books you should read before you die?

[SarzWix]

'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' by Susannah Clarke

'The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters' by GH Dalquist

All of the 'Dark is Rising' series by Susan Cooper (supposed to be children's books, but they are FAB)

Any (or all) Georgette Heyer books (the Regency ones, not the detective ones), her characters are great.

[zazen999]

Modern/Contemporary

J Strange - seconded.

Time Traveller's Wife - seconded.

The Book Thief is excellent [Markus Zusak]

And

the Secret Purposes by David Baddiel [truly excellent book]

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

City of Thieves by David Benioff

Any other books by anyone called David [the above is just a coincidence...3 great books]

Either of the Jonathan Safran Foer books

Modern Classics;

Pnin by Nabokov [Gotta love V. Pnin with his trouser leg riding up his calf ]

Midnight's Children by Rushdie

I could go on but won't - those are 2 of the best 20C books

[Pumpkin Becki]

I've promised myself I will finish Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I find the last few chapters so sad, I have to stop reading. I think I'm on my 5th attempt

[jojo2910]

Life of Pi - Yann Martel
The Time Travellers Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Kitchen confidential - Anthony Bourdain
The girl who series - Steig Larsson
On Chisel Beach - Ian McEwan
Notes from a small island - Bill Bryson

Our Farm: A Year in the Life of a Smallholding - it was an interesting read about how Rosie Boycott set up a smallholding with her husband. It ventured off in many places and talked about Tesco and how they dominate high street. It also talked about how they make ham. Won't go into details, but the OH and I have vowed never to buy supermarket ham again.

[Flummery]

I loved the Dark is Rising books too.
Another kids' one - The Once and Future King by TH White. Children's book but full of humour and wisdom.

[SarzWix]

I've got 'Ada or Ardor' (Nabokov) waiting for me to read, but I just can't get past the first couple of pages - too much else to do to concentrate on it I WILL read it before the end of the summer holidays!
I've also got to get through 'Fathers and Sons' (Turgenev), 'Frankenstein', 'Great Expectations' (ugh! Dickens), 'Top Girls' (Caryl Churchill) and Othello, As You Like It and Henry V for my next course.

[maytreefrannie]

Oh i forgot one!

The Hungry hungry catapillar!

Brilliant book! my Nices now have it! now if a book can stay in press for 30 years it must be good

I agree, Dark Crow. I recently read that The Hungry Caterpillar has been voted the best children's book ever.

Meanwhile,
Any/all of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple or Poirot series for a good, old fashioned read.
The Bookseller of Kabul
A Greener Life by Clarissa Dickson Wright (one of the 2 fat ladies) and Johnny Scott
The Gaia Continuum (or is it Concept?) by James Lovelock
The Kite Runner
A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
1066 and all that

[its hilly]

War and Peace-tolstoy..if you're after classics
Lord of the Rings-tolkien
The Illiad-some greek bod, maybe Homer
Any Pooh books
Afraid I read to relax, so I go for detective, fantasy etc not classics.
Anything by Barbara Erskine will have the hairs on the back of your neck trembling.

[weekendwellies]

wow, guys, you're doing great, some fabulous ideas there. I now have a page and a half list of books to start on. Some I have heard of, some I have read but would love to read again, and some I haven't a clue about but will try a few of

Some of you have mentioned about school putting you off, and I agree, I found that I just liked to read the books, but all the analysing stuff put me off. But having gone back as an adult and tried them again I really enjoyed them.
Someone mentioned Homer's Odyssey and Iliad and I would love to try them again, I really enjoyed Classics, and I have added the Theban Plays too - Oedipus, Oedipus at Collonus and Antigone; and also Herodotus, I need to tackle that as an adult too.

And someone has reminded me about Rushdie, I really wanted to read years ago, but never got round to it.

Poems ~ something I have to tackle, that just never got into my bloodstream so I will go get some Yeats.

If I have a good balance of classic and modern, I will be very happy.

Keep the ideas coming.

[Nicos]

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks is my top book ever.

I've just read it for the 4th time in about 10 years- and still feel very emotional throughout it.

Have a look on Google at the top 100 books selected by various newspapers and also I think the 'BBC best reads'- even more ideas on that!

I can't easily get hold of English books out here- but have been introduced to 'The English Library' which is about 2 hrs away. A group of us go and take old books and take away replacement ones- all second hand and free- apart from a small donation towards heating and lighting.(It's run by a kindly English family in one of their barns)
Needless to say I've picked up books I'd not normally buy and have thoroughly enjoyed them- so its well worth having 'a bash' at all sorts of books!

[swansea girl]

Books I have read and read again...

Tom Saywer - Mark Twain
Huckleberry Fin - Mark Twain
Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha -Roddy Doyle
Adrian Mole Diaries - Sue Townsend
Harry Potter (all of them)- J K Rowling

I love autobiographies and the only two I can think of at the moment are...
Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
An Evil Cradling - Brian Keenan

[janeyo]

Having done English A Level, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton , then studying French Literature at Uni, including Molilere, Balzac, Camus, Zola... I now only read CHICK LIT.

The Color Purple is a Great Book

[di]

I've really struggled to get back into reading since having the kiddies...never seems time to just absorb myself(and once into a story I hate to have to put it down regardless of how hungry my charges may be )
I love Charles De Lint...a gentle escape to the other realms without all the tricky names and words that some other authors of the same genre feel the need to use(I like an easyish read)

Another excellent series of books I read years ago and intend to read again soon was the autobiography of Maya Angelou....starting with 'I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings'...at times terribly moving and others truly inspiring.

[bobleponge]

Papillon by Henri Charriere and
Endurance by Caroline Alexander are imvho the 2 greatest books ever written for vastly differing reasons.
A very close third is Empire by Niall Ferguson.
Tales by Japanese Soldiers, Kazuo Tamayama gives a fascining insight into the "other side" of the conflict in Burma.
Anything by Lyn Mcdonald, just so moving.
Point of Departure by James Cameron. Brilliant.

For belly laughs a plenty try French Revolutions by Tim Moore but dont read it in public, you will get odd looks.

[lettucegrow!]

Second The Book Thief, I loved that book.
The Five Peole You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom is a must for everyone to read, very moving.