What are your top ten favourite novels?

Here's a challenge for all book geeks. "Top tens" have been around for some time in other things, such as pop music, so I thought we might try it here with our favourite novels, just for fun and to see what each of us recommends. It can be just as hard to know what to leave out! See if you can sort them into some order of preference. For what its worth here are the top ten novels that have given me the most pleasure and satisfaction:

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot
2. Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris
3. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
7. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
8. The Iliad by Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)
9. The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
10. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Classics only, no pulp? Ok, in order from 1- most pleasurable, to 10- least:

1. Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
2. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
4. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
5. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
7. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
8. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
9. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
10. The Odyssey by Homer

I have only completed 5, 6, 7, and 10 on your list. I have seen the film of No. 8, starring Humphrey Bogart, and want to start on No. 4 (Dumas) soon. So many good books, so little time...

I don't try to rank my favourites anymore generally, but if I think of this in terms of the classics I remember most fondly:

Moby Dick
Jane Eyre
A Passage to India
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Arabian Nights
Swallows and Amazons
The Pickwick Papers
Watership Down
The Grapes of Wrath

I had trouble with this because when I looked at the books I have rated 5 stars here they were almost all non-fiction, poetry, and drama. So the Iliad and Odyssey are not on this list because they are not novels.

Here is what I came up with, not in any rank order:

Moby-Dick
Lud-In-The-Mist
The Secret Glory
The Eyre Affair
The Name of the Rose
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Memoirs of Hadrian
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Red and the Black
Lolita

I may revise this list once I finish Ulysses and re-read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, but this is it for the present.

hmmm I think my top ten would change depending on my mood, but here's a list that also ignores The Iliad for the same reason it ignores Shakespeare--not a novel:

No particular order though:

Jane Eyre
Persuasion
Moby Dick
The Brothers Karamazov
The Alexandrian Quartet (cheating a bit, I know)
Story of an African Farm
Kim
Another Country
The Three Musketeers
Woman in White

...I'd have an entirely different list if I stuck to authors who are still alive.

In no particular order

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A Story Like the Wind by Laurens van der Post
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Not exactly in order but here are my 10:
Middlemarch
A Passage to India
Jude the Obscure
The Grapes of Wrath
The Go-Between
The Return of the Soldier
Silk
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Great Expectations

By way of keeping 'classics' separate from what I would call 'modern classics' I've tried to keep my list to some of my older favourites, but I couldn't resist throwing in 'Silk'. And it is a fairly arbitrary dip into a much longer list of my favies, just to keep it down to 10.

Oh, dear! I think I can agree with between six and nine of the choices on all the above lists. I tried making a list for myself yesterday, and found I had to impose all sorts of arbitrary rules on myself to get the list down to anything remotely like ten. No children's books, no P.G. Wodehouse, nothing after 1945, ... Even then, it was hard, and I felt sure that I was excluding books that mattered more to me than the ones on the list. But how can you weigh up Swallows and Amazons against War and Peace, or Excellent women against Jane Eyre?

My latest attempt, not in any way definitive:

Bleak House
Die Blechtrommel
Deutschstunde
Howards End
Middlemarch
Northanger Abbey
The swimming-pool library
Voss
Vanity Fair
Zazie dans le Métro

I couldn't keep it to 10.....

1 David Copperfield
2 The Count of Monte Cristo
3 The Three Musketeers
4 The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
5 A Tale of Two Cities
6 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
7 Jane Eyre
8 Gulliver's Travels
9 War and Peace
10 Moby-Dick
11 Beau Geste
12 The Prisoner of Zenda
13 The War of the Worlds
14 Ivanhoe
15 The Hunchback of Notre Dame
16 Treasure Island
17 Moonfleet
18 Nineteen Eighty-Four
19 Captain Blood
20 The Talisman by Walter Scott -- not Stephen King
21 The Woman In White
22 Great Expectations
23 To Kill a Mockingbird
24 Madame Bovary
25 Crime and Punishment

Haven't read Middlemarch, Brothers Karamazov, or Les Miserables yet.
Left out all poetry, plays, etc., so Shakespeare and Homer are excluded.

