 | James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Buy used from: £0.01 My favourite book as a small child, but the characters are so beautifully written that I still enjoy it now.
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 | To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Buy new: £4.30 / Used from: £2.00 Much much more than the typical 'coming of age' novel.
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 | The New Quantum Universe by Tony Hey
Buy new: £18.08 / Used from: £16.62 The book that convinced me I wanted to study physics.
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 | The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £0.01 Clever, funny, yet also very poignant at times. This should still be essential reading for any self respecting physicist.
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 | The Handmaid's Tale (Contemporary classics) by Margaret Atwood
Buy new: £4.97 / Used from: £0.01 Haunting and written in prose so brilliant that it's almost poetry. Written in reponse to the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the US, this unfortunately feels very prophetic.
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 | The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £0.47 I can't look at fairy tales in the same way again.
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 | Great Expectations (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens
Buy new: £5.00 / Used from: £0.01 Food for thought, with Dickens' typical brilliant characterisation.
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 | American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Buy new: £5.07 / Used from: £2.00 Dark, witty and very clever.
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 | The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Buy new: £4.02 / Used from: £0.43 Very touching and poignant, and a wonderful example of Hemingway at his best.
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 | The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Buy new: £4.76 / Used from: £0.92 A beautiful book about loss, regret and the passing of time.
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 | The Green Mile by Stephen King
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.01 Haunting and unsettling, I read this several years before watching the film.
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 | Goodnight Mister Tom (Puffin Modern Classics) by Michelle Magorian
Buy new: £4.77 / Used from: £0.01 The first book that made me cry, and still can.
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 | All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Buy new: £5.07 / Used from: £2.00 Probably the best book about WW1 I have read. I regret that I cannot read German so I have to read a translation.
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 | Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Buy new: £5.46 / Used from: £0.01 The interwoven stories fit together perfectly and the whole is haunting and poignant.
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 | Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
Buy used from: £0.01 Another of my favourite childhood books that has enough substance for me to still enjoy it now.
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 | Le Petit Prince (French) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Buy used from: £5.26 Either in the original French or a translation, this is absolutely beautiful.
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 | Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Popular Classics) by Jonathan Swift
Buy new: £2.16 / Used from: £0.01 Definitely not a children's book, this is in fact very clever and unforgiving satire.
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 | When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
Buy new: £5.47 / Used from: £0.99 Haunting. It is sad and frustrating to know how few people realise there is much more to Raymond Briggs than 'The Snowman.'
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 | The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer
Buy new: £10.91 / Used from: £7.49 Wonderful. It is a shame that so few peole attempt to tackle this in the original middle English.
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 | The Origin of Species (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) by Charles Darwin
Buy new: £2.70 / Used from: £0.78 The result of more than 20 years of thought, and it shows.
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 | The Colour of Magic: The First Discworld Novel (A Discworld Novel) by Terry Pratchett
Buy new: £4.79 / Used from: £0.01 Or any of the Discworld novels. Not just sci-fi/fantasy, they are also cleverly satirical.
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