Must-read books

Books by Lois

The Telegraph have included a supplement this weekend to coincide with the Hay-on-Wye Book festival, of a list of the 500 must-read books. They are not suggesting you would be lacking in some way if you don’t read them, it is just a suggestion of what might constitute a basis for a library. They split the suggested titles into categories, including war and history, romance, poetry, British greats, food and drink, money,  thrillers, crime, sci-fi and fantasy, children’s, plays, European/Russian/Latin American/African/ Asian/American classics, sports/pastimes,  comedy and autobiographies! Good heavens! How inclusive!

I read through the list and was surprised how many I had actually read; there were also some I had tried but not completed for various reasons, some I definitely want to read, and some I’ve never heard of! There were some inclusions by authors which surprised me, not necessarily because of the writer but because I didn’t necessarily agree with the title being the best of the oeuvre.

Have a look and see what you think:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/promotions/10075387/must-read-books.html

http://books.telegraph.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/showSubCategories.do?categoryCode=3064

These are some thoughts on what might be on my list… don’t take it as definitive, I’ve probably missed a few, and maybe will discard some on further reflection!

  1. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
  2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  3. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
  4. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
  5. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
  6. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  7. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  8. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
  9. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  10. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  11.  The Trial by Franz Kafka
  12. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
  13. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque
  14. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
  15. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  16. Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
  17. The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
  18. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  19. The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
  20.  Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
  21.  The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
  22. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  23. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
  24. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
  25. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
  26. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  27.  A Passage to India by EM Forster
  28.  1984 by George Orwell
  29. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
  30. The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
  31. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  32. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
  33. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
  34. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  35. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  36. Northern Lights, Philip Pullman
  37. 2666, Roberto Bolaño
  38. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
  39. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
  40. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
  41. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
  42. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
  43. The Magus, John Fowles
  44. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
  45. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
  46. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
  47. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
  48. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
  49. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  50. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
  51. Round the bend, Nevil Shute
  52. Watership Down, Richard Adams
  53. Animal Farm, George Orwell
  54. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
  55. Return of the Native,  Thomas Hardy
  56. The Dhammapada

 

 

9 Comments

    1. Lois
      Reply

      Sorry… I should have included her I know, it’s just a prejudice of mine! I’ll amend the list when I remember all the other people I’ve forgotten!

      Like

  3. Isabel Lunn
    Reply

    And furthermore, what about D H Lawrence, Kashuo Ishigura, Anthony Burgess, Cervantes,Marquez and modern ones such as Margaret Drabble, Margaret Forster et al

    Like

    1. Lois
      Reply

      Oh heck… I will have to really get to work on my amended list… although I did only include books I have actually read… is that a good enough excuse?

      Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.