Favourite books
Nineteenth century
- Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion
- Charlotte Bronte: Villette
- Charles Dickens: Dombey and Son and A Tale of Two Cities
- George Eliot: Silas Marner and Adam Bede
- Thomas Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge
- Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
- Balzac: Lost Illusions
- Tolstoy: War and Peace
- Flaubert: Madame Bovary
- Stendhal: Scarlet and Black
- Emile Zola La Bete Humaine
- Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment and The Idiot
Later English books:
- D.H.Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, and the poem called Snake
- Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway and A Room of One’s Own
- Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca
- David Lodge: A Small World
- Barbara Trapido: Brother of the More Famous Jack
- A.S.Byatt: Possession
- Jeannette Winterson: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
… and whatever I have read and enjoyed most recently, a huge list that I cannot control, so I won’t try, but last month (August 2013) I did adore “We need new names” by NonViolet Bulawayo, and i’m currently swooning over “A History of Silence” by Loyd James.
Australian books:
- Leslie Rees: Shy the Platypus
- Dorothy Wall: The Adventures of Blinky Bill
- May Gibbs: Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie
- Henry Lawson: While the Billy Boils
- Helen Garner: The First Stone
- Peter Carey: Jack Maggs
- Patrick White: The Solid Mandala
- Sally Morgan: My Place
- Shirley Hazzard: The Transit of Venus
- Tom Keneally: Schindler’s Ark
- Tim Winton: Cloudstreet , The Riders and Turning Point
North American books:
- Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
- John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
- Alice Walker: The Color Purple
- William Faulkner: Light in August
Canadian books:
- Rohinton Mistry: A Fine Balance
- Rohinton Mistry: Such a Long Journey
- E. Annie Proulx: Shipping News
Indian Books:
- Vikram Seth: A Suitable Boy
- R.K. Narayan: The English Teacher and The Tiger of Malgudi
South American Books:
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Mario Varghas Llosa: Aunt Julia and the Script-Writer
- Isabelle Allende: Eva Luna
Others:
- The Bible
- Shakespeare
- Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury
- Jung Chang: Wild Swans
- Naguib Mahfouz: Wedding Song
- Katherine Mansfield: Bliss