21 December 2011 Selma Dabbagh's top 10 stories of reluctant revolutionaries 1. The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi 2. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates 3. Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali 4. Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev 5. Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert 6. Soul in Exile: Lives of a Palestinian Revolutionary by Fawaz Turki 7. Middlemarch by George Eliot 8. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 9. Prisoner of Love by Jean Genet 10. Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh
07 December 2011 Philip Gross's top 10 writings from the edge of language 1. The Ruin by an unknown Anglo-Saxon author 2. The Waste Land by TS Eliot 3. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban 4. Ishi in Two Worlds by Theodora Kroeber 5. Keeping Mum / Llofrudd Iaith by Gwyneth Lewis 6. A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty by Frank Kuppner 7. The School of Eloquence by Tony Harrison 8. The Poems of Paul Celan translated by Michael Hamburger 9. The Beast In The Space by WS Graham 10. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
30 November 2011 Harry Mount's top 10 essays 1. George Orwell, Why I Write (1946) 2. Martha Gellhorn, Eichmann and the Private Conscience (1962) 3. Evelyn Waugh, A Call to the Orders (1938) 4. Michel de Montaigne, On the Cannibals (1595) 5. JM Barrie, Courage (1922) 6. Truman Capote, The Duke in his Domain (1957) 7. Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729) 8. Thomas Paine, Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, on the following interesting subjects (1776) 9. Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953) 10. AN Wilson, In Defence of Gay Priests (2003)
23 November 2011 Nile Rodgers' top 10 music books 1. Miles by Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe 2. Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business by Fredric Dannen 3. Chronicles: Volume 1 by Bob Dylan 4. Beethoven's Letters 5. The Real Frank Zappa Book by Frank Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso 6. Berry, Me, and Motown by Raynoma Gordy Singleton 7. Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography and Discography by Vladimir Simosko and Barry Tepperman 8. He's a Rebel by Mark Ribowsky 9. Hendrix: Setting The Record Straight by John McDermott with Eddie Kramer 10. The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, An Artist's Journey, 1898–1939 by Paul Robeson
16 November 2011 Michel Schneider's top 10 books about Marilyn Monroe 1. Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold 2. Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote 3. Marilyn, Mon Amour by Andre de Dienes 4. Hollywood on the Couch by Stephen Farber and Mark Green 5. On Loving, Hating and Living Well by Ralph Greenson 6. The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O'Hagan 7. Marilyn Monroe by Barbara Leaming 8. My Story by Marilyn Monroe 9. Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates 10. Marilyn Monroe: The Biography by Donald Spoto
09 November 2011 Liz Pichon's top 10 funny books with pictures 1. Silly Verse For Kids by Spike Milligan 2. The Twits by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake 3. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smit 4. The Fox books by James Marshall 5. Clarice Bean That's Me by Lauren Child 6. The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss 7. You're a Bad Man, Mr Gum! By Andy Stanton, illustrated by David Tazzyman 8. Stuck by Oliver Jeffers 9. Matilda by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake 10. Princess Smarty Pants by Babette Cole Just one more...The Adventures of Captain Underpants: An Epic Tale by Dav Pilkey
02 November 2011 Philip Connors's top 10 wilderness books 1. A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold 2. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 3. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey 4. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson 5. Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America by Cabeza de Vaca 6. Eating Stone by Ellen Meloy 7. The Tree by John Fowles 8. The Abstract Wild by Jack Turner 9. Claiming Ground by Laura Bell 10. The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder
26 October 2011 Alexandra Fuller's top 10 African memoirs 1. The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter by Albie Sachs 2. One Day I will Write About this Place by Binyavanga Wainaina 3. The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper 4. This Child Will Be Great by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf 5. The Devil that Danced on Water by Aminatta Forna 6. Boyhood by JM Coetzee 7. Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela 8. A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt by Toyin Falola 9. What Is the What by Dave Eggers 10. Sometimes There Is a Void by Zakes Mda
19 October 2011 Adam Thorpe's top 10 English translations 1. Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney (Faber & Faber) 2. Russian Short Stories, translated by Robert Chandler and others (Penguin Classics) 3. Poems by Wang Wei, translated by GW Robinson (Penguin Classics) 4. Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner, translated by HT Lowe-Porter (Penguin Modern Classics) 5. Ezra Pound: Translations (Faber & Faber) 6. Asterix by Goscinny and Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge (Hodder Children's Books) 7. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by TE Lawrence (OUP) 8. Tyndale's Bible 9. The Essays of Montaigne – John Florio (1603) 10. The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by NK Sandars (Penguin Classics)
