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22 December 2003
Lynne Truss's top 10 books for wordsmiths
1. A Concise Dictionary of English Idioms, compiled by BA Phythian
2. The Oxford Guide to Style by RM Ritter
3. The New Fowler's Modern English Usage by RW Burchfield
4. The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage by Kingsley Amis
5. The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, & Quotation, edited by Elizabeth Knowles
6. Le Mot Juste: The Penguin Dictionary of Foreign Terms and Phrases, edited by Eugene Ehrlich
7. The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and EB White
8. English Our English (and How to Sing It) by Keith Waterhouse
9. Mother Tongue: The English Language by Bill Bryson
10. Oxford Dictionary of English (second edition)
 
08 December 2003
Gwyneth Jones's top 10 science fiction by women writers
1. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin
2. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
3. Up the Walls of the World by James Tiptree Jr
4. The Female Man by Joanna Russ
5. Cyteen by CJ Cherryh
6. Grass by Sheri Tepper
7. Synners by Pat Cadigan
8. Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler
9. Light Music by Kathleen Ann Goonan
10. Natural History by Justina Robson
 
03 December 2003
Alexander McCall Smith's top 10 favourite humorous books
1. Mapp and Lucia by EF Benson
2. Lucia in Wartime by Tom Holt
3. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
4. The Young Visiters (sic) by Daisy Ashford
5. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
6. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
7. The English Teacher by RK Narayan
8. Die Gefangennahme eines Postboten (The Capture of a Postman) by Michael von Poser
9. The Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy by Sigmund Freud
10. The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
 
24 November 2003
Ian Mackersey's top 10 books on aviation
1. Winged Victory by VM Yeates
2. Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3. The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary
4. Amy Johnson by Constance Babington Smith
5. West with the Night by Beryl Markham
6. Beyond the Blue Horizon by Alexander Frater
7. No Highway by Nevil Shute
8. Propellerhead by Antony Woodward
9. Sir George Cayley by J Laurence Pritchard
10. The Sky Beyond by Sir Gordon Taylor
 
17 November 2003
Anthony Read's top 10 books about Hitler and the Third Reich
1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer
2. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock
3. Hitler (2 vols) by Ian Kershaw
4. The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg
5. Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer
6. Letters to Freya by Helmuth James von Moltke
7. The Face of the Third Reich by Joachim C Fest
8. The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert
9. Hitler's War Aims by Norman Rich
10. The German Dictatorship by Karl Dietrich Bracher
 
06 November 2003
Andrew Lycett's essential Dylan Thomas
1. From Love's First Fever (October 1933)
2. I See the Boys of Summer (March 1934)
3. Poem in October (August 1944)
4. A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London (March 1945)
5. Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night (May 1951)
6. The Peaches
7. Old Garbo
8. Holiday Memory
9. Return Journey
10. Under Milk Wood
 
15 October 2003
Cornelia Funke's top 10 bedtime stories
1. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
2. The BFG by Roald Dahl
3. What Witch? by Eva Ibbotson
4. Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
5. Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver by Michael Ende
6. Peter Pan by JM Barrie
7. The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren
8. The War of the Buttons by Louis Peraud
9. The Wizard of Oz by LF Baum
10. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
 
14 October 2003
Max Jones's top 10 books about exploration
1. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922)
2. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (1980)
3. The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels (1845)
4. Scott's Last Expedition Vol I: The Journals of Captain RF Scott (1913)
5. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
6. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (1968)
7. South: the Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917 by Ernest Shackleton (1919)
8. The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa from 1865 to His Death, edited by Horace Waller (1874)
9. Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler (1998)
10. The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific: As Told by Selections of His Own Journals 1768-1779
 
15 September 2003
Marianne Elliott: top 10 Irish history books
1. The Making of Modern Ireland 1603-1923 by JC Beckett
2. Modern Ireland 1600-1972 by RF Foster
3. Ireland: a Social and Cultural History 1922-1985 by Terence Brown
4. The Narrow Ground: Aspects of Ulster 1609-1969 by ATQ Stewart
5. Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in Late 18th Century Ireland by IR McBride
6. Small Differences: Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants 1815-1922 by Donald Harman Akenson
7. Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia by David Fitzpatrick
8. Armed Struggle: the History of the IRA by Richard English
9. The Oxford Companion to Irish History by SJ Connolly
10. Home Rule: An Irish History 1800-2000 by Alvin Jackson
 
