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31 December 2014
Extreme adventures: the top 10 stories of real-life peril
1. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (Vintage, 2010; first published 1922)
2. Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth by James Tabor (Random House, 2003)
3. Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger (Penguin Classics, 2007; first published 1959)
4. Magnificent Failure: Free Fall from the Edge of Space by Craig Ryan (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003)
5. Neutral Buoyancy by Tim Ecott (Penguin, 2002)
6. Regions of the Heart by David Rose and Ed Douglas (2000)
7. The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall (Hodder & Stoughton, 2003)
8. The Wave: In Pursuit of the Oceans’ Greatest Furies by Susan Casey (Vintage, 2011)
9. Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (Vintage, 1997)
10. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield (Macmillan, 2013)
 
24 December 2014
The top 10 winters in literature
1 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, anonymous (late 14th century)
2 Lucy Gray in Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth (1800)
3 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843)
4 Poem 311: It sifts from Leaden Sieves by Emily Dickinson (written c.1862, published 1891)
5 The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922)
6 The Glamour of the Snow by Algernon Blackwood (1911)
7 The Dead by James Joyce (1914)
8 Last Christmas of the War by Primo Levi (1986)
9 Snow by Ted Hughes (written 1956, published 1995)
10 The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (1978)
 
17 December 2014
The top 10 novels about 9/11
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
The Zero by Jess Walter
Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Home Boy by HM Naqvi
The Submission by Amy Waldman
Oblivion by David Foster Wallace
The Effect of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits
A Better Angel by Chris Adrian
 
10 December 2014
The top 10 neo-Victorian novels
1 Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
2 Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
3 The Music of the Spheres by Elizabeth Redfern
4 The Dark Clue by James Wilson
5 The Observations by Jane Harris
6 Florence and Giles by John Harding
7 The Convictions of John Delahunt by Andrew Hughes
8 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
9 The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox
10 The Asylum by John Harwood
 
03 December 2014
Lynne Truss’s top 10 gothic novels
1. The Monk by Matthew Lewis
2. Great Stories of Mystery and Imagination, selected by Bryan Douglas
3. Three Gothic Novels edited by Peter Fairclough - Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, William Beckford’s Vathek, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
4. The Devil’s Elixirs by ETA Hoffman
5. The Vampyre: Lord Ruthven to Count Dracula, edited by Christopher Frayling
6. Tales of Terror and the Supernatural by Wilkie Collins
7. The Monkey’s Paw by WW Jacobs
8. The Best of Saki
9. Tales of Terror and Mystery by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
10. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by MR James
 
26 November 2014
The top 10 books of rural Wales
1. The Owl Service by Alan Garner
2. Martha, Jack and Shanco by Caryl Lewis (trans Gwen Davies)
3. Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare
4. Wild Abandon by Joe Dunthorne
5. On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
6. Collected Poems 1945-1990 by RS Thomas
7. Tree of Crows by Lewis Davies
8. Runt by Niall Griffiths
9. Rebecca’s Daughters by Dylan Thomas
10. One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard (trans Philip Mitchell)
 
19 November 2014
The top 10 words invented by writers
1. Banana Republic
2. Beatnik
3. Bedazzled
4. Catch-22
5. Cyberspace
6. Freelance
7. Hard-Boiled
8. Malapropism
9. Serendipity
10. Whodunit
 
12 November 2014
The top 10 books about reading
1. U and I by Nicholson Baker
2. To the River by Olivia Laing
3. Portrait of A Novel by Michael Gorra
4. The Possessed by Elif Batuman
5. How to Live by Sarah Bakewell
6. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
7. Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer
8. Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose
9. The Magician’s Book by Laura Miller
10. A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter by William Deresiewicz
 
