If you could take only 5 books to a desert island...

[naomi83]

what would they be?
my current choices would be:

Time traveller's wife

The lovely bones

A thousand splendid suns

Water for elephants

And little women

P and P
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Emma
S and S

Would leave Mansfield Park behind as it annoys me!

lord of the rings

the complete works of shakespeare

the complete works of dorothy parker

the complete works of jane austen

how to live on a desert island giving a handy step by step guide on how to make a shelter, the climate to expect, how to catch and kill and gut and cook food stuff and what herbs and fruit and veg to look out for

You'll be needing this then custardo

Wuthering Heights for me
Wild Swans
War and Peace - never read it but I guess I would have time!

I seem to like books beginning with 'W'

An Argos Catalog.
A very detailed annotated copy of the Koran (in English!!)
Stephen Hawking book (something I'd have to read a lot and slowly to get)
War and Peace
I'd like something practical for the 5gth book, like a Botany guide, but failing that I'd like something very cheerful or uplifting.

Anything but "The complete works of" XXXX.

Pride and Prejudice

The God of Small Things

Jane Eyre

HP and the Goblet of Fire

Wild Swans because its so big

Oxford History of England
Complete works of Georges Simenon
The selfish gene (R Dawkins)
the great terror (Robert Conquest)
The Tony Benn diaries

I plan to be prepared for a long stay!

Regeneration trilogy (Pat Barker)
Any Human Heart (William Boyd)
Rivals (Jilly Cooper)

errmmm...

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

Something pracical and obscure, I guess...

Oh if I'm allowed complete works I'll take:

Complete works of JA including 'Mansfield Park'
Complete works of Ibsen
Complete poems of Larkin
Lord Of The Rings
All of the Harry Potters

That is far too difficult a question! Only five books? How awful.

LOl, This was my 'A' level English exam question 15 years ago!

Pride and Predjudice

Three Men in a Boat

A Prayer for Owen Meany

Larousse Gastronomique (something to flick through while gnawing my chargrilled rat)

The collected works of Ray Mears.

How to build a pc and internet connection using sticks and leaves.

Tonight's top 3 would be:

Cats Eye - Margaret Atwood
Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
The Road - Cormac McCarthy

If you asked me next week I would say:

An Instance of the Fingerpost - Ian Pears
Under the Skin - Michel Faber
The Secret History - Donna Tartt

Limiting myself to 3 is impossible!

hum

if we're talking volumes

the complete Sherlock Holmes
Brideshead Revisited
Collected short stories of Saki
John Donne's collected works
Shakespeare's collected works

think I could live with that

ooh 3 men in a boar

[considers ditching Shakespeare]

BOAT

Midge, you are the antithesis of me.

I now long to understand you.

How can anyone need to take An Instance of the Fingerpost (dire dire child on a muck heap direness) AND Secret History (Oh God, where do I start) and read them perpetually??

I'd but I'm too busy being baffled.

I've tried with every book on your list and each and every one has left me depressed and lonely - explain?

ROFLing rather hard at 3 men in a boar - sounds a bit porny

montmorency would Not Approve

Nigella Lawson: How To Eat

Kenneth Williams: Diaries

Peter Ackroyd: Hawkesmoor

Rose Tremain: Restoration

The latest Barbara Vine

The Deptford Trilogy, Robertson Davies (in one volume so it doesn't count as 3!)
The Business, Iain Banks
The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon

(Can I have one more? Not Wanted on the Voyage, Timothy Findley)

Sorry, Monty.

The Diary of a Provincial Lady (actually the collection, to get The Provincial Lady in War Time..)

The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge(or the 3 Eliot books in one volume if possible)

War and Peace

Gaudy Night

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

(or maybe not - isn't it hard to choose?!)