100 Favourite Books

A better book list from Cursive Knives and friends.

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I think the Guardian’s 100 Best Novels of All Time list is fine, but there’s nothing exciting on it. I’ve read just over half of what’s on it, but that’s because it looks like a literature undergrad reading list. Which is fine if you’re doing a literature degree, but it’s absolutely not a list to inspire people to get into reading. I had a little bit of a dig into the actual recommendations people were giving and there were things there that were more interesting, or more unexpected, than yet another list of classics. Why were there more Virginia Woolf novels than novels written in the last decade?¹ Is MIDDLEMARCH the best book everyone has ever read, really??² I think I’m actually more interested in what people’s favourite books are, rather than what anyone thinks the “best” books are (because, of course, that list is always going to skew towards classics, or aspirational reads that more people say they’ve read than have actually read). No one is getting back into reading by picking up WAR AND PEACE, come on. “Best” books lists feel exclusionary and kind of dickish. Sorry.

So, I’m doing a Cursive Knives top 100 by giving you my top 10 and rounding up some of our bookish pals to give me theirs. The rules are: your ten favourite books, fiction only, go with your gut. Choosing just ten proved harder than expected, so the following list is closer to 150 recommendations.

I’ll go first…

Immediately as I got to ten I thought of at least another fifty books I wanted to include. Absalom, Absalom! should maybe be swapped out for The Sound and the Fury but it feels even more wankery. I ran out of space for Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over and David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks. I’ve left out On The Calculation for Volume because it feels unfair to add a series that’s unfinished. I snuck one short story collection in, but I’d also add more Angela Carter (Nights at the Circus), Lauren Groff (Florida), Julia Armfield (salt slow). Non-fiction would’ve added Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem or The White Album), James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son), John Jeremiah Sullivan (Pulphead) and Olivia Laing (The Lonely City); poetry would’ve added Allen Ginsberg (Howl) and Sylvia Plath (Ariel). But this’ll do for now.

1. Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter

2. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner

3. Marble, Amalie Smith

4. Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko

5. The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

6. Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel

7. Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger

8. Fen, Daisy Johnson

9. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

10. Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfield

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OK, OK, LOOK I’m fairly certain that the Cursive Knives audience skews female and that there’s only one woman on my list but as a bookish white boy I, maybe unsurprisingly, tend to relate to bookish white boy authors. Please don’t be mean to me.

I tried to think of the best of my favorites or it might have just been a list of Martin Amis and Murakami (I know, I know I’M SORRY OKAY). Terri said I couldn’t have nonfiction so Didion and Arendt were thrown from the longlist. Barbara Kingsolver and Margaret Atwood were close too but Terri said go with my gut and my gut is disturbed and male.

It’s not in any order but if it was, Isherwood’s A Single Man would be at the top and I would read it again and again, over and over into eternity.

1. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

2. The Pregnant Widow, Martin Amis

3. A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood

4. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffery Eugenides

5. After The Quake, Haruki Murakami

6. The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara

7. A Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell

8. Burmese Days, George Orwell

9. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

10. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote

James Tennent writes Late to the party. Doing an alt-list was his idea.

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I tried to think of my list as not my best books or what people think I should think are the best books because that’s what we’ve been taught. Besides, if you like books you already know these books already so that’s nothing new. Just go look at the Guardian list if you want that. So what defines a favourite book to me? I’ve gone for a measurable metric because comparing books really is a fools errand and so here’s a list of books I’ve loved enough to read again and again in no particular order… and with apologies to all the brilliant books I couldn’t include.

1. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

2. Wise Children, Angela Carter

3. Affinity, Sarah Waters

4. Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia E. Butler

5. Fair Play, Tove Jansson

6. The Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K LeGuin

7. Persuasion, Jane Austen

8. Under The Skin, Michel Faber

9. Carol, Patricia Highsmith

10. Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss

Elizabeth Lovatt is the author of Thank You For Calling The Lesbian Line.

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In order of importance to me:

1. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

2. Palaver, Bryan Washington

3. The Kingdom of Sand, Andrew Holleran

4. A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood

5. Play it as it Lays, Joan Didion

6. A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

7. A Minor Chorus, Billy Ray Belcourt

8. Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett

9. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

10. Call Me By Your Name, Andre Aciman

Honourable mentions to Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

Darby Jones is a writer and editor. He writes Fragile, Unfinished Somethings.