12 October 2011 Belinda McKeon's top 10 farming novels 1. Stoner by John Williams 2. Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh 3. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather 4. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans 5. That They May Face The Rising Sun by John McGahern 6. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff 7. Foster by Claire Keegan 8. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons 9. God's Own Country by Ross Raisin 10. The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker, translated by David Colmer
28 September 2011 Andy McSmith's top 10 books of the 1980s 1. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (1980) 2. The Scarman Report – The Brixton Disorders by Lord Scarman (1981) 3. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982) 4. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (1983) 5. Blow Your House Down by Pat Barker (1984) 6. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (1985) 7. The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins (1986) 8. Serious Money by Caryl Churchill (1987) 9. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (1988) 10. One of Us by Hugo Young (1989)
21 September 2011 Madeline Miller's top 10 classical books 1. The Metamorphoses by Ovid 2. Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus 3. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson 4. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer 5. Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare 6. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson 7. The Bacchae by Euripides 8. Agamemnon by Aeschylus (The Oresteia Trilogy) 9. The Aeneid by Virgil 10. Philoctetes by Sophocles
07 September 2011 Megan Abbott's top 10 novels of teenage friendship 1. "The Body" by Stephen King 2. Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell 3. Sula by Toni Morrison 4. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers 5. The Power of Three by Laura Lippman 6. The Outsiders by SE Hinton 7. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 8. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 9. The Secret History by Donna Tartt 10. The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
31 August 2011 Jason Goodwin's top 10 books about Turkey 1. Istanbul: Poetry of Place, edited by Ates Orga 2. Snow by Orhan Pamuk 3. Turkey: a Short History by Norman Stone 4. Classical Turkish Cooking by Ayla Algar 5. Turkish Letters by Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq 6. Constantinople: City of the World's Desire by Philip Mansel 7. Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernières 8. Eothen by AW Kinglake 9. A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich 10. Rebel Land by Christopher de Bellaigue
24 August 2011 Teju Cole's top 10 novels of solitude 1. The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald 2. Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar 3. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 4. The Enigma of Arrival by VS Naipaul 5. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis 6. The Plains by Gerald Murnane 7. English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee 8. Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household 9. The Master by Colm Tóibín 10. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
17 August 2011 Anthony Clavane's top 10 football fictions 1. A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines 2. The Damned Utd by David Peace 3. The Unfortunates by BS Johnson 4. The Match by Alan Sillitoe 5. Goalkeepers Are Different by Brian Glanville 6. The Arsenal Stadium Mystery by Leonard R Gribble 7. The Man Who Hated Football by Will Buckley 8. How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup by JL Carr 9. The Football Factory by John King 10. The Hope That Kills Us: An Anthology of Scottish Football Fiction edited by Adrian Searle
17 August 2011 10 of the best books set in Berlin Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin, 1939 Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929 Cees Nooteboom, All Souls' Day, 2001 Thomas Brussig, Heroes Like Us, 1995 Chloe Aridjis, Book of Clouds, 2009 Philip Kerr, March Violets, 1989 Ian McEwan, The Innocent, 1990, Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin, 1947 Anna Funder, Stasiland, 2003 Len Deighton, Funeral in Berlin, 1964
03 August 2011 Mal Peet's top 10 books to read aloud Peepo! by Janet and Allan Ahlberg Burglar Bill by Janet and Allan Ahlberg The Lorax by Dr Seuss Stanley Bagshaw and the Mafeking Square Cheese Robbery, written and illustrated by Bob Wilson The BFG by Roald Dahl Wolf Pie by Andrew Matthews The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
27 July 2011 Tom Rachman's top 10 journalist's tales 1. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh 2. The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm 3. The Quiet American by Graham Greene 4. All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward 5. Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn 6. A Treasury of Great Reporting edited by Louis L Snyder and Richard B Morris 7. Floater by Calvin Trillin 8. Personal History by Katherine Graham 9. The Best of Granta Reportage 10. Psmith Journalist by PG Wodehouse
