TOP 5 BOOKS EVER.............?

[enprovence]

Desperate for some new reading matter, what are you TOP 5 BOOKS EVER?

Will rack my brains and add mine too..........

hmm tough one!

i'd have to go with:

1 The Time Traveller's Wife
2 Goodnight Mister Tom
3 My Sister's Keeper
4 Jane Eyre
5 Marley & Me

Oooooo... of all time@

1984
The English Patient
Wuthering Heights
The Life and Loves of a She Devil
Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Recently:

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
The House at Riverton
Past Imperfect
The White Tiger

How depressing - can't think of another

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith has to be up there.

One flew over the cuckoos nest
To Kill a mockingbird
Good Night Mister Tom
1984
A life of Pi

don;t have a top 5 becasue there are too many good novels around from classic authors like Dickens, Austen and the Bronte's to choose from.

But I would very much recommend 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks.

Mara and Dann by Doris Lessing

Birds without Wings

The Five People you meet in Heaven

Life of Pi

Veronica Decides to Die

Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)

American Gods (Neil Gaiman)

Wasted (Marya Hornbacher)

Wicked (Gregory Maguire)

Wilt (Tom Sharpe)

To Kill A Mockingbird
The Alchemist
Jane Eyre
Sense and Sensibility
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

I thought of one:

The 19th Wife

Mansfield Park
The Dispossessed (Ursula le Guin)
George Orwell's collected essays
Devil's Cub (Georgette Heyer)
Diary of a Provincial Lady (E M Delafield)

Thanks for the suggestions so far, I have been totally convinced to get 'To kill a mockingbird' as so many love this book.

Some of my faves are:

Love in a Time of Cholera - GG Marquez

AS I walked out one midsummer morning - Laurie Lee

Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan

My Father's Glory (& my Mother's Castle) Marcel Pagnol.

A top five discounting classics (as it's so long ago that I read any )
A Fine Balance -Rohinton Mistry
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
Any Human Heart - William Boyd
City of Djinns - William Dalrymple

And after I post this I'll want to switch all but the first one to something else!!

The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates)
Diary of a Nobody (George and Weedon Grossmith)
If This is a Man (Primo Levi)
The Quincunx (Charles Palliser)
another vote for George Orwell's essays too

Magician - Raymond E Fiest
Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
The Naked Jape - Jimmy Carr
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Time Travelers Wife - Audrey Nefenager

The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Look to Windward - Iain Banks
The Kiterunner

so many others!

The catcher in the rye - JD Salinger
The handmaids tale - Margaret Atwood
The sopranos - Alan Warner
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
The bell jar - Sylvia Plath

V difficult to only list five!

Not top five, but five books that moved me:

One hundred years of solitude, Garcia Marquez
Embers, Sandor Marai
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Mme. Bovary, Flauvert
Quiet flows the don, M. Sholokov
Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky

Pride and Prejudice
The Unconsoled
Rebecca
Notes from a Small Island
Alias Grace

One Hundred Years of Solitude
A Picture of Dorian Gray
Midnight's Children
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Rebecca

Top Fiveish:
Wuthering Heights
All Quiet on the Western Front (but not read it for years so that's based on my teenage self)
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Writing on the Wall (children's book from the 80s by Lynne Reid Banks)
Rebecca

Five of my favourite books, I don't think I could actually rate a Top 5:

The Time Traveller's Wife
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
The Hyperion series by Dan Simmons (I know not one book so it shouldn't be counted but I can't choose one out of the series)
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

argh, hate the pressure of choosing your top three or five, I alwyays think of more afterwards!

Ok first ones that come to mind are

Pride & Prejudice - Austen
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde
Bleak House - Dickens
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
To The Lighthouse - Woolf

Can I sneak in 5 more recent ones?

Music & Silence - Rose Tremain
The Quincunx - palliser (great if you like dickens)
The Thorn Birds - Coleen McCullough
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
Any Human Heart - Willam Boyd

Thorn Birds in amongst all those lovely classics!

It's really good, honest!

Well I remember it from when I was about 14 - we read all the saucy bits at breaktime and lusted after Richard Chamberlein.