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My final list³, in no order:

1. God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

2. Swallow the Air, Tara June Winch

3. The Swan Book, Alexis Wright

4. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

5. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

6. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

7. White Noise, Don Delillo

8. Beloved, Toni Morrison

9. Human Acts, Han Kang

10. Dead Europe, Christopher Tsiolkas

Oh, if I had space honourable mentions:

• The Well, Elizabeth Jolley

• Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson

• Freddy Neptune, Les Murray

• Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

• The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai

• Blonde, Joyce Carol Oates

• Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter

• Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood

• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

• The Secret History, Donna Tartt

• Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad

Lauren Mitchell is an editor at UQP.

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After much agonising and rending of hair, this is what I’ve come up with:

1. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst

2. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

3. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

4. Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte

5. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

6. The Book of Ayn, Lexi Freiman

7. The Stepdaughter, Caroline Blackwood

8. The First Bad Man, Miranda July

9. The Topeka School, Ben Lerner

10. Vladimir, Julia May Jonas

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is a regrettable omission...as is Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, and Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads, and Percival Everett’s Erasure. And actually, it feels CRIMINAL to not have included any Ray Bradbury or JG Ballard! Although I’d have to pick the collected stories for both of them (cheating??). The Bell Jar should be there too, and Lolita, and definitely a Jennifer Egan – maybe Look at Me? And Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis! And Pet Sematary by Stephen King. TOO MANY!!

Carody Culver is the editor of Griffith Review. She writes Critical Condition.

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1. Chain-Gang All- Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

2. Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson

3. Babel, RF Kuang

4. The Will of the Many, James Islington

5. The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett

6. The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson

7. The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow

8. Bunny, Mona Awad

9. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

10. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

    

Bec Naoumis (@booked.this.week) runs the bi-monthly The Secondhand Book Bookclub.

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The word “best” is very subjective, so this is my “top ten” on vibes alone and hurriedly typed out. And it’ll probably change in the next 5 mins …

1. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

2. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

3. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

4. 1984, George Orwell

5. Atonement, Ian McEwan

6. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan

7. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

8. The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak

9. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

10. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

Emily Lighezzolo is the author of Life Drawing and is a publicity manager at Hachette.

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I just did this very quickly to avoid overthinking – and tried to think of books that had been very significant to me at different points in my life...

1. Middlemarch, George Eliot

2. Latecomers, Anita Brookner

3. The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark

4. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

5. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

6. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

7. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

8. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

9. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

10. Catch 22, Joseph Heller

Frances Ambler is the deputy editor of The Simple Things. She writes here on Substack: Frances.

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1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

2. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

3. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

4. Just Kids, Patti Smith⁴

5. Haunted, Chuck Palahnuik

6. Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

7. An Education, Lynn Barber

8. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

9. Hangsaman, Shirley Jackson

10. The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood

I went quickly and with my gut, though it was actually not as difficult as choosing the final five. Camila Grudova’s short stories The Doll’s Alphabet lost a spot despite lingering with me. There is also a sense of regret in leaving out favourite trilogies and series, with one part of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam universe staying in through The Year of the Flood. I felt a particular sadness removing books from His Dark Materials, The Lord of the Rings, The Kingkiller Chronicle, Southern Reach and Wool, as they represent entire worlds I’ve returned to or wanted to return to.

Amber Carnegie runs Get Lit Books.

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Voila! I hope that you spotted something there that might pull you out of a reading slump, or found a bookish kindred spirit.

We always want more. Tell us about the book you read ten years ago that was a weird debut novel from a small press, or something that’s been translated in the last five years, or a novel you found in a charity shop that you couldn’t even find on Goodreads but it’s changed your life.

1. This could be an exaggeration, but if it is, it’s not much of one.

2. I haven’t read it so maybe it is, and it does appear on the Cursive Knives list, just once!

3. Spoiler, it was not the final list.

4. I did tell Amber that this was rule-breaking and she ignored me. 😂