>10 Betelgeuse:
It might be fun to make a "top ten books I haven't read yet" list. Mine would probably have Buddenbrooks, Der Zauberberg and Les Misérables at the top of it. Closely followed by The good soldier, The age of innocence, and most of Henry James...

Here are mine.

1. Pride & Prejudice
2. The Catcher in the Rye
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four
5. The Great Gatsby
6. To Kill a Mockingbird
7. Something Happened
8. Little Women
9. The House of the Spirits
10. Gone With the Wind (I'm sorry, I love it)

The Complete Sherlock Holmes
A Christmas Carol
Jane Eyre
L.A Confidential
Night Walks
The Midwich Cuckoos
The Catcher in the Rye
Les Miserables
Great Expectations
The Picture of Dorian Gray

> 11, My top TBR list includes Middlemarch, Brothers Karamazov, Les Miserables, Vanity Fair, Tom Jones, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Twain's Joan of Arc, Walter Scott's Waverley and Rob Roy, and Dickens' Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, and Little Dorrit.

>11 thorold: :-)

Tom Jones should be on my list of shame too. I've read a few chapters at various times, and even written essays about it, but never sat down and read the whole thing...

>11 thorold: My top TBR would have to include Bleak House, Uncle Silas, The Artamonovs, Camilla, Voss, Outlaws of the Marsh, This Side of Paradise, Waverley, Don Quixote and The Magic Mountain

As with some of the other posters, my favorites vary but here it is at the current moment - classics only (public domain):

1. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
4. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
5. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
6. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
7. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
8. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
9. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
10. Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell

I tried to only pick one book per author but Dickens had to have more than one!

Till we have faces by C. S. Lewis
Lilith by George MacDonald
Viper's tangle by Francois Mauriac
Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen
Little women by Louisa May Alcott
The scarlet pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Great expectations by Charles Dickens
Thank you, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey

Oh, I love Wodehouse! I should have included him in my list - it is hard to pick which one though! Maybe The Code of the Woosters...

I also really like Brat Farrar and almost all other Tey as well. In fact, I think that I like everything on your list except the first three which I am unfamiliar with! I will have to look for those :)

Code of the Woosters is wonderful as well. I also love The mating season

Here's, with a French curve :

Michel de Montaigne : The essays -
Austen : Pride and Prejudice
Homer : The Iliad
Euripides : The Bacchae
Rabelais : Gargantua
Racine : Britannicus
Marivaux : Théâtre
Stendhal : Le Rouge et le Noir - The Red and the Black
Balzac : La peau de chagrin - The Wild Ass's Skin
Proust : Du côté de chez Swann - Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1

I envy someone who can list Proust as a favourite! I haven't tried him yet, but I'm led to believe it'll be nothing but a chore when I do. Then again, same was said of Henry James and so far I find he's not so bad.

I have made my peace with Henry James, but not Marcel. I read Swann's way a few years ago and it was the longest decade of my life, even though it really took a couple months.

Hmmmmm. Top 10 "classics." Interesting. OK, off the top of my head, in no particular order, and I snuck in an 11th . . .

Catch 22
The Sun Also Rises
Don Quixote
Treasure Island
Horton Hatches the Egg
Crime and Punishment
Lord Jim
Heart of Darkness
The Natural
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Wise Blood

> 22 & 23 : I studied it in twelfth grade and I can remember how I waited and waited for the story to "resolve" itself ;-). And I must concede Swann's way is the most "storylike" of the whole lot! Nevertheless, it was an intense experience and the sort of "diving" I crave while reading.

Oh how in the world can you narrow down favorites to only 10??? Here are some favs in no order what so ever..

Gone With the Wind
House of Mirth
Rebecca
The Count of Monte Cristo
Vanity Fair
Les Miserables
War and Peace
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Master and the Margarita
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wuthering Heights
Tess of the D'urdervilles
Great Expectations
Crime and Punishment

and I dont know if this would be old enough to be a classic but still loved the book
Life of Pi.

In May of 2010 I did a list, and ranked them in order. Here it is:

FICTION:
1. The Killer Angels A Novel, by Michael Shaara (read 29 May 1981) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Fiction prize in 1975)
2. Kristin Lavransdatter The Bridal Wreath - The Mistress of Husaby - The Cross, by Sigrid Undset (read 24 Apr 1947) (Book of the Year)
3. Brideshead Revisited The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, by Evelyn Waugh (read 18 Mar 1947 - re-read 27 Nov 1982)
4. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte (read 23 Jan 1946 - re-read 8 Dec 1973)
5. Beau Geste, by Percival C. Wren (read in 1942 - re-read 1 July 1961)
6. The Incredible Journey, by Sheila Burnford (read 12 Nov 1972 - re-read 15 Apr 1991)
7. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy (read 8 Dec 1964)
8. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren (read 21 Sept 1958) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Fiction prize for 1947)
9. All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque translated from the German by A. W. Wheen (read 4 Nov 1957)
10. Giants in the Earth, by O. E. Rolvaag (read 14 Jan 1946 - re-read 19 Aug 1969)

This listing is heavily influenced by how I remember feeling right after I finished reading the book.

I can narrow it down to 11:

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West
Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Cannery Row, John Steinbeck

. . . and an honourable mention for Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell. I didn't exactly enjoy this book, but I think it's very important and a must-read.

Oh goodness.

Classic Classics
Victor Hugo
Les Miserables - read unabridged when I was 10 years old and it changed my reading forever
L'homme qui rit (The Man Who Laughs) - one of his darker works and just remarkable
Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamne (The Last Day of a Condemned Man) - short but amazing with the most amazing you-got-me! moment at the end

Alexandre Dumas (I just like everything by him)
La Reine Margot
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo
The d'Artagnan series

Murasaki Shikibu
The Tale of Genji

Miguel de Servantes
Don Quixote - this made for a great summer of reading

More modern "classics":
Romain Gary
Les Racines du Ciel - I need to reread this one 'cause it's just too beautiful

Kobo Abe
The Box Man

Akira Yoshimura
Shipwrecks

Masuji Ibuse
Black Rain

Shohei Ooka
Fires on the Plain

Truman Capote
In Cold Blood

---

You know what? I quit this game. I like everything.

In the spirit of the challenge, I limited myself to those works of fiction in any form that have given me the most satisfaction or made the greatest impact:

1. The Brothers Karmazov by Fyodor Dostoevesky
2. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostovevsky
3. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
4. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
5. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
6. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
7. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Anonymous
8. MacBeth by William Shakespeare
9. Being in Being : The Collected Works of Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay Unabridged translation of a Haida mythteller by Robert Bringhurst. Highly recommended.
10. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Read Tom Sawyer as a kid and didn't get much out of it. Just picked it up again recently and it's a treasure trove of humour that went completely over my head last time - really good stuff.

I've just joined the group and am not really sure what definition of "classic" is best to use, so I have confined myself to "books that were published pre-1970" for want of a better cut-off. There's a heavy representation of Russian authors in here because that's the classic literature I'm mostly familiar with - and I've gone with ten authors rather than ten books.

In no particular order:

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso)
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina and War and Peace
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero Of Our Time
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
George Eliot, Silas Marner
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Oh, what the heck, I'll add one more - written during WWII though published considerably later:

Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise

I just identified these ten favorites on another thread:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Odyssey by Homer (I'd pick the Fagles translation)
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Castle by Franz Kafka (but most people would pick The Trial)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
My Antonia by Willa Cather

In thinking about it, I'd substitute Cannery Row for The Grapes of Wrath, as good as the latter is.

