Meany but I think I might go for The Cider House Rules.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Alias Grace by Maragret Attwood

I love books that are beautifully written, not just good stories.

best books ive read this year:

The Gargoyle
The time travellers wife
When will there be good news

damn damn damn richard and judy! everything ive loved this year has been in there bloody bookclub!

but they were fab reads and i really enjoyed them!

To Kill a Mokingbird.
The curious incident of the dog in the nightime
one about a young girl who was a bit of a detective and she'd sit in a shopping mall and watch people all day, then someone finds her teddy or something.

Can't remember the name of the book.

I am actually going through a stage of going throught the 'must reads' at the moment

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth - enormously huge, but wonderful, it flies by.

I love A.S.Byatt, so Possession or the Frederica Porter quartet (A Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, A Whistling Woman).

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Sorry, that was cheeky of me, your asked for 3 books, I listed 9, oops.