08 September 2003
Tibor Fischer's top 10 eastern European novels
1. The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
2. Embers by Sándor Márai
3. The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
5. Ashes and Diamonds by Jerzy Andrzejewski
6. Omon Ra by Viktor Pelevin
7. The Transylvanian Trilogy by Miklós Bánffy
8. The Joke by Milan Kundera
9. The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare
10. Memoir of a Russian Punk by Eduard Limonov
 
01 September 2003
Neal Asher's top 10 fantasy novels
1. Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
2. Waylander by David Gemmell
3. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
4. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
5. Volkhavaar by Tanith Lee
6. Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock
7. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson
8. Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
9. The Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance
10. Shiva 3000 by Jan Lars Jensen
 
26 August 2003
Terry Deary's favourite history books
1. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe by Charles Nicholl
2. They Called it Paschendale by Lyn Macdonald
3. In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood
4. The English: A Social History 1066- 945 by Christopher Hibbert
5. Made in America by Bill Bryson
6. Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle by Michael K Jones
7. The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity have Changed History by Erik Durschmied
8. Behind the Castle Gate: From Medieval to Renaissance by Matthew Johnson
9. Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley by Alison Weir
10. Stranger than Fiction: A Book of Literary Lists by Aubrey Dillon-Malone
 
26 August 2003
Joyce Hackett's top 10 musical novels
1. The Loser by Thomas Bernhard
2. Longing by JD Landis
3. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
4. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
5. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
6. The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
7. Edinburgh by Alexander Chee
8. The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
9. Corregidora by Gayl Jones
10. Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
 
18 August 2003
Jude Fisher's top 10 tales of adventure
1. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
2. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
3. Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
4. In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
5. Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
6. Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
7. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
8. The Road to Miklagard by Henry Treece
9. Sharpe's Eagle by Bernard Cornwell
10. Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson
 
05 August 2003
Tim Pears's top 10 20th-century political novels
1. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1910)
2. The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek (1923)
3. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1940)
4. The Bridge Over the Drina by Ivo Andric (1945)
5. The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (1945)
6. Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (1948)
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
8. When the Tree Sings by Stratis Haviaras (1979)
9. The Life and Times of Michael K by JM Coetzee (1983)
10. Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje (2000)
 
29 July 2003
Michael Marshall Smith's top 10 horror books
1. Dark Feasts by Ramsey Campbell
2. Pet Sematary by Stephen King
3. Ghost Story by Peter Straub
4. Dead Babies by Martin Amis
5. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
6. Night Shift by Stephen King
7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
8. The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
9. At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft
10. Best New Horror, edited by Stephen Jones
 
14 July 2003
Amanda Craig's top 10 romantic comedies
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Ayala's Angel by Anthony Trollope
3. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
4. The Guy Next Door by Meg Cabot
5. The Marrying Game by Kate Saunders
6. The Hearts and Lives of Men by Fay Weldon
7. A Room with a View by EM Forster
8. Perfect Strangers by Robyn Sisman
9. Harnessing Peacocks by Mary Wesley
10. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
 
02 July 2003
Patrick Neate's top 10 hip-hop books
1. The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty
2. Hip Hop America by Nelson George
3. Westsiders by William Shaw
4. Egotrip's Book Of Rap Lists
5. Six Out Seven by Jess Mowry
6. The Art Of War by Sun-Tzu
7. Rap Attack: African Rap To Global Hip Hop by David Toop
8. Pimp by Iceberg Slim
9. No Logo by Naomi Klein
10. Black Noise: Rap Music And Black Culture In Contemporary America by Tricia Rose
 
24 June 2003
George Monbiot's top 10 world-changing books
1. The Future of Money by Bernard Lietaer
2. Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh
3. The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
4. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
5. The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
6. Selected Writings by Gerrard Winstanley
7. Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
8. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
9. Letters to a Young Activist by Todd Gitlin
 