21 July 2011 Lauren St John's top 10 animal adventures 1. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell 2. Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell 3. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell 4. National Velvet by Enid Bagnold 5. The Black Stallion by Walter Farley 6. Charlotte's Web by EB White 7. The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford 8. For the Love of a Horse by Patricia Leitch 9. The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo 10. Born Free by Joy Adamson
20 July 2011 Kamin Mohammadi's top 10 Iranian books 1. Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) by Abolqasem Ferdowsi 2. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi 3. The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran by Roy Mottahedeh 4. The Conference of the Birds by Farid Attar 5. The Story of Leyla and Majnun by Nizami 6. Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad 7. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat 8. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle Eastern Terror by Stephen Kinzer 9. Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuściński 10. Daiey Jan Napoleon (My Uncle Napoleon) by Iraj Pezeshkzad
13 July 2011 Esi Edugyan's top 10 tales of Americans in Europe 1. Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler 2. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter 3. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James 4. The Dean's December by Saul Bellow 5. The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain 6. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway 7. The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 by Jack Gilbert 8. Memoirs of Montparnasse by John Glassco 9. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin 10. The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant
06 July 2011 Cornelia Funke's top 10 fairytales 1. The Goose Girl 2. The Six Swans 3. The Mistress of Copper Mountain 4. The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear 5. Gold Foot 6. The Nightingale 7. The Birthday of the Infanta 8. Donkeyskin 9. Merlin and Vivien, as told in Brittany 10. Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales by Ted Hughes
29 June 2011 Andrew Miller's top 10 historical novels 1. Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff 2. I, Claudius by Robert Graves 3. Kepler by John Banville 4. The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino 5. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald 6. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 7. Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar 8. Rites of Passage by William Golding 9. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel 10. The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell
22 June 2011 Sjón's top 10 island stories 1. Gallimauf's Gospel by Chris Wilson 2. Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson 3. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie 4. The Island Of Dr Moreau by HG Wells 5. W or The Memory Of Childhood by Georges Perec 6. Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau 7. Concrete Island by JG Ballard 8. The Book Of Revelation 9. The Island at Noon by Julio Cortázar 10. The Old Man and His Sons by Heðin Brú
15 June 2011 Katharine Quarmby's top 10 disability stories 1. Gullivers Travels, by Jonathan Swift (1726) 2. A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (1843) 3. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847) 4. Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851) 5. The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins (1869) 6. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883) 7. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1910) 8. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by DH Lawrence (1928) 9. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (1954) 10. Grace Williams Says It Loud by Emma Henderson (2010)
01 June 2011 Caradoc King's top 10 childhood memoirs 1. Little House on The Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1935) 2. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr (1971) 3. Haywire by Brooke Hayward (1977) 4. Boy by Roald Dahl (1984) 5. Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams (1992) 6. And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison (1993) 7. Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000) 8. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000) 9. Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater (2004) 10. This Is Not About Me by Janice Galloway (2008)
25 May 2011 Stephen Kelman's top 10 outsiders' stories 1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 2. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 3. The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger 4. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut 5. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole 6. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks 7. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga 8. Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones 9. Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane 10. Even The Dogs by Jon McGregor
