Books #43

[Harlot O'Scara]

THE RESULTS ARE IN!

TATTLE'S BEST BOOKS LIST

37 Tattle book lovers, 274 books and 224 authors (I think )

And the winner is.....

Daphne du Mauriers's Gothic classic Rebecca (1938), which appeared on 7 lists!

6 Votes:

5 Votes:

4 Votes:
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

3 Votes:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
Beartown - Frederik Backman
Foster - Claire Keegan
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend
Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
Persuasion - Jane Austen
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

Condensed for sake of space:

Spoiler: 2 Votes

11/22/63 - Stephen King
A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
A Man Called Ove - Frederik Backman
American Wife - Curtis Sittenfeld
And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie
Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery
Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt - Lucinda Riley & Harry Whittaker
Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman
I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman
In Memoriam - Alice Winn
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus
Life After Life - Kate Atkinson
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante
Never Let Me Go - Kazuro Ishiguro
Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
One Day - David Nicholls
Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt
Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart
Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Heart's Invisible Furies - John Boyne
The Island - Victoria Hislop
The List of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
The Paper Palace - Miranda Cowley Heller
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Running Grave - Robert Galbraith
The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
The Will of the Many - James Islington

Spoiler: 1 Vote

A Child for Sale - Pam Howes
A Civil Contract - Georgette Heyer
A Company of Liars - Karen Maitland
A History of Loneliness - John Boyne
A Kind of Intimacy - Jenn Ashworth
A Matter of Death and Life - Irvin Yalom
A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
A Month in the Country - JL Carr
A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro
A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler
A Terrible Kindness - Joe Browning Wroe
A Wedding in Provence - Katie Fforde
A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye - Christopher Brookmyre
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
All the Bright Places - Jennifer Niven
All the Young Men - Ruth Coker Burns
Alone in Berlin - Hans Fallada
American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins
American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis
An Imaginative Experience - Mary Wesley
Appointment with Death - Agatha Christie
Ask Again, Yes - Mary Beth Keane
Beach Read - Emily Henry
Before My Actual Heart Breaks - Tish Delaney
Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson
Bella's Christmas Bake Off - Sue Watson
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Bewilderment - Richard Powers
Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty
Book Lovers - Emily Henry
Born a Crime - Trevor Noah
Boys Don't Cry - Fiona Scarlett
Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel
Cackle - Rachel Harrison
Cacophony of Bone - Kerry ni Docartaigh
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Berniers
Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
Caucasia - Danzy Senna
Circe - Madeline Miller
City of Girls - Elizabeth Gilbert
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Date with Justice - Julia Chapman
Death by a Cornish Cove - Fliss Chester
Death in the Spires - KJ Charles
Don't Let Him In - Lisa Jewell
Emma - Jane Austen
Every Note Played - Lisa Genova
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie
Fortunes Rock - Anita Shreve
Frank and Red - Matt Coyne
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Girl in Red Velvet - Margaret James
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
Good Behaviour - Molly Keane
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda
Half of the Human Race - Anthony Quinn
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling
Hogfather - Terry Pratchett
Home - Marilynne Robinson
Home Fire - Camila Shamsie
How High We Go in the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu
How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran
Hum if You Don't Know the Words - Bianca Marais
I Am Pilgrim - Terry Hayes
I Love You, I Love You, I Love You - Laura Dockrill
I Regret Almost Everything - Keith McNally
Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier
Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Jules Verne
Just As Long As We're Together - Judy Blume
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
Kill For Me Kill For You - Steven Cavanaugh
Kindred - Octavia E Butler
Le Vicomte de Bragelonne - Alexandre Dumas
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little Universes - Heather Demetrios
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Midori by Moonlight - Wendy Nelson Tokunaga
The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
Miss Mole - EH Young
Monday's Not Coming - Tiffany D Jackson
Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa
Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
My Friends - Frederik Backman
My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologies - Frederik Backman
Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
Nesting - Roisin O'Donnell
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Oh, William - Elizabeth Strout
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Voung
One Left Alive - Helen Phifer
Only Ever Yours - Louise O'Neill
Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
Pet Semetary - Stephen King
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
Polo - Jilly Cooper
Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld
Prima Facie - Suzie Miller
Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes
Remote Sympathy - Catherine Chidgey
Riders - Jilly Cooper
Room - Emma Donoghue
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
Rules of Civility - Amor Towles
Saving Noah - Lucinda Berry
Sea of Tranquility - Emily St John Mandel
See You in September - Charity Norman
Shogun - James Clavell
Shouting the Odds - John Franklin
Sistersong - Lucy Holland
Slow Horses - Mick Herron
Small Island - Andrea Levy
Still Alice - Lisa Genova
Stoner - John Williams
Strange Pictures - Uketsu
Such Quiet Girls - Noell Ilhi
Summer Flings and Dancing Dreams - Sue Watson
Summer Sisters - Judy Blume
Sunrise on the Reaping - Suzanne Collins
The Allotment Girls - Kate Thompson
The Bestseller - Olivia Goldsmith
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Attwood
The Blood Years by Elana K Arnold
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
The Bookbinder of Jericho - Pip Williams
The Code of the Woosters - PG Wodehouse
The Country Girls - Edna O'Brien
The Crimson Petal and the White - Michael Faber
The Desperate Bride's Diet Club - Allison Sherlock
The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank
The Eights - Joanna Miller
The End of Men - Christina Sweeney-Baird
The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
The Feast - Margaret Kennedy
The First Day of Spring - Nancy Tucker
The Foundling - Stacey Halls
The Glass Lake - Maeve Binchy
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
The Good Samaritan - John Marrs
The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkai
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
The Hallmarked Man - JK Rowling
The Hand That First Held Mine - Maggie O'Farrell
The Happiest Man on Earth - Eddie Jaku
The Hollywood Governess - Alexandra Weston
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
The House in the Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune
The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Librarians of Rue de Picardie - Janet Skeslien Charles
The Lion Women of Tehran - Marjan Kamali
The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
The Mammy - Brendan O'Carroll
The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Most Fun We've Ever Had - Claire Lombardo
The Names - Florence Knapp
The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
The One - John Marrs
The Passage - Justin Cronin
The Picts and the Martyrs - Arthur Ransome
The Power of the Dog - Don Winslow
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Secrets of Strangers - Charity Norman
The Serpent King - Jeff Zentner
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Shepherd's Crown - Terry Pratchett
The Stone Book Quartet - Alan Garner
The Stranger Beside Me - Anne Rule
The Stranger in Her House - John Marrs
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
The Switch - Beth O'Leary
The Tailor of Panama - John le Carre
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce
The Versions of Us - Laura Barnett
The Very Secret Societ of Irregular Witches - Sangu Mandanna
The War of the Worlds - HG Wells
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
The Women - Kristin Hannah
The Word for World is Forest - Ursula K LeGuin
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
This is Going to Hurt - Adam McKay
Three Hours - Rosamund Lupton
Timeline - Michael Crichton
Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters
Topics About Which I Know Nothing - Patrick Ness
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
Twelve Days of Christmas - Trisha Ashley
Two Brothers - Ben Elton
Watermelon - Marian Keyes
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
Weyward - Emilia Hart
Winter Solstice - Rosamund Pilcher
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
You Are Here - David Nicholls