13 June 2003
Brenda Maddox's top 10 Joycean books
1. Dubliners (intro Terence Brown, Penguin)
2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (ed Seamus Deane, Penguin)
3. Ulysses (ed Seamus Deane, Penguin)
4. Finnegans Wake (Faber)
5. James Joyce by Richard Ellman (second edition, OUP 1982)
6. James Joyce: the Years of Bloom by John McCourt (The Lilliput Press, 2000)
7. Dear Miss Weaver: Harriet Shaw Weaver 1876-1961 by Jane Lidderdale and Mary Nicolson (Viking, 1970)
8. My Brother's Keeper by Stanislaus Joyce (Faber)
9. Joyce's Revenge: History, Politics and Aesthetics in Ulysses by Andrew Gibson (OUP)
10. James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses by Frank Budgen
 
02 June 2003
Stephen Jones's top 10 Americana
1. America's Back Porch by Daniel Jeffreys
2. Waiting Period by Hubert Selby Jr
3. From A to B and Back Again by Andy Warhol
4. Factotum by Charles Bukowski
5. Junky by William S Burroughs
6. Atomic Candy by Phyllis Burke
7. Dogwalker by Arthur Bradford
8. Naked Pueblo by Mark Poirier
9. Wild at Heart by Barry Gifford
10. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
 
28 May 2003
Christopher Priest's top 10 slipstream books
1. The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
2. Crash by JG Ballard
3. The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
4. Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
5. The Sea Came in at Midnight by Steve Erickson
6. Light by M John Harrison
7. Ice by Anna Kavan
8. Being There by Jerzy Kosinski
9. The Knife Thrower and Other Stories by Steven Millhauser
10. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz
 
20 May 2003
Rose Elliot's top 10 vegetarian cookbooks
1. The Café Paradiso Cookbook by Denis Cotter
2. New Vegetarian by Celia Brooks Brown
3. Japanese Vegetarian Cookbook by Patricia Richfield
4. Vegetarian Thai by Jackum Brown
5. Fresh Flavours of India by Das Sreedharan
6. The Cranks Bible by Nadine Abensur
7. The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas
8. Easy Vegan Cooking by Leah Leneman
9. Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian
10. Colin Spencer's Vegetable Book
 
13 May 2003
Monty Don's top 10 gardening books
1. Derek Jarman's Garden by Derek Jarman
2. The English Gardener by William Cobbett
3. Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey
4. The New Book of Apples by Joan Morgan and Alison Richards
5. Classic Roses by Peter Beales
6. The Vegetable Garden displayed (1961 edition), Royal Horticultural Society
7. The Principles of Gardening by Hugh Johnson
8. Garden Flowers by Christopher Lloyd
9. The Organic Salad Garden by Joy Larkcom
10. The Well-tempered Garden by Christopher Lloyd
 
07 May 2003
The 10 most popular misconceptions about Oscar Wilde
1. 'Oscar' is the best-known 'Wilde'
2. He was homosexual from his schooldays
3. He coasted through university, with a reputation for langorousness and a love of lilies
4. Apart from writing a couple of plays, a few children's stories, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and The Picture of Dorian Gray he doesn't seem to have done much
5. Being Irish was just an accident of birth; he was an English author, surely?
6. 'Earnest' was a code-word for 'gay' and wearing a green carnation was a 'secret' sign of homosexuality
7. Oscar Wilde's arrest was delayed by several hours to allow him to catch the last boat-train and escape to the continent
8. Once Oscar Wilde was arrested, tried and imprisoned, Lord Alfred Douglas, who essentially got him into the mess, abandoned him
9. Oscar Wilde died of syphilis
10. Oscar Wilde was merely a hedonist who, as he admitted, put his genius into his life but only his talent into his works
 
29 April 2003
Paul Kingsnorth's top 10 dissenting books
1. Essays by George Orwell
2. Upside Down by Eduardo Galeano
3. False Dawn by John Gray
4. Our Word is Our Weapon by Subcomandante Marcos
5. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
6. Copse by Kate Evans
7. Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
8. Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman
9. Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn
10. Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh
 