18 May 2011 Reggie Nadelson's top 10 jazz books 1. Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje 2. Jazz by Toni Morrison 3. Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle 4. The Blue Moment by Richard Williams 5. Lush Life, a biography of Billy Strayhorn by David Hadju 6. Pops, A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout 7. Hear Me Talkin' To Ya, the Story of Jazz As Told By the Men Who Made It by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff 8. Jazz by Gary Giddins and Scott Deveaux 9. Whitney Balliett, Collected Works, A Journal of Jazz 1954-2001 10. Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson by Wil Haygood
11 May 2011 Sam Leith's top 10 alternative realities 1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 2. The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish 3. Coraline by Neil Gaiman 4. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman 5. Vurt by Jeff Noon 6. House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski 7. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson 8. The Coma by Alex Garland 9. "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury 10. Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and various artists
04 May 2011 David Lodge's top 10 HG Wells books 1. The Time Machine (1895) 2. The War of the Worlds (1898) 3. Kipps (1905) 4. Tono-Bungay (1909) 5. Ann Veronica (1909) 6. The History of Mr Polly (1910) 7. Mr Brittling Sees It Through (1916) 8. Russia in the Shadows (1920) 9. A Short History of the World (1922) 10. Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (1934)
21 April 2011 Robert Irwin's top 10 quest narratives 1. Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory 2. Quest for The Red Sulphur: The Life of Ibn 'Arabi by Claude Addas 3. The Way of a Pilgrim 4. A New Model of the Universe by PD Ouspensky 5. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 6. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh 7. The Way of the White Clouds: A Buddhist Pilgrim in Tibet by Lama Anagarika Govinda 8. The Thousand-Petalled Lotus: The Indian Journey of an English Buddhist by Sangharakshita 9. Pilgermann by Russell Hoban 10. The New Life by Orhan Pamuk
06 April 2011 Edward Docx's top 10 deranged characters 1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 2. Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth 3. L'Etranger by Albert Camus 4. Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol 5. Time's Arrow by Martin Amis 6. Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 7. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson 8. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov 9. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess 10. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
04 April 2011 Cat Clarke's top 10 books with teens behaving badly 1. Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers 2. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow 3. Accomplice by Eireann Corrigan 4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 5. Wasted by Nicola Morgan 6. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver 7. Ember Fury by Cathy Brett 8. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson 9. When I Was Joe by Keren David 10. The Disreputable History of Frankie Laudau-Banks by E Lockhart
30 March 2011 Eleanor Birne's top 10 books on motherhood Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-69) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1873-77) Anne of Green Gables by L Montgomery (1908) Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence (1913) To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927) Life After Birth by Kate Figes (1998) Hey Yeah Right Get a Life by Helen Simpson (2000) A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk (2001) Making Babies by Anne Enright (2004) Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey (2007)
23 March 2011 Michelle Harrison's 10 best bad fairies 1. Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee 2. The Merrybegot by Julie Hearn 3. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare 4. Poison by Chris Wooding 5. Cold Tom by Sally Prue 6. Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book by Terry Jones, illustrated by Brian Froud 7. The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh 8. Heretic by Sarah Singleton 9. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti 10. The Stolen Child by WB Yeats
16 March 2011 Peter Forbes's top 10 books on colour 1. The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary 2. Jazz by Henri Matisse 3. Adaptive Coloration in Animals by Hugh Cott 4. Ostensibly There is Colour by Democritus 5. Endless Forms: Charles Darwin and the Visual Arts by Diana Donald and Jane Munro (eds) 6. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 7. Vowels by Rimbaud 8. John Gage, Colour and Culture, Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 9. Messages from Psyche by Philip Howse 10. The Venetian Vespers by Anthony Hecht
09 March 2011 Justin Cartwright's top 10 state of the nation novels 1. Rabbit at Rest by John Updike 2. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie 3. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens 4. Disgrace by JM Coetzee 5. Middlemarch by George Eliot 6. American Pastoral by Philip Roth 7. Money by Martin Amis 8. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe 9. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen 10. Home by Marilynne Robinson