I have LT to thank for pointing out My Antonia. Never would have made my TBR pile otherwise. And I wish I could find a copy of that Bulgakov.

My ten favorites, with 'classic' in mind:

Persuasion
Wuthering Heights
Far From the Madding Crowd
A Staircase in Surrey by J.I.M. Stewart - a series of five novels
The Return of the Soldier
The Tenants of Moonbloom
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate
Bonjour Tristesse
The Bachelors by Henri de Montherlant
I,Claudius

As with everyone else - ten is not enough

A Man of the People
(Achebe)

The Brothers Karamazov
(Dostoevskii)

On the Marble CLiffs
(Juenger)

The Embezzlers (Kataev)

Dr. Sax (Kerouac)

Darkness at Noon (Koestler)

"It Canʻt Happen Here"
(S. Lewis)

(The Confidence Man: his Masquerade (Melville)

Mardi (Melville)

Glover (Pollini)

--I may be the only one here who has listed TWO Melville titles, and neither of them is Moby Dick. which, however, I have no intentionof disparaging.

- - A list like this is a great equalizer. Am I saying, e.g., that V. Kataev is "as good"
as Dostoevsky, and "Better" than Tolstoy who didnʻt
(again no disparagement intended) make it into the
"TOP" Ten? Of course not. Itʻs just that old question: why does it have to be ONLY ten?

Carlo Emilio Gadda's That Awful Mess
Hans Grimmelhausen's Simplicissimus
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night
Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road
Seymour Epstein's Leah
Heinrich Mann's Man of Straw
Flaubert's Sentimental Education
Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Rousseau's Emile
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Job: The Story of a Simple Man by Joseph Roth

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Eternal Fire by Calder Willingham

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

ONLY 10? Very difficult!

Wuthering Heights-Bronte
The Scarlet Letter-Hawthorne
Jane Eyre-Bronte
A Tale of Two Cities-Dickens
Great Expectations-Dickens
Animal Farm-George Orwell
Dr. Zhivago-Pasternak
Anna Karenina-Tolstoy
Bleak House-Dickens
Silas Marner-Eliot

Limited myself to ten by not overthinking too much and just putting down the first ten that came to mind.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
Barchester Towers by Trollope
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Germinal by Zola
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov

Broken April by Ismail Kadare

"Cogan's Trade" by George V. Higgins

Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis

"The Fox and the Camelias" / "La Volpe
e le Camellie"
by Ignazio Silone

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Pendennis by William M. Thackeray

Roderick Random
by Tobias Smollett

"Wall of Noise" by Daniel M. Stein

Geez this is tricky. This isn't in rank order, but here goes...

1.) Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
2.) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
3.) Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
4.) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
5.) A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
6.) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
7.) Animal Farm - George Orwell
8.) Lord of the Flies - William Golding
9.) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
10.) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

I am 73 y.o. and so have had a chance to read the titles more than once, and look forward to reading each of them one more time.

As with an art gallery, these titles always benefit from yet another visit.

NB: I believe I am the only one, as of this time, that is listing Wives and Daughters.

1.)The Iliad (trans. Robert Fagles).. 2x
2.)David Copperfield...4x
3.)The Forsyte Saga..2x
4.)War and Peace...3x
5.)The Little Minister ..3x
6.)Portrait of a Lady...2x
7.)Jane Eyre...3x
8.)Howards End...3x
9.)Wives and Daughters...2x
10.)Kim...3x
11.)The Little Prince*...3x

*Yes , I know that is 11, but I have trouble with math...

These may not be 'classics', but they are ones I enjoyed.

