I got talking with a mate a few weeks back and we’d both been thinking the same thing, there are plenty of books out thee that you are supposed to have read.

I just finished To Kill A Mockingbird and it was fantastic, so where next?

I’d rather hear what people recommend as must reads rather than trawling through the lists online.

My thoughts were Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Slaughterhouse 5, Breakfast of Champions, On The Road

Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

For cyclists, I would recommend The Rider by Tim Krabbe. Proper good literature. Not too long either. I’m not a fast reader and struggle unless a book is really good, but this is one of the small few I’d happily read again.

1984 – George Orwell

The Twits – Roald Dahl

The End of Faith – Sam Harris

Flashman – George MacDonald Fraser

At The Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft

1984
The Pickwick papers
Candide
Confessions of an English opium eater
The misfortune of virtue
The ascent of rum doodle

Last 2 good books I read that’d I recommend are, Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky and The Martian, Andy Weir.

I’d Recommend, Wigan Pier or Down and out before 1984 myself.

The count of Monte Christo

The kite runner

Cold comfort farm
Freakonomics
+1 for Down and Out and Wigan pier.
Good Behaviour (Molly Keane)
A Farewell to Arms

Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Good Omens – Terry Pratchett (RIP) and Neil Gaiman.
Into Thin Air – John Krakauer
Carrying the Fire – Michael Collins
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
House of Leaves – Mark Danielewski (be careful with this one – It’s not for you 8) )

Small Gods- Terry Pratchett

oh, forgot one of my proper faves: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

The thought gang-Tibor Fischer.

My favourites include:
100 years of solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
World According to Garp – John Irving

On Extended Wings – Diane Akerman. Brilliant account of learning to fly light aircraft. Sounds dull, but fantastic.

Oooh, haven’t read Garp in ages! Good call.

A few of the classics from me;
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding. Glorious.
The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan. Reads as if it’s not real, but sadly it was all too real.
The Great Game, by Peter Hopkirk. Another documentary of history that reads like the finest proto-spy novel ever written.

And, Fleming. Yes, go and read the Bond books. They’re truly excellent, IMHO.

*Edit – Seadog, see also “Fate is the hunter” by Ernest Gan. *

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Anything by Terry Pratchett or David Gemmell

Two personal favourites.

Angry White Pyjamas – Robert Twigger. He spends a year learning Aikido on the Japanese riot police course, starting from scratch pretty much.

Hokkaido Highway Blues – Will Ferguson. Bloke hitchhikes the length of Japan following the cherry blossom.

It’s been a long time since I read Vonnegut but my favourite was Sirens of Titan.

Some of my favourite books are:

Sunset song – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Young Art & Old Hector / Green Isle of the Great Deep – Neil Gunn
Anathem – Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon is also very good)
Spook Country – William Gibson (his others are good too)
Gravitys rainbow – Thomas Pynchon (took a lot to get get into but once there loved it. Intense!)
Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
The Chrysalids – John Wyndam
A confederacy of dunces – John Kennedy Toole.

Just finished-
Trainspotting + Skagboys, Irvine Welsh.

Just avoid the clichéd pride and prejudice

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

Definitely Good Omens. My personal favorite.
Also The Brentford Trilogy by Robert Rankin.
Bottersnikes And Gumbles (just for your inner child).
Top books.

The Wasp Factory, and quite a few other Iain Banks books. The Bridge is great, must have read at least once a year since I got it.. Also, if you can do scifi read Player of Games, some will say start with Consider Phlebas which is very good but PoG is bettererererer.

American Tabloid, James Ellroy

Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

The Secret History, Donna Tartt

The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe

In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick

Oh aye Iain Banks! Crow Road and Espedair Street for me.

+1 for 100 yrs of solitude
This thing of darkness – phenomenal novel about Darwin and captain Fitzroy
Midnight’s children
Darkness at noon
East of Eden
Things fall apart

Bottersnikes And Gumbles

Christ that takes me back , chopper.

The Moon’s a Balloon – David Niven autobiography.
Spike Milligan’s war memoirs (mostly the first 3 though).

Another vote for ‘The Right Stuff’

CFH Have you also read ‘Foreign Devils on the Silk Road’? Yours for the borrowing also [quick before it gets packed to move!]

Other Ernest Gann books are also worth a read.

Anything by Georgette Heyer or Nevil Shute is worth your time, and The Rubiyat Of Omar Khayyam should be by your bedside for dipping into at all times, as should anything by Saki / HH Munro.

No mention of Patrick Leigh Fermor yet?

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Catch 22 – Joseph Keller
The Road – Cormac McCarthy

These would be on my list

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
and another vote for Catcher in the Rye

Another +1 for “100 years of solitude”, totally weird and I have no idea why I like it but I love it.

My current favourite book is “Shantaram”

I must be one of the few people who didn’t like “Catch 22” I never really found a voice for it in my head, if you know what I mean.

hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

The Dice Man

a couple off the top of my head

Fair stood the Wind for France by HE Bates
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Dry by Augusten Boroughs
Writing Home by Alan Bennett
England’s Lane by Joseph Connolly
Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

100 is not enough, just a few from the 80/90s

Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis
The Music of Chance by Paul Auster
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest – Ken Kesey
The Fight – Norman Mailer
Fight Club – Chuck Palahnuik
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
Empire of the Sun – JG Ballard

(Not Kerouac’s On The Road – it’s crap)

Some great suggestions but I am astounded that no-one has suggested The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) yet. Perhaps the most perfect book ever written and as for the final page? Perfection.

Gotta say that Birdsong had perhaps the most profound effect on me though – from reading that I have developed a massive interest in the two World Wars and have since read lots of historical accounts, biographies and auto-biographies of people involved in the wars in one way or another. And my interest has also effected my 6 year old girl who likes nothing better than reading about the war (children’s encyclopaedias of the wars) as her bedtime book.