Some fun facts:

- Of the 224 authors on our list, 143 or 64% were female, vs 81 (36%) Male

- The oldest book on the list is Pride & Prejudice (1813)

- The longest book is The Count of Monte Cristo at 1276 pages!

- 22 authors have 2 or more books on the list

- Authors with 3 or more books:
- JK Rowling/Robert Galbraith (5)
- Agatha Christie (4)
- Frederik Backman (4)
- John Marrs (4)
- John Steinbeck (4)
- Jane Austen (3)
- Kazuo Ishiguro (3)

Thank you all for participating!

(Apologies if there's anything incorrect or accidentally missed off, I'm working without a proper computer so I've had to McGyver this a bit )

 

[Carapop]

I didn’t know this. What a beautiful gesture.

 

[TheStrawberryThief]

Amazon just recommended me a book called ' West of Wicked'. It is described as a sexy spicy dark wizard of oz retelling.

I have read the blurb and it appears that Dorothy shags either the tin man or scarecrow or both. It costs 99p. I am going to have to read this out of morbid curiosity.

 

[mindlessness]

I have a suggestion along the lines of the chatgpt thing. But with a real person!

There's a wonderful independent bookstore in Bath called Mr B's Emporium and they do a thing called a Reading Spa. You meet with one of their booksellers over tea/coffee and cake and talk about what you love and they give you loads of recommendations. I haven't done a 'Spa' yet but last time I visited I overheard one going on and it sounded like the loveliest bookish chat. If anyone lives near Bath or ever takes a holiday there I think well worth doing! I will be booking myself in next time I am there.