22 April 2003
James Siegal's top 10 thrillers
1. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
2. Marathon Man by William Goldman
3. Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
4. The Firm by John Grisham
5. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
6. Act of Darkness by Francis King
7. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
8. Anything by Elmore Leonard
9. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carré
10. Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
 
14 April 2003
Michael Morpurgo's top 10 favourite books
1. The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
2. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell
4. The Last Giants by François Place
5. The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
6. Cat in the Manger by Michael Foreman
7. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
8. Clown by Quentin Blake
9. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
10. Oscar and Hoo by Theo and Michael Dudok De Wit
 
20 March 2003
Julia Darling's top 10 books about northern England
1. Out of One Eye: Jimmy Forsyth, photographer by Anthony Flowers and Derek Smith
2. 1956: a collection of short stories edited by Margaret Wilkinson
3. Counting Stars by David Almond
4. Cousin Coat: selected poems by Sean O'Brien
5. Broke Through Britain by Peter Mortimer
6. Lintel by Gillian Allnut
7. Loving Geordie by Andrea Badenoch
8. 2nd: the second collection by Andrew Waterhouse
9. Only A Small Boat by Cynthia Fuller
10. The Madolescents by Chrissie Glazebrook
 
03 March 2003
Michael Rosen's top 10 books
1. Zebby Gone with the Wind by Binette Schroeder
2. My Very First Mother Goose, edited by Iona Opie, illustrated by Rosemary Wells
3. Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
4. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll illustrated by Sir John Tenniel
6. Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah
7. Gulf by Robert Westall
8. The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon
9. Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams
10. Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era by Curtis Breight
 
24 February 2003
Peter F Stevens's top 10 nautical books
1. The Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingly
2. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
3. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
4. The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees
5. Selkirk's Island by Diana Souhami
6. Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
7. Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana
8. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic by Alfred Lansing
9. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel
10. A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
 
18 February 2003
David Smith's top 10 economics books
1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar
2. Keynes, by Robert Skidelsky
3. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by JM Keynes
4. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
5. Second Amongst Equals by Richard Holt
6. The Armchair Economist by Stephen Landsburg
7. The Accidental Theorist by Paul Krugman
8. Dot.Con by John Cassidy
9. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes
10. Macroeconomics - Understanding the Wealth of Nations by DK Miles and Andrew Scott
 
11 February 2003
Giles Lyon's top 10 cricket books
1. Harold Gimblett: Tormented Genius of Cricket by David Foot
2. The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley
3. The Appeal of the Championship: Sussex in the Summer of 1981 by John Barclay
4. The Hambledon Cricket Chronicle 1772-1796 by FS Ashley-Cooper
5. Bodyline Autopsy by David Frith
6. Famous Cricketers and Cricket Grounds, edited by CW Alcock
7. Through The Caribbean by Alan Ross
8. The Best of Cricket Fiction (2 vols) by Leslie Frewin
9. Brightly Fades the Don by JH Fingleton
10. Cricket Highways and Byways by FS Ashley-Cooper
 
03 February 2003
AL Kennedy's top 10 controversial books
1. The Dark by John McGahern
2. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S Thompson
3. That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis
4. Sergeant Getulio by Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro
5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
7. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
8. The Confidence Man by Herman Melville
9. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes
10. The Beach at Falesa/ The Ebb Tide/ Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by RL Stevenson
 
15 January 2003
Richard Grant's top 10 books about wandering
1. Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca
2. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
3. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
5. Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger
6. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
7. Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz
8. Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto
9. Desierto by Charles Bowden
10. Great Plains by Ian Frazier
 
09 January 2003
David Peace's top 10 British true-crime books
1. Beyond Belief by Emlyn Williams
2. Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son by Gordon Burn
3. Killing for Company by Brian Masters
4. The Streetcleaner by Nicole Ward Jouve
5. Error of Judgement by Chris Mullin
6. State of Siege by Jim Coulter, Susan Miller and Martin Walker
7. Who Framed Colin Wallace? by Paul Foot
8. Smear! by Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay
9. The Terrorism Trilogy by Martin Dillon
10. Bloody Valentine by John Williams
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