05 November 2014
Top 10 books about the 1970s
1. What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr President? Jimmy Carter, America’s “Malaise”, and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country by Kevin Mattson (Bloomsbury, 2010)
2. What You Want Is in the Limo by Michael Walker (Spiegel & Grau, 2013)
3. Grovel! The Story and Legacy of the Summer of 1976 by David Tossell (Pitch Publishing, 2012)
4. The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China by James Palmer (Faber, 2012)
5. Nice to See It, to See It, Nice: The 1970s in Front of the Telly by Brian Viner (Pocket Books, 2010)
6. A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown by Julia Scheeres (Simon & Schuster, 2011)
7. 70s Style and Design by Dominic Lutyens and Kirsty Hislop (Thames and Hudson, 2009)
8. Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski (Harcourt, 1985)
9. The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1970s by Tom Tully and David Sque (Titan Books, 2009)
10. G.P.O. Versus G.P-O: A Chronicle of Mail Art on Trial by Genesis P-Orridge
 
29 October 2014
The top 10 vampire books
1. The Vampyre by John William Polidori (1819)
2. La Morte Amoreuse (The Dead Woman in Love) by Théophile Gautier (1836)
3. Varney, the Vampyre by James Malcolm Rymer (1845-47)
4. Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu (1872)
5. La Ville-Vampire (Vampire City) by Paul Féval (1875)
6. The Fate of Madame Cabanel by Eliza Lynn Linton (1880)
7. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
8. The Blood of the Vampire by Florence Marryat (1897)
9. The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein (2002)
10. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (2005)
 
22 October 2014
The top 10 civil war novels
The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis
A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The King’s General by Daphne Du Maurier
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
 
15 October 2014
The top 10 modernisers in literature
Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties by Rachel Cooke (2013)
Our Fathers by Andrew O’Hagan (1999)
Big Jim: The Life and Work of James Stirling by Mark Girouard (1998)
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (2009)
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A Caro (1974)
The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn (2010)
Ernö Goldfinger: The Life of an Architect by Nigel Warburton (2003)
High Rise by JG Ballard (1975)
Modern Architect: the Life and Times of Robert Matthew by Miles Glendinning (2008)
Late Call by Angus Wilson (1964)
 
08 October 2014
The top 10 fairytales
1. The Juniper Tree by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
2. The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen
3. The Golden Ass or the Transformation of Lucius by Apuleius
4. The Tiger’s Bride (from The Bloody Chamber) by Angela Carter
5. The Tale of Camar al-Zaman and Princess Badoura
6. Cinderella
7. Possession by AS Byatt
8. Dear As Salt by Italo Calvino
9. Mr Fox, from Joseph Jacobs’ English Folk Tales
10. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
 
01 October 2014
The top 10 rural Irish books
1. Amongst Women by John McGahern
2. The Contractors by John B Keane
3. The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
4. Blue Tango by Eoin McNamee
5. The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien
6. The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry
7. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
8. Cal by Bernard MacLaverty
9. To School Through the Fields by Alice Taylor
10. Beyond by Michael Foley
 
25 September 2014
The top 10 walks in books
1. A Letter to Henrietta Lund from Søren Kierkegaard
2. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. The Shoe Breaker by Daniel Boulanger
5. On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
6. Of Walking in Ice by Werner Herzog
7. Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer
8. The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane
9. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
10. Modern Utopia by HG Wells
 
17 September 2014
The top 10 stories of mothers and daughters
1. The Great Mother by Erich Neumann (translated from the German by Ralph Manheim)
2. The Book of Ruth (Authorised King James Version)
3. The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik (translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin)
4. A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir (translated from the French by Patrick O’Brian)
5. Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton by Linda Gray Sexton
6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
7. A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe
8. The Devil Kissed Her: The Story of Mary Lamb by Kathy Watson
9. The Glass Essay by Anne Carson
10. On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis and the Law of the Mother by Amber Jacobs
 