02 March 2011 David McKie's top 10 eccentrics in literature 1. Sairey Gamp, in Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens The White Knight in Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll Aunt Dot in The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay Kenneth Widmerpool in Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time sequence Pedro Camacho in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa William Beckford, in William Beckford by James Lees-Milne "Doctor" Joseph Healey in Passages in the Life of a Radical, by Samuel Bamford William John Cavendish Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, fifth Duke of Portland, in Amazing Grace: the Great Days of Dukes, by ES Turner Augusta, Lady Llanover, in a chapter by Prys Morgan in The Invention of Tradition edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, in As We Were, by EF Benson (and in Jowett, a Portrait, by GC Faber)
23 February 2011 Barry Miles's top 10 counterculture books 1. Days in the Life, Voices from the English Underground 1961-1971 by Jonathon Green 2. Give the Anarchist a Cigarette by Mick Farren 3. It Was Twenty Years Ago Today by Derek Taylor 4. England's Dreaming: The Sex Pistols and Punk Rock by Jon Savage 5. Groupie by Jenny Fabian and Johnny Byrne 6. Soho in the Fifties by Daniel Farson 7. Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus 8. Thanks for Coming! by Jim Haynes 9. Rockin' At the 2Is Coffee Bar by Andrew Ings 10. The Tightrope Walker by Hermine Demoriane
16 February 2011 Dan Vyleta's top 10 books in second languages 1. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad 2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 3. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler 4. Waiting by Ha Jin 5. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon 6. The Bridge of the Golden Horn by Emine Sevgi Özdamar (translated by Martin Chalmers) 7. Less Than One by Joseph Brodsky 8. True History by Lucian of Samosata 9. Molloy by Samuel Beckett 10. Peter Schlemihl's Wondrous Story by Adelbert von Chamisso
09 February 2011 John Stammers's top 10 love poems 1. To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell 2. The Love-Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot 3. Arracombe Wood by Charlotte Mew 4. A Subaltern's Love Song by John Betjeman 5. Whoso List to Hunt by Thomas Wyatt 6. The Flea by John Donne 7. Badly-Chosen Lover by Rosemary Tonks 8. Methought I Saw My Late Espousèd Saint by John Milton 9. A Private Bottling by Don Paterson 10. Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
02 February 2011 Paul Bailey's top 10 stories of old age 1. 'Old Love' by Isaac Bashevis Singer 2. Ending Up by Kingsley Amis 3. 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain' by Alice Munro 4. Memento Mori by Muriel Spark 5. Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann 6. As a Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo 7. The Old Boys by William Trevor 8. Confusion by Stefan Zweig 9. King Lear by William Shakespeare 10. The Book of Job
26 January 2011 EC Osondu's top 10 immigrants' tales 1. My Odyssey: An autobiography by Nnamdi Azikiwe 2. The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III 3. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri 4. The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon 5. Drown by Junot Díaz 5. On Black Sisters' Street by Chika Unigwe 6. Becoming Abigail by Chris Abani 7. A Squatter's Tale by Ike Oguine 8. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengetsu 9. Harare North by Brian Chikwava 10. Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany
19 January 2011 Jon McGregor's top 10 dead bodies in literature 1.As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 2. Being Dead by Jim Crace 3. So He Takes the Dog by Jonathan Buckley 4. How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman 5. Inferno: The Divine Comedy by Dante Aligheri 6. 'So Much Water So Close to Home' by Raymond Carver (collected in Short Cuts) 7. The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper 8. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 9. Nox by Anne Carson 10. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
12 January 2011 Edmund White's top 10 New York books 1 Kafka Was the Rage by Anatole Broyard 2. A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin 3. Old New York by Edith Wharton 4. Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran 5. The People With the Dogs by Christina Stead 6. Old Love by Isaac Bashevis Singer 7. Collected Stories by John Cheever 8. Money by Martin Amis 9. Bricks and Brownstone by Charles Lockwood 10. Here is New York by EB White
06 January 2011 Cornelius Medvei's top 10 talking animals in literature 1. Tobermory ('Tobermory' by Saki) 2. Eeyore (Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by AA Milne) 3. Behemoth (The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov) 4. Lucius (The Golden Ass by Apuleius) 5. Red Peter ('A Report for an Academy' by Franz Kafka) 6. Toad (The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame) 7. Bottom (A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare) 8. Hansaburo ('Horse Legs' by Ryunosuke Akutagawa) 9. archy ('archy & mehitabel' by Don Marquis) 10. Snowy (The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé)