Lucky Jim | Kingsley | Amis |
Behind The Scenes At The Museum | Kate | Atkinson |
Augustus Carp Esq., By Himself | Sir H.H. | Bashford |
The Jacaranda Tree | H. E. | Bates |
Planet Of The Apes | Pierre | Boulle |
Bridge Over The River Kwai | Pierre | Boulle |
Brazzaville Beach | William | Boyd |
Jane Eyre | Charlotte | Bronte |
Wuthering Heights | Emily | Bronte |
The 39 Steps | John | Buchan |
Greenmantle | John | Buchan |
Mr Standfast | John | Buchan |
A Clockwork Orange | Anthony | Burgess |
Possession | A.S. | Byatt |
Wild Swans | Jung | Chang |
Riddle Of The Sands | Erskine | Childers |
The Woman In White | Wilkie | Collins |
Heart of Darkness | Joseph | Conrad |
Lord Jim | Joseph | Conrad |
Captain Corelli's Mandolin | Louis | de Bernieres |
Robinson Crusoe | Daniel | Defoe |
Bomber | Len | Deighton |
The IPCRESS File | Len | Deighton |
To Serve Them All My Days | R.F. | Delderfield |
A Horseman Riding By | R.F. | Delderfield |
Last Bus To Woodstock | Colin | Dexter |
The Idiot | Fyodor | Dostoyevskiy |
Crime & Punishment | Fyodor | Dostoyevskiy |
Birdsong | Sebastian | Faulks |
Bridget Jones' Diary | Helen | Fielding |
Madame Bovary | Gustave | Flaubert |
One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel | Garcia Marquez |
Love In The Time Of Cholera | Gabriel | Garcia Marquez |
Cold Comfort Farm | Stella | Gibbons |
Dead Souls | Nikolai | Gogol |
Lord Of The Flies | William | Golding |
To The Ends Of The Earth Trilogy | William | Golding |
Memoirs Of A Geisha | Arthur | Goulden |
Wind In The Willows | Kenneth | Grahame |
Goodbye To All That | Robert | Graves |
The Third Man & Fallen Idol | Graham | Greene |
Diary Of A Nobody | George & Weedon | Grossmith |
Love On A Branch Line | John | Hadfield |
Tess of The d'Urbervilles | Thomas | Hardy |
Fatherland | Robert | Harris |
The Good Soldier Schweik | Jaroslav | Hasek |
Catch 22 | Joseph | Heller |
Brave New World | Aldous | Huxley |
An Artist of The Floating World | Kazuo | Ishiguro |
Three Men In A Boat | Jerome K. | Jerome |
The Phantom Tollbooth | Norton | Juster |
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold | John | Le Carre |
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - trilogy | John | Le Carre |
A Murder of Quality | John | Le Carre |
To Kill A Mockingbird | Harper | Lee |
If This Is A Man | Primo | Levi |
Call Of The Wild | Jack | London |
Ring of Bright Water | Gavin | Maxwell |
Moby Dick | Herman | Melville |
Puckoon | Spike | Milligan |
Rumpole Of The Bailey - the whole set | John | Mortimer |
A House For Mr Biswas | V.S. | Naipaul |
1984 | George | Orwell |
Animal Farm | George | Orwell |
Dr Zhivago | Boris | Pasternak |
Swallows And Amazons | Arthur | Ransome |
Rendezvous South Atlantic | Douglas | Reeman |
All Quiet On The Western Front | Erich Maria | Remarque |
She | Sir Henry | Rider Haggard |
Hyman Kaplan | Leo | Rosten |
Catcher In The Rye | J.D. | Salinger |
Porterhouse Blue | Tom | Sharpe |
Blott On The Landscape | Tom | Sharpe |
Riotous Assembly | Tom | Sharpe |
Wilt | Tom | Sharpe |
Frankenstein | Mary | Shelley |
Larry's Party | Carol | Shields |
The Stone Diaries | Carol | Shields |
A Town Like Alice | Neville | Shute |
On The Beach | Neville | Shute |
Pastoral | Neville | Shute |
633 Squadron | Frederick E. | Smith |
River God | Wilbur | Smith |
A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich | Aleksandr | Solzhenitsyn |
Grapes of Wrath | John | Steinbeck |
Treasure Island | Roert Louis | Stevenson |
Gulliver's Travels | Jonathan | Swift |
War and Peace | Leo | Tolstoy |
Anna Karenina | Leo | Tolstoy |
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists | Robert | Tressell |
First Love | Ivan | Turgenev |
Aunt Julia & The Scriptwriter | Mario | Vargas Llosa |
Journey To The Centre of The Earth | Jules | Verne |
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea | Jules | Verne |
Decline And Fall | Evelyn | Waugh |
The Sword Of Honour Trilogy | Evelyn | Waugh |
War Of The Worlds | H.G. | Wells |
The Time Machine | H.G. | Wells |
The First Men In The Moon | H.G. | Wells |
The Day Of The Triffids | John | Wyndham |
I've ordered them alphabetically by author's surname because I don't wish to say whether one book is better than another. A work of literature is just as good fun as light reading and vice versa. It depends how one feels at the time. I like oysters but I also like bacon sandwiches. And yes, I have cheated by including trilogies. The best thing is that I have the whole of P G Wodehouse to read. I thought about adding Kafka, Kipling, M R James, Conan Doyle, du Maupassant, Saki, Hemingway but will keep them back for a top short story list sometime.Enjoy!
6 comments:
Oh for the bloody time!
I read a couple of books a week but I've only read a handful of the books on your lists. I'll have to try a few of them.
I dedicate my reading list to a working life mispent commuting by train and bus.
I've read 45 of them. Excluding Kafka I have read your other authors also.
I haven't read so many of these, but it looks like a more balanced list than the BBC one to me!
It has more than its share of Ripping Yarns but that's because I've never grown up.
Lists tend to be biased by fans' organised campaigns - hence the preponderance of Tolkein, Rowling, Pratchett in the BBC list and contemporary bias in favour of recent publications or releases (see music and film top hundreds for evidence).
Of course my list isn't definitive as it will change as I read more and remember good books I've read.
But it's the only list I don't haruummph at and say "Bloody Lord Of The Rings."
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