Earth Abides ... George Stewart
Fahrenheit 451...Ray Bradbury
Brave New World... Aldous Huxley
1984...George Orwell
Grapes of Wrath... John Steinbeck
Moon is Down... John Steinbeck
Winesburg, Ohio... Sherwood Anderson
Alas, Babylon... Pat Frank
Against the Fall of Night (City and the Stars)... Arthur C. Clarke

>43 Urquhart:, what a great mix of titles I've loved and ones I still want to read. I'm only 41 yrs so far, so hopefully I've time to revisit favourites as you have done.

I have always had a hard time deciding on my favorites and they change over time. Here's what I think they are at this time, and, yes, I would re-read and have re-read them.

At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
Sahara by Clive Cussler
Crater by Homer Hickam
Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
Life of Pi by Yan Martel
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Born in Fire by Nora Roberts
A Story Like the Wind by Laurens Van der Post
Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

It's difficult to create a list of my top 10. My list includes some of the classics, some I read in school and some I discovered on my own. Oh well, here it goes.

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
5. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
7. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
8. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
9. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
10. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Iliad by Homer
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

In order by author; most I have read at least twice:

Pride and Prejudice, Austen
Persuasion, Austen
Jane Eyre, Bronte
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Cather
Bleak House, Dickens
Little Dorrit, Dickens
Middlemarch, Eliot
North and South, Gaskell
The Duke's Children, Trollope
The Return of the Soldier, West

A list to top them all! -- not in particular order:
1. The Illiad/The Odyssey, Homer
2. The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
4. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
5. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
6. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
7. Ulysses, James Joyce
8. Pere Goriot, Honore de Balzac
9. The Recognitions, William Gaddis
10. Blood Meridian, Carmac McCarthy

My intent was to list only 1 piece by each author. Homor is my exception, because the differences between the two are (to me) so dramatic. The others? At least 7 of the others (!) have multiple possible
entries.

>10 Betelgeuse: !!! I did not put Walter Scott on my list -- argh. Rob Roy for me.

>51 MccMichaelR: That's alright, since I wrote that, I've read most of the TBR classics that I list in >14 Betelgeuse:, so I'd have an even harder time keeping myself to just 10!

Top 10 Classics! I'm glad someone revived this thread!

In no particular order:
1. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies - a classic of Canadian literature.
2. The Name of the Rose by Emberto Eco
3. Wurthering Heights by Emily Bronte - a psychological thriller written before the science of psychology was even invented. Brilliant!
4. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe - A funny and clever read. Defoe's best.
7. The Shooting Party by Anton Chekhov - the very first mystery novel written from the murder's point of view. An under-appreciated Chekhov work.
8. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing - a feminist classic. Written from a period before the word "feminist" was coined, it follows the self-reflection of a middle-aged woman who has lived an unconventional life at a time when women were still expected to have only one career option - marriage.
9. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe - my favourite Edgar Allan Poe short story and a great Halloween read.
10. Leave It to Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse - Wodehouse is my go-to author whenever I'm feeling down and need a good laugh.

>53 Gail.C.Bull:, lots that I'm still looking forward to reading!

>53 Gail.C.Bull: Moll Flanders is very funny

>55 Betelgeuse: I discovered Moll Flanders in a round about way. I saw an adaption done by the BBC on television and laughed myself silly all the way through. Then I went and picked the book up from the library and laughed my way through it a second time.

You can probably tell by my list that I'm a fan of humour and mystery. It's even reflected in my list of favourite classics.

>56 Gail.C.Bull: My wife and I watched the BBC production after I read and loved the novel. I also like Wodehouse!

>57 Betelgeuse: I bought a BCC audio play production of the Jeeves and Wooster stories in a download-able form. I listen to it when I'm grocery shopping sometimes, and it makes the whole task much more enjoyable.

Novels only:

Don Quixote
Moby Dick
War and Peace
Middlemarch
Lord of the Rings
Lonesome Dove
Notre Dame de Paris
Mansfield Park
Little Women
The Long Winter

>59 krosero:, good choice among the Ingalls set. Pretty amazing story.