10 September 2014
The top 10 books about Nigeria
1. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
2. The Trouble With Nigeria by Chinua Achebe
3. The Nigerian Civil War by John de St Jorre
4. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5. Sozaboy by Ken Saro-Wiwa
6. Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa
7. My Nigeria by Peter Cunliffe-Jones
8. Ake by Wole Soyinka
9. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin
10. Open City by Teju Cole
 
03 September 2014
The top 10 books about trains
1. Mugby Junction by Charles Dickens (1866)
2. La Bête Humaine by Émile Zola (1890)
3. The Railway Children by E Nesbit (1906)
4. Stories of the Railway by VL Whitechurch (1912)
5. Bradshaw's April 1910 Railway Guide (1968)
6. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux (1975)
7. The Railway Station: A Social History by Jeffrey Richards and John M Mackenzie (1986)
8. Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain by Christian Wolmar (2007)
9. Parallel Lines by Ian Marchant (2003)
10. Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain, by Matthew Engel (2009)
 
27 August 2014
The top 10 fictitious biographies
1. Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann
2. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
3. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
4. Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle
5. Nat Tate by William Boyd
6. Kiss and Tell by Alain de Botton
7. An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay
8. The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn
9. DooDaaa: The Balletic Art of Gavin Twinge by Ralph Steadman
10. Summertime by JM Coetzee
 
20 August 2014
The top 10 restaurants and bars in modern literature
1. Hotel X in Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
2. The Dingo in A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
3. Milliways in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
4. The Farolito in Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
5. The cabman's shelter under Loop Line bridge in Ulysses by James Joyce
6. Lantenengo Country Club smoking room in Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
7. O'Connell's in White Teeth by Zadie Smith
8. Charlie Bathcellar's Poolroom in Studs Lonigan by James T Farrell
9. Korova Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
10. Dorsia in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
 
13 August 2014
The top 10 hotel novels
1. The Shining by Stephen King
2. Evil Under the Sun (and others) by Agatha Christie
3. Hotel by Arthur Hailey
4. These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach
5. The Lady With the Dog by Anton Chekhov
6. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
7. The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
8. Psycho by Robert Bloch
9. The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem
10. Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
 
06 August 2014
The top 10 novels about childbirth
1. Night Waking by Sarah Moss
2. The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
3. Common Ground by Andrew Cowan
4. The Millstone by Margaret Drabble
5. The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
6. Me and the Fat Man by Julie Myerson
7. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
8. Beloved by Toni Morrison
9. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
10. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
 
30 July 2014
Top 10 war poems
1. The Battle of Maldon (Anonymous)
2. The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson
3. Drummer Hodge by Thomas Hardy
4. Christ and the Soldier by Siegfried Sassoon
5. Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen
6. Aristocrats by Keith Douglas
7. MCMXIV by Philip Larkin
8. Requiem for the Croppies by Seamus Heaney
9. Platform One by Ted Hughes
10. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell
 
23 July 2014
Top 10 holidays in fiction
1. The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
2. Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
3. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
4. Paper Losses, from Bark by Lorrie Moore
5. Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
6. Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead
7. Maine by Courtney Sullivan
8. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
9. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
10. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
 
16 July 2014
The top 10 books about Chicago
1. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
2. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
3. Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Addams
4. Native Son by Richard Wright
5. Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren
6. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow\
7. Letting Go by Philip Roth
8. Endless Love by Scott Spencer
9. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
10. The Death of the Detective by Mark Smith
 
09 July 2014
Top 10 books of the Midlands
1. The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe
2. Toast by Nigel Slater
3. The News Where You Are by Catherine O' Flynn
4. The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
5. Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend
6. Anita and Me by Meera Syal
7. Moranthology by Caitlin Moran
8. Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell by Simon Heffer
9. Nice Work by David Lodge
10. Collected Poems by WH Auden
 
02 July 2014
Philip Hensher's top 10 parallel narratives
1. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
2. Three Marriages by EM Delafield
3. Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
4. The Turning by Tim Winton
5. In A Free State by VS Naipaul
6. Darkness Visible by William Golding
7. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
8. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
9. The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert
10. The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk
 
25 June 2014
Top 10 books about Indian families
1. Rich Like Us by Nayantara Sahgal
2. The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh
3. The In Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji
4. Mrs Sen's by Jhumpa Lahiri (from The Interpreter of Maladies)
5. Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee by Meera Syal
6. The Journey by Indira Ganesan
7. Family Life by Akhil Sharma
8. Haunting Bombay by Shilpa Agarwal
9. Gayatri From English Lessons by Shauna Singh Baldwin
10. The Insult from English Lessons by Shauna Singh Baldwin
 
18 June 2014
The top 10 hospital stories
1. Regeneration by Pat Barker
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
3. Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
4. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
5. The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
6. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
7. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
8. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
9. Middlemarch by George Eliot
10. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
 
11 June 2014
The top 10 feminist books
1. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (2012)
2. Fat Is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach (1978)
3. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
4. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
5. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison (1992)
6. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)
7. The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues by Angela Davis (2012)
8. The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology edited by Nathalie Handal (2001)
9. The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism by George Bernard Shaw (1928)
10. Saint Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville-West (1936)
 
04 June 2014
William Atkins's top 10 books of the moor
1. The Heart of the Moor by Beatrice Chase
2. Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson
3. Remains of Elmet by Ted Hughes
4. Millstone Grit by Glyn Hughes
5. Brontë Moors and Villages by Elizabeth Southwart
6. Forty Years in a Moorland Parish by Canon John Christopher Atkinson
7. The Moorlands of North-Eastern Yorkshire by Frank Elgee
8. The Middle Marches by GM Trevelyan
9. The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott
10. The Desert World by Arthur Mangin
 
28 May 2014
The top 10 bookworms' tales
1. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
2. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
3. The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
4. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
5. Possession by AS Byatt
6. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
7. Matilda by Roald Dahl
8. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
9. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
10. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
 
27 May 2014
William Sutcliffe's top 10 books to read aloud to children
1 Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
2 Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet Ahlberg and Allan Ahlberg
3 The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway
4 The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
5 I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
6 The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dalgliesh
7 You're a Bad Man, Mr Gum! by Andy Stanton
8 A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
9 How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
10 Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell
 
21 May 2014
Dea Brøvig's top 10 Norwegian novels
1. Hunger by Knut Hamsun (translated by Sverre Lyngstad)
2. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (translated by Anne Born)
3. Dina's Book by Herbjørg Wassmo (translated by Nadia Christensen)
4. The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas (translated by Elizabeth Rokkan)
5. The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen (translated by Kenneth Steven)
6. Child Wonder by Roy Jacobsen (translated by Don Bartlett)
7. My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgård (translated by Don Bartlett)
8. The Seducer by Jan Kjærstad (translated by Barbara Haveland)
9. The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad (translated by Ingrid Christophersen)
10. Naive. Super by Erlend Loe (translated by Tor Ketil Solberg)
 
14 May 2014
The top 10 loners in fiction
1. Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan
2. Miss Havisham in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
3. Tom Oakley in Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
4. Stevens in The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
5. Frederick Clegg in The Collector by John Fowles
6. Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
7. The Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr Seuss
8. Meursault in The Outsider by Albert Camus
9. Barbara in Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller
10. The McPheron brothers in Plainsong by Kent Haruf
 
07 May 2014
Top 10 John Updike short stories
1. The Happiest I've Been (1958)
2. Separating (1974)
3. A&P (1960)
4. A Sandstone Farmhouse (1990)
5. The Blessed Man of Boston, My Grandmother's Thimble, and Fanning Island (1960)
6. The Bulgarian Poetess (1964)
7. Bech in Czech (1986)
8. Problems (1975)
9. Here Come the Maples (1976)
10. My Father's Tears (2005)
 
30 April 2014
Top 10 novels inspired by Shakespeare
1. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (Macbeth/King Lear)
2. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (Richard III)
3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (The Tempest)
4. Cakes and Ale by W Somerset Maugham (Twelfth Night)
5. The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Macbeth)
6. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch (Hamlet)
7. The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth (Julius Caesar)
8. Wise Children by Angela Carter (The Taming of the Shrew et al)
9. Love in Idleness by Amanda Craig (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
10. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (King Lear)
 
23 April 2014
The top 10 writers to see live
1. Sebastian Barry
2. Neil Gaiman
3. Caitlin Moran
4. Chuck Palahniuk
5. Ruth Ozeki
6. David Levithan
7. Jeanette Winterson
8. AL Kennedy
9. Laura Dockrill
10. Jon McGregor
 
16 April 2014
The top 10 novels of desert war
1. Ice Cold in Alex by Christopher Landon
2. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
3. A Good Clean Fight by Derek Robinson
4. Dune by Frank Herbert
5. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
6. The Sands of Valour by Geoffrey Wagner
7. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
8. Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence
9. Take These Men by Cyril Joly
10. The Four Feathers by AEW Mason
 
09 April 2014
Top 10 books about missing persons
1. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
2. The Song is You, by Megan Abbott
3. And She Was, by Alison Gaylin
4. If You Were Here, by Alafair Burke
5. Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O'Nan
6. The Leftovers, by Tom Perrotta
7. Half Magic, by Edward Eager
8. The Company You Keep, by Neil Gordon
9. Marjorie Morningstar, by Herman Wouk
10. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
 
02 April 2014
Top 10 books on memory
1. Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older by Douwe Draaisma
2. Searching for Memory by Daniel L Schacter
3. The Craft of Thought by Mary Carruthers
4. In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
5. Memory by Alan Baddeley, Michael W Eysenck and Michael C Anderson
6. The Mind of a Mnemonist by AR Luria
7. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
8. Memory: An Anthology edited by Harriet Harvey Wood and AS Byatt
9. Austerlitz by WG Sebald
10. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
 
26 March 2014
Top 10 books about intelligent animals
1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
2. The Once and Future King by TH White
3. Watership Down by Richard Adams
4. Animal Farm by George Orwell
5. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
6. Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
7. Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
8. Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley
9. Fudoki by Kij Johnson
10. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
 
19 March 2014
Top 10 books about Cambodia
1. A Cambodian Prison Portrait by Vann Nath
2. The Sea Wall by Marguerite Duras
3. The Lost Executioner by Nic Dunlop
4. Building Cambodia by Helen Grant Ross and Darryl Leon Collings
5. Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Philip Short
6. A Dragon Apparent by Norman Lewis
7. Phnom Penh by Milton Osborne
8. Cambodian Folk Stories from the Gatiloke by Kong Chhean
9. Pol Pot's Little Red Book by Henri Locard
10. Four Faces by Han Suyin
 
12 March 2014
The top 10 impostors in fiction
1. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
2. Two Much by Donald E Westlake
3. Matchstick Men by Eric Garcia
4. Madame Doubtfire by Anne Fine
5. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon
6. The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
7. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
8. The Pardoner's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer
9. The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
10. Flashman by George Macdonald Fraser
 
05 March 2014
Top 10 books about Alaska
1. Coming Into the Country by John McPhee
2. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
3. Where the Sea Breaks its Back by Corey Ford
4. Travels in Alaska by John Muir
5. Songs of a Sourdough by Robert Service
6. White Fang by Jack London
7. The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians by Brian Garfield
8. Moments Rightly Placed: An Aleutian Memoir by Ray Hudson
9. Call of the Wild by Jack London
10. Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban
 
26 February 2014
Rory MacLean's top 10 Berliners in literature
1. Sally Bowles in Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
2. Franz Biberkopf in Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
3. Wilhelm von Humboldt in Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
4. Hendrik Höfgen in Mephisto – Novel of a Career by Klaus Mann
5. Otto and Elise Hampel in Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
6. Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
7. Frank Lehmann in Berlin Blues by Sven Regener
8. Klaus Uhltzscht in Heroes Like Us by Thomas Brussig
9. Timothy Garton Ash in The File by Timothy Garton Ash
10. Mike Klingberg in Why We Took the Car by Wolfgang Herrndorf
 
19 February 2014
Vikram Chandra's top 10 computer books
1. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
2. The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
3. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy
4. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg
5. The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise by Nathan Ensmenger
6. Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Fred Vogelstein
7. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
8. Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
9. The Culture novels by Iain M Banks
10. The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine by Charles Petzold
 
12 February 2014
The top 10 difficult love stories
1. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
2. Daniel Martin by John Fowles
3. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
4. Addition by Toni Jordan
5. The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick
6. The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
7. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
8. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
9. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
10. Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel
 
05 February 2014
The best fiction featuring real writers
1. Siegfried Sassoon in Regeneration by Pat Barker
2. John Clare in The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
3. Novalis in The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
4. Heinrich von Kleist in No Place on Earth by Christa Wolf
5. Walt Whitman in Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian
6. Gertrude Stein in The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
7. Henry James in The Master by Colm Tóibín
8. Franz Kafka in Kafka's Leopards by Moacyr Scliar
9. Franz Kafka in A Friend of Kafka by IB Singer
10. Marco Polo in Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
 
29 January 2014
The top 10 locked-room mysteries
10. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)
9. The Case of the Constant Suicides John Dickson Carr (1941)
8. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)
7. Suddenly At His Residence by Christianna Brand (1946)
6. The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (1892)
5. The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux (1908)
4. The King Is Dead by Ellery Queen (1951)
3. La Septième hypothèse by Paul Halter (1991)
2. The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada (1981)
1. The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr (1935)
 
22 January 2014
The top 10 crime novels in translation
1. The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien Georges Simenon (translated by Linda Coverdales)
2. Have Mercy on Us All Fred Vargas (translated by Siân Reynolds)
3. Alex by Pierre Lemaitre (translated by Frank Wynne)
4. Thirteen Hours by Deon Mayer (translated by KL Seegers)
5. The Depths of the Forest by Eugenio Fuentes (translated by Paul Antil)
6. The Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri (translated by Stephen Sartarelli)
7. River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi (translated by Josephh Farrell)
8. Voices by Arnaldur Indridason (translated by Bernard Scudder)
9. Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar (translated by Domingo Villar)
10. Badfellas by Tonino Benacqista (translated by Emily Read)
 
15 January 2014
The top 10 books about houses
1. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
2. Exmoor Village by WJ Turner
3. The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine
4. Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life by Judy Attfield
5. In the Dark Room by Brian Dillon
6. From Mangle to Microwave: The Mechanization of Household Work by Christina Hardyment
7. The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home by Michael McMillan
8. Life at the Top by John Braine
9. The Ideal Home through the Twentieth Century by Deborah Sugg Ryan
10. As Long as it's Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste by Penny Sparke
 
08 January 2014
Rosa Rankin-Gee's top 10 novellas about love
1. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
2. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
3. Swann in Love by Marcel Proust
4. The Enchanter by Vladimir Nabokov
5. Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
6. First Love by Ivan Turgenev
7. The Immoralist by André Gide
8. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
9. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
10. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
 
01 January 2014
Travis Elborough's top 10 literary diarists
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
WNP Barbellion (1889-1919)
Fred Bason (1908-73)
Joan Wyndham (1921–2007)
Alan Bennett (born 1934)
Dickon Edwards (born 1971)
James Boswell (1740-95)
Hallie Eustace Miles (c1870–c1940)
Elizabeth Smart (1913-86)
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
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