 | Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Buy new: £4.79 / Used from: £0.01 riveting, fractured dystopia. re-read the last page and let the full horror sink in...
|
 | Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Buy new: £5.47 / Used from: £0.01 a dazzling mystery, a brainy page turner; atwood at her most narrative-driven
|
 | The Sot-weed Factor by John Barth
Buy new: £8.36 / Used from: £2.51 big, rude and very clever, from this neglected US magical realist
|
 | The Autumn of the Patriarch (International Writers) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Buy used from: £0.01 difficult at first (written as one sentence, as i remember), but casts a malign, obsessive spell
|
 | Great Jones Street (Picador Books) by Don DeLillo
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £1.68 his later stuff can be a bit too cerebral , but this tale of a dylan-esque rock star in hiding is right on the money
|
 | The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: £6.26 / Used from: £3.30 the novel as rollercoaster ride - no other author is as adept at releasing you from the moorings of conventionality / sanity without you knowing it. astonishing.
|
 | What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe
Buy used from: £0.01 his novels are consistently excellent, but this is still his best - the porn-writing episode has got to be one of the funniest in modern literature...
|
 | Grendel (Fantasy Masterworks Series) by John Gardner
Buy used from: £8.55 wonderful, moving monster-in-first-person narrative. underrated...
|
 | The Spire by William Golding
Buy new: £4.76 / Used from: £1.28 dense, intense, peculiarly british, did this at A-level and has stayed with me ever since
|
 | Rites of Passage (Faber Fiction Classics) by William Golding
Buy used from: £1.00 ...and this, i think is Golding's finest moment - the first instalment of the Sea trilogy, funny, brutal, unutterably weird.
|
 | Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
Buy new: £5.09 / Used from: £1.02 the treasure of english magical realism. bawdy, sexy, authentic, mysterious. get this, then the bloody chamber and wise children
|
 | The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Buy new: £5.36 / Used from: £1.80 the only one of his that I really like. unreconstructed and brave.
|
 | Flashman in the Great Game (Flashman 08) by George MacDonald Fraser
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £2.61 in my view, the best flashman, funny, epic, savage and very moving...the ultimate page turners.
|
 | The Tenants by Bernard Malamud
Buy used from: £4.50 a brilliant slice of 70s New York writers paranoia
|
 | The Rabbit Omnibus by John Updike
Buy used from: £2.88 the omnibus edition of Updike's finest triptych. Fantastic writing, a blueprint for so much has followed (including Anthony Soprano?) - and then get Rabbit at rest as well.
|
 | Catch-22 (Vintage Classics) by Joseph Heller
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £0.99 a bit obvious I know, but still the funniest anti-war novel ever read. The trial is hysterical
|
 | The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett
Buy new: £5.98 / Used from: £0.01 i loved this - part thriller, part ;love story, enlightening about the turmoil in the Congo in the fifties. gripping.
|
 | Leading the Cheers by Justin Cartwright
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.01 thoughtful, complex, harrowing. i should read some of his others...
|
 | My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Buy new: £4.76 / Used from: £0.01 anyone who struggled through the Name of The Rose should turn instead to this - a brilliant historical whodunnit...
|
 | American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Buy new: £4.57 / Used from: £1.24 roth just gets better and better; this is a powerful meditation on loss and parenthood and aging...
|
 | Invisible Man (Penguin Modern Classics) by Ralph Ellison
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £4.55 a modern american fable. half did it at uni, then re-read it after...a sure sign of a classic!
|
 | Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut
Buy new: £5.07 / Used from: £1.96 another obvious one perhaps, but an inspiring, life changing read. so it goes
|
 | The Sheltering Sky (Penguin Modern Classics) by Paul Bowles
Buy new: £5.98 / Used from: £5.00 like graham greene on opium. check out his collected stories,as well.
|
 | The Book of Daniel (Penguin Classics) by E. L. Doctorow
Buy new: £5.68 / Used from: £3.75 riveting fictitious portrait of the offspring of Julius & ethel rosenberg (executed for treason, for allegedly spying) making their way in Vietnam-era America. a work that genuinely stays with you
|
 | Molesworth (Penguin Modern Classics) by Geoffrey Willans
Buy new: £7.11 / Used from: £3.41 genius - still laugh out loud funny, and a warm reminder of a simpler time. as any fule kno.
|
Listmania!
