As a spin-off to the thread about books, I thought it might be a good idea to collect in this thread our own personal top ten of books we've read - ever; the ones that stick in your mind long after you've turned the last page, and that you maybe re-read (and re-read). I had a hard job whittling down the last 20 or so, but here's my selection (in no particular order):

An Equal Music: Vikram Seth
A Note of Madness: Tabitha Suzuma
English Passengers: Matthew Kneale
Bel Canto: Ann Patchett
The Book Thief: Markus Zusak
The Island: Victoria Hislop
Mist over Pendle: Rober Neill
To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee
The Kite Runner: Khaled Hosseini
Germinal: Emile Zola

Would love to read other people's lists!

I couldn't possibly narrow my list down to 10, no way I could pick a number 1 either

Me neither, though I'll have a good think.

I've only read two on your list, Misterioso (English Passengers and To Kill a Mockingbird) but loved them both I may not be able to pick my own top 10, but I've a feeling the lists on here will produce some great recommendations

Interesting list; out of them I've read An Equal Music, Bel Canto, The Kite Runner and Germnal, and part of The Book Thief.

Obviously one person's list is going to influence another's - I wonder if I would have remembered An Equal Music and Germinal and The Kite Runner if I hadn't read yours, but I'd include them and also

Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
South Riding (Winifred Hotby)
Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons)
Nineteen Eighty our (George Orwell)

Oh, hang on, tht makes 11 with your three. Can we change the threadhead?

Thats interesting ! Nos 1,5,6,8,and 9 probably among my best also !!!
That means I have to find five.

Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger) I also still enjoy
The Piano Teacher by Elfrida Jelinek (She won the Nobel Prize for Literature)
Anything by Willam Trevor, particularly his short stories !
Also DH Lawrences novels, eg The Rainbow is probably his best, then 'Women in Love'
Finally 'The Old Man and the Sea' by Ernest Hemingway.

I was thinking that too

I've only read one of those on the lists so far, To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye are on my substantial list of books to read though!

Mine don't seem to bear any resemblance to anyone else's!!!

Here they are (not in any particular order):

1) Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte
2) The Chronicles of Narnia: C.S. Lewis
3) The Diary of Samuel Pepys
4) The Wind in the Willows: Kenneth Grahame
5) Three Men in a Boat: Jerome K. Jerome
6) The Diary of a Nobody: George and Weedon Grossmith
7) A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens
8) The Picture of Dorian Grey: Oscar Wilde
9) Peter Pan: J.M. Barrie
10) The Daughter of Time: Josephine Tey

This is really difficult and for me harder than I would find choosing ten pieces of music...
Mine (in no particular order) - at least today - would be:

Jane Austen Persuasion
Thackeray Vanity Fair
Dickens Bleak House
Saki Collected Short Stories
PG Wodehouse Summer Lightning
CS Lewis Chronicles of Narnia
TH White The Once and Future King
Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night
Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
Neal Stephenson Quicksilver

This is one Top Ten that I worked out this morning with back-up choices in brackets afterwards In no particular order, except that I realised that the first three on Crock's list would also be on mine

1. Persuasion, Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility)
2. Bleak House, Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations)
3. Vanity Fair, William Thackeray
4. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
5. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
6. Jamaica Inn, Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek)
7. Wise Children, Angela Carter (Nights at the Circus)
8. Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd (Chatterton, Dan Lemo and the Limehouse Golem)
9. Jeeves and Wooster (too many even to pretend it's one book )
10. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (Fludd, A Place of Greater Safety)

1,2,4,5 and 7 would probably make my list too great books all of them.

Top ten, just couldn't do it, but here's one that has stuck in my mind the past year:

Day-tripper (graphic novel by Moon and Ba)

1. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
2. Our Man in Havana (Greene)
3. Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin)
4. Lituma en los Andes/Death in the Andes (Llosa)
5. Consider Phlebas (Banks)
6. Troubles (Farrell)
7. Master and Margarita (Bulgakov)
8. Flashman (Fraser)
9. Alex's Adventures in Numberland (Bellos)
10. Masquerade (Griffin)

With Wilde head and shoulders above the rest!

I've just realised I missed out A Far Cry from Kensington, which is probably my fave Muriel Spark. And I'll sneak Beryl Bainbridge onto a reserve list too

I could also do a completely separate Top Ten for childrens' books (which are still on my shelf )

I'm afraid Beryl Bainbridge wouldn't even make it onto my reserve list!

But children's Top Ten: now there is a whole new can of worms - oops, sorry, books. There's nothing wrong with having them on your bookshelf! I have a whole boxful (or two?) up in the loft, waiting for grandchildren!

Hot damn! How could I have forgotten:

The Secret Agent (Conrad)
The Big Sleep (Chandler) "I called her a dumb broad. She didn't move an inch, but it looked like a mile"
Aberystwyth Mon Amour (Pryce)
American Psycho (Ellis)
Restoration (Tremain)
Lucky Jim (Amis)
Armageddon and Stalingrad (Hastings)

all deserving equal 10th!!!

A fair number of my list WERE 'children's books'...

That's what set me thinking