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:
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
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 )
Thank you so much for all that effort! What a brilliant idea it was. I think its absolutely fascinating how we all love reading yet our favourite books are all so different. Love it!
Thank you @Harlot O'Scara! I will add Rebecca to my TBR. I watched the first half hour of the film with Lily James in, but DNF'd it because for some reason she (Lily) winds me up in everything she is in I trust the book is better anyway, and it's been voted top, here, so I will give it a try.
Echoing everyone else thanks @Harlot O'Scara! Definitely a much better list that the one put together by the great and good for the Guardian. What do they know!
Also thanks to people who mentioned Ordinary Time by Cathy Rentzenbrink on here a couple of months ago. I hadn’t come across it before but was convinced I like it because of the comparisons people made to Claire Chambers, and it didn’t disappoint. Just what I needed after a few books that have felt really slow and uninspiring this month!
Oooooh wow thanks everyone! I’m closing the lines for voting now or I’ll need Harlot to help me figure out the top five
Oh Sister is first up (I read and loved Another Life)
The Mercies (Almost Life was a recent 4*)
Drive Your Plows (has been haunting me for years, in light of recent author scandal am delighted to finally investigate her pre-AI)
And ending with Lost Letters (@AllieBee did you read The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually? Gorgeous heartbreaking book)
Oooooh wow thanks everyone! I’m closing the lines for voting now or I’ll need Harlot to help me figure out the top five
Oh Sister is first up (I read and loved Another Life)
The Mercies (Almost Life was a recent 4*)
Drive Your Plows (has been haunting me for years, in light of recent author scandal am delighted to finally investigate her pre-AI)
And ending with Lost Letters (@AllieBee did you read The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually? Gorgeous heartbreaking book)
Oooooh wow thanks everyone! I’m closing the lines for voting now or I’ll need Harlot to help me figure out the top five
Oh Sister is first up (I read and loved Another Life)
The Mercies (Almost Life was a recent 4*)
Drive Your Plows (has been haunting me for years, in light of recent author scandal am delighted to finally investigate her pre-AI)
And ending with Lost Letters (@AllieBee did you read The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually? Gorgeous heartbreaking book)
I’m on Atmosphere by TJR at the moment. I’m about 20% of the way in and bored at the moment, probably because I don’t really like space. Is it going to get better?
I’m on Atmosphere by TJR at the moment. I’m about 20% of the way in and bored at the moment, probably because I don’t really like space. Is it going to get better?
i really didn’t like atmosphere (tjr’s writing only very rarely works for me though, she’s so pushy in what she wants the reader to feel) - if you don’t like space i can tell you that part only gets worse!
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I trust the book is better anyway, and it's been voted top, here, so I will give it a try.
