 | The Ogre (Penguin Modern Classics) by Michel Tournier
the 20th centurys greatest work of literature? no, really...see for yourself!...& then try "Gemini" & "The Four Wise Men"
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 | White Noise (Picador Books) by Don DeLillo
Buy new: £4.76 / Used from: £2.13 his most controlled work, a deeply profound and comic exploration of the human inability to face death. Stunning.
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 | A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £4.36 both truly hilarious and truly brilliant...Wallace is genius, utterly of and about his (and our) time... and this is a form of autobiography
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 | Suttree (Picador Books) by Cormac McCarthy
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £5.20 melancholy has never been so richly, nor so humerously evoked. This is even better than the 'Western'novels...see also the ultra-vivid "Child of God"
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 | Ghosts by John Banville
Buy new: £5.07 / Used from: £2.65 magical...from the most under-rated (living) author in the English language..."Mefisto" is equally good & "The Book of Evidence" is a great place to start with Banville
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 | Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £1.99 a fabulous, big fat celebratory novel. All human (and much other besides) life is here, and almost every sentence is masterfully constructed, using language to its utmost.
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 | A Confederacy of Dunces (Penguin Modern Classics) by John Kennedy Toole
Buy new: £5.92 / Used from: £2.87 ...the funniest novel I've ever read
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 | The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
Buy used from: £0.40 about loss and memory, but alive with wit, warmth and endless wonders...see also "The Rings of Saturn"...tragically, Sebald was killed on Dec 14th 2001
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 | Laughter in the Dark (Penguin Modern Classics) by Vladimir Nabokov
Buy new: £6.46 / Used from: £4.17 dark, comic tragedy...see also "An Invitation to a Beheading"
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 | The House of Breath by William Goyen
Buy used from: £0.20 staggeringly beautiful prose
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 | Wildlife (Harvill Panther) by Richard Ford
Buy used from: £0.01 as taut as a drum-skin...Vastly superior to 'The Sportswriter' etc.
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 | Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee
Buy used from: £0.99 epic and yet simple, lucid and yet dream-like...Coetzee is a poet...see also "In The Heart of the Country" & "Disgrace"
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 | The Songlines (Vintage classics) by Bruce Chatwin
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.31 more pain, more beauty...see also "Utz"
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 | Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Buy used from: £1.99 follows Faulkner, precedes McCarthy, but carves it's own niche of greatness
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 | Winter: Notes from Montana by Rick Bass
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £1.51 a hymn to the church of the wild...see also: "The Sky, The Stars & The Wilderness"
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 | A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
Buy used from: £0.01 deeply moving
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 | The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
Buy used from: £0.01 dignity in the face of tragedy and Banks' speciality: the rotten heart of America..oh, and a compulsive page-turner to boot
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 | The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Buy new: £5.27 / Used from: £2.50 back at the birth of pop culture, so much packed into such a small space...and still laugh-out-loud funny
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 | Complete Illustrated Works by Lewis Carroll
Buy used from: £70.96 where it all begins...
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 | Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Buy used from: £4.19 rhythm, harmony, elegant simplicity
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 | To a God Unknown (Penguin Modern Classics) by John Steinbeck
Buy new: £9.53 / Used from: £6.50 another prayer for the church of the wild...early Steinbeck is all great, but this seems more resonant.
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 | The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.01 on the nature and meaning of childhood...
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 | The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
Buy used from: £0.01 a hypnotic & compelling trance
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 | The Underground Man (paperback) by Mick Jackson
Buy new: £5.79 / Used from: £0.01 wonderful writing, loaded with wit and sadness..
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 | Purple America by Rick Moody
Buy used from: £0.01 the detonation of the "nuclear family" is hardly the most original ground, but the writing transcends that, and the opening is mesmerizing
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