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

155 replies

enprovence · 09/08/2009 14:36

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

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

OP posts:
jurisfictionoperative · 14/04/2010 23:47

pride and prejudice
rebecca
gone with the wind
lord of the rings (the whole set)
anne rice (the vampire chronicles/mayfair witches)
anything by jasper fforde
i know thats actually about 28 books, but i cant possibly narrow it down any more!!

mumtoxii · 16/04/2010 20:05

Oh, this thread is soooo hard!

Jane Eyre
Cazelet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Little House on the Prairie ( have read the whole series every year for the past 35 years!)
September by Rosamunde Pilcher
The Darling Buds of May

JeanLouiseFinch · 16/04/2010 20:07

The Grapes of Wrath

brightyoungthing · 16/04/2010 20:15

This is too hard but books that come to mind at the moment are

Papillon (?)
The bronze horseman-Paulina Simmons
The road-Cormac McCarthy
The good earth-Pearl S Buck
His dark materials trilogy-Phillip Pullman

mumtoxii · 17/04/2010 07:53

Oh, I forgot, Cross stitch by Diana Gabaldon!

thehat · 17/04/2010 23:58

Just finished Brixton Beach which has now become one of my all time favourites.

chixinthestix · 18/04/2010 00:21

Not sure that they are all time favourites but not mentioned here yet....
Girl with a pearl earring - Tracy Chevalier
The man who planted trees - Jean Giono
Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
Possession - AS Byatt
The Magic apple tree - Susan Hill

kodokan · 11/06/2010 21:47

Dragging up an old thread, but wanted to play.

Cross Stitch/ Voyager series - Diana Gabaldon
The Wheel of Fortune - Susan Howatch
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
How Green Was My Valley - Richard Llewellyn

and a nod to childhood

The Dark Is Rising - Susan Cooper
or something by Diana Wynne Jones, can't quite decide

singsinthebath · 12/06/2010 00:30

Germinal - Emile Zola
Time Traveller's Wife
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Brave New World- Aldous Huxley

And for light reading:
Tales of the City series - Armistead Maupin

amimagic · 23/06/2010 19:58

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

A Secret History - Donna Tartt

Hitchhikers Guide - Douglas Adams

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman/terry Pratchett

The Time Travellers Wife - Audrey ?

That's trying to avoid the classics - although I think Catch 22 should be classed as a classic by now!

domesticsluttery · 23/06/2010 20:03

Favourites from recent years:

The Time Traveller's Wife
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
The Girl with a Pearl Earring
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian
Chocolat

CoteDAzur · 23/06/2010 20:11

Is Birds Without Wings really that good?

CoteDAzur · 23/06/2010 20:14

Horses for courses, and all that but still... "Tractors" cannot possibly be one of the best 5 books of all time for anyone!

abeautifulbutterfly · 23/06/2010 20:23

Agree Cote: even the next one by Lewycka (sp?) - Two Caravans - was better than Tractors

Mine off the top of my head:
Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton (a teenage favourite)
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
Gatsby
The Wasteland - Eliot (poncey I know, and not a novel but I don't care)
Something by Hardy - Tess? Jude?

piscesmoon · 23/06/2010 20:35

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
To Kill a Mockingbird
Birdsong
Gone With the Wind

(I didn't like Time Traveller's wife)

domesticsluttery · 24/06/2010 08:13

Cote: I didn't say it was the best of all time, I said it was one of my recenet favourites. I preferred Tractors to either Two Caravans or We are all made of Glue. Tractors was the first book in a long time that made me actually laugh out loud, so it has a special place on my list due to that.

If I listed my top 5 books of all time they would all be classics, and I was trying to avoid that. If I was listing classics it would be Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Mrs Dalloway and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Which is an incredibly boring list!

Sakura · 24/06/2010 08:21

"Kevin"
Madame Bovary
The Bronze Horseman (Paulina Simons)
The Interpretor of Maladies (Jumphar Lamphri sp?)
Crime and Punishment

Pacita I thought I was the only person in the world who'd read Quiet flows the don, M. Sholokov (though the title I read it under was "And Quietly Flows the Don".) I too found it strangely moving and beautiful.

CoteDAzur · 24/06/2010 10:27

Thread title being "Top 5 books ever?", it was a surprise seeing "Tractors" on anybody's list, whatever the list is called.

It didn't make me laugh at all, by the way. Except maybe a pained grimace at the state of the world where that book makes it to the bestsellers' lists.

CoteDAzur · 24/06/2010 10:30

Without meaning to criticize anybody, can I just say that whenever these "favorites" threads come up, the vast majority of books mentioned are either dusty classics we read in school or feather-brained first-books by unknown authors.

I wonder why that is. I really do, and I don't know the answer.

abeautifulbutterfly · 24/06/2010 11:49

I reckon there are lots of reasons for this:

-the books you read in Eng Lit/other literature classes are pre-selected as "good books" to some extent anyway

-you are "taught" to read them, helped to understand them, they are probably the books you ever read in the greatest detail, therefore, unless you actually dislike reading (or the books themselves), the process will bring you immense pleasure. Let's face it, few of us in later life have the time or energy to read with the depth and attention you give a book at, say, A-Level. So those are the ones that stick in your mind.

-a lot of us at this parenting stage in our lives read purely for pleasure and are usually practically comatose by the time we have any time to ourselves to read, so our mental energy is sorely diminished for more ambitious books. So recent favourites might be less ambitious than "all-time" favourites discovered at school.

-we read less? (All of the above probably true for me anyway)

I put this on the other thread I read back-to-back with this yesterday (about books we were unable to finish) but I will repeat it - the vast majority of titles feature frequently on both threads. Ergo: those whose favourites matched some of the unreadables on the other threads might find even more reading material there IYSWIM...

Anyway, give us your list now you've commented so acerbically on everyone else's

TaudrieTattoo · 24/06/2010 11:55

Here's mine...

1984
Wuthering Heights
Alias Grace
Wolf Hall
The Road

MayorNaze · 24/06/2010 12:12

love story by erich segal (i love erich segal and no-one usually has ever even heard of him, he has written other books as well but they are out of print in te uk )

i love books, absolutely need them - i couldn't list a top 5 but to give you an idea of my booksehlves my last charity shop haul included ruby ferguson, jilly cooper, david lodge, andrew davison and susan coolidge

piscesmoon · 24/06/2010 14:51

I don't think that Pride and Prejudice are 'dusty' classics, CoteDAzur. I love them because I can read them and re read them and I like them as much as I did when I was a teenager.
I would agree with tractors-I didn't find it in the least funny.

piscesmoon · 24/06/2010 14:52

Sorry -I meant to say and Jane Eyre.

Sakura · 24/06/2010 15:13

"Without meaning to criticize anybody, can I just say that whenever these "favorites" threads come up, the vast majority of books mentioned are either dusty classics we read in school or feather-brained first-books by unknown authors.

I wonder why that is. I really do, and I don't know the answer. "

Umm, because we're thick (hence the featherbrained choices) and lacking in imagination (hence the dusty classics)

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