Gifts for book lovers - Mr B's Emporium

For over ten years Mr B's has been coming up for brilliant gift ideas for the book-lover in your life. Explore our award-winning Book Spas and Subscriptions

mrbsemporium.com

Their booksellers anyway are so excellent at recommendations. It's also one of the indies that does book subscriptions and I have no doubt they make great selections for that too.

 

[ordinaryjelly]

I have done it! But I am not OK with how brutal I had to be. I just went through and was rithess. I had got down to 21 books. So losing 11 hurt.

Can't remember if we were allowed to include a memoir? I put it in italics just in case no we aren't and would put the book below it in its place.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
This Is How We Are Human by Louise Beech
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Foster by Claire Keegan
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe
Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Just as Long as We're Together by Judy Blume

All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burns
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

[Harlot O'Scara]

Me trying to compile our list:

I'll give until midnight tonight for any final Top 10s and then I'll endeavour to post the results tomorrow

 

[Carapop]

I understand how older books can be problematic now, but I think when they are a reflection of their time then allowances can be made. Reading it isn’t endorsing the behaviour or mindset, it’s learning about a time when it was normalised.

 

[Carapop]

Married five times, secret child, gay for pay, halitosis, coercive behaviour, slept with nearly all of his co-stars, and cheated on everyone.

Frankly my dear, I still would.

 

[ordinaryjelly]

"When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

As we were!

 

[daisynoon]

Piggybacking off @Harlot O'Scara's hard work and made a List Challenges version of the list! https://www.listchallenges.com/book-threads-favourite-books

(One of my favourite time-wasting sites, but I made a new profile for this for privacy! Also was vague on the description so we don't attract visitors)

 

[Carapop]

That has to hurt tbh, I'm torn

You may very well be! 🫣

 

[OhhBacon]

This is my current list but am sure there are some I have forgotten. Where I have highlighted the author it's because there was more than one of their books I could have picked!

The Island -Victoria Hislop
My Friends- Frederik Blackman
Wild Swans- Jung Chang
Memoir of a Geisha-Arthur Golden
Life after Life -Kate Atkinson
The Lion Women of Tehran -Marjan Kamali
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Half of a Yellow Sun- Chimamanda Adichie
The Goldfinch- Donna Tart
There are Rivers in the Sky- Elif Shafak

 

[daisynoon]

Had a great reading month! Already spoke about East of Eden, so my other favourite books this month were After Hours at Dooryard Books and The Nickel Boys. I already owned the latter, but seeing it on a few Tattlers' lists made me pick it up, and wow - extremely impactful.

Hated Audition.

 

[CommentBelow]

Just to check - is there anybody still working on their Top 10?

I was going to give it a full week but if that's it, I can try and post the results a bit earlier?

Here’s mine -

Handmaid’s Tale
Life After Life
One Day
Wild Swans
Girl, Woman, Other
Pachinko
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Cloud Atlas
Beartown
I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

I feel bad for the 9 I had to cut 🫣

 

[daisynoon]

Hay Festival announced a "Pleasure List"



and most of the comments are like this:

 

[CommentBelow]

I won't quote the post because it's massive, but thank you so much for doing the list @Harlot O'Scara !

Echoed!

It’s exceptional - thank you!

Does anyone know how we can create/add to a thread Wiki? I think this epic list needs to be pride of place/easy for me to refer to ahem 🫢

 

[AllieBee]

Has anyone read This Is How We Are Human by Louise Beech? Omg what a beautiful book

Just found this thread 5 pages in, didnt realise a new one had started, but just to say I also loved Gone With The Wind, read it twice but that was a long while ago. I really struggle with any book being called 'problematic', I think all books are important to show our progression as a society and how life was in the Deep South in the 1860s is a story that needs to be told and learned from. I think as adults we are perfectly capable of deciding not to read a book if we dont like the content.

 

[LaBlonde]

They definitely need to rename it. Many from that list would be better labelled quietly devastating.

hammet?! small things like these?! the book thief?! this is not a “bookshelf to spark joy”

 

[veronica71]

There’s just too many books and I want to read them all

 

[ToolaRoola]

Foyles have been inspired by the Guardian’s top 100 books and have created their own Top 30 via their booksellers recommendations

Foyles have been inspired by Tattle to create their own top 30!