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2016

30 December 2015
Top 10 modern medieval tales
1. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (first performed 1600)
2. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (1820)
3. A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (1889)
4. Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset (1920-22)
5. The Happy Warriors by Halldór Laxness (1952)
6. Grendel by John Gardner (1971)
7. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (1980)
8. A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin (1991-)
9. The Leper’s Companions by Julia Blackburn (2000)
10. The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth (2014)
 
23 December 2015
Top 10 kitchens in literature
1. Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer (1958)
2. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
3. At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor (1945)
4. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (1865)
5. The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester (1996)
6. The kitchen at Charleston
7. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis (1991)
8. The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (1948)
9. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (1996)
10. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (1937)
 
16 December 2015
Top 10 books about justice and redemption
1. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
2. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
3. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
5. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
6. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
7. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
8. Harvest by Jim Crace
9. Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney
10. H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
 
09 December 2015
Top 10 uncanny graphic novels
1. Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet (2014)
2. Prosopopus by Nicolas De Crecy (2009)
3. Naming Monsters by Hannah Eaton (2013)
4. Adamtine by Hannah Berry (2012)
5. The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (2006)
6. Fran by Jim Woodring (2013)
7. The Black Project by Gareth Brookes (2013)
8. Black Hole by Charles Burns (2005)
9. The Ticking by Renée French (2006)
10. Here by Richard McGuire (2014)
 
02 December 2015
Top 10 novels about unfaithful wives
The Red and the Black (1830) by Stendhal
Emma Bovary (1856) by Gustave Flaubert
Anna Karenina (1878) by Leo Tolstoy
Effi Briest (1894) by Theodor Fontane
Dom Casmurro (1899) by Machado de Assis
The Wicker Work Woman (1910) by Anatole France
The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by DH Lawrence
HM Pulham Esquire (1942) by JP Marquand
Lancelot (1977) by Walker Percy
 
25 November 2015
Top 10: the best dialogue in crime fiction
1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
2. Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
3. Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
4. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
5. Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
6. Billion Dollar Brain by Len Deighton
7. Night Train by Martin Amis
8. Be Cool by Elmore Leonard
9. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
10. Snowdrops by AD Miller
 
18 November 2015
John O’Farrell’s top 10 celebrity appearances in fiction
1. Prince Charles in Patriot Games by Tom Clancy (1987)
2. Colin Firth in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding (1999)
3. Richard Burton in Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (2012)
4. Tony Blair in Saturday by Ian McEwan (2005)
5. James Joyce in Any Human Heart by William Boyd (2002)
6. Jimmy Carter in The Dead Zone by Stephen King (1979)
7. Marilyn Monroe in Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (2000)
8. Frank Sinatra in Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
9. Elizabeth Taylor in Crash by JG Ballard (1973)
10. Scarlett Johansson in The First Thing You See by Grégoire Delacourt (2015)
 
11 November 2015
Top 10 books about bankers
1. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
2. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
3. The Power of Yes by David Hare
4. Fool’s Gold by Gillian Tett
5. The Big Short by Michael Lewis
6. In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman
7. Capital and Whoops! by John Lanchester
8. Shredded: Inside RBS, the Bank that Broke Britain by Ian Fraser
9. Merchants of Greed by Philip Augar
10. After the Great Complacence by Ewald Engelen et al
 
04 November 2015
Top 10 assassination plots in fiction
1. A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James
2. Libra by Don DeLillo
3. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
4. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
5. HHhH by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor
6. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
7. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
8. Cal by Bernard MacLaverty
9. The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Edith Grossman
10. The Man With the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming
 
28 October 2015
Top 10 memorable meals in literature
1. On the Pleasures of the Table by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
2. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
3. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
4. The manager of The Kremlin by Evelyn Waugh
5. Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen
6. A Kitchen Allegory by MFK Fisher
7. The Flounder by Günter Grass
8. Heartburn by Nora Ephron
9. Best Quality by Amy Tan
10. Sorry Fugu by TC Boyle
 
21 October 2015
Top 10 transgender books
1. Cobra by Severo Sarduy (1972)
2. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993)
3. Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein (1994)
4. Man Enough to be a Woman by Jayne County (1995)
5. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism by Patrick Califia (1997)
6. Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People by Viviane K Namaste (2000)
7. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano (2007)
8. Transgender History by Susan Stryker (2008)
9. Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era by Beatriz/Paul Preciado (2008)
10. Redefining Realness by Janet Mock (2014)
 
14 October 2015
Petina Gappah's top 10 books about Zimbabwe
1. Zambesia, England’s El Dorado in Africa by Edward Peter Mathers (1895)
2. The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (1950)
3. Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera (1998)
4. Pafunge (Think of It) by TK Tsodzo (1972)
5. Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (1988)
6. The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera (1978)
7. Harvest of Thorns by Shimmer Chinodya (1989)
8. Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? (Is Silence Not Also Speech?) by Charles Mungoshi (1983)
9. Becoming Zimbabwe edited by Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo (2009)
10. The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers (2010)
 
07 October 2015
The best LGBT sex in literature
1. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
2. Days of Grace by Catherine Hall
3. Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue
4. Blackberries by Katherine McMahon (in Treasure in the History of Things)
5. A New York Story by DL King (in Best Lesbian Erotica 2008)
6. Dressing for Shift, circa 1981 by Laurie Lynn Drummond
7. One Cigarette by Edwin Morgan
8. Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
9. Valencia by Michelle Tea
10. If I Were a Dance by Diriye Osman (in Fairytales for Lost Children)
 
30 September 2015
Top 10 books about forgetting
1. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
2. The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia by Orlando Figes
3. Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson
4. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
5. The Childhood of Jesus by JM Coetzee
6. The Sea by John Banville
7. The Waste Land by TS Eliot
8. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
9. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
10. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
 
23 September 2015
Top 10 books about Thatcherism
1. Not for Turning, and Everything She Wants by Charles Moore (2013, November 2015)
2. The Grocer’s Daughter and The Iron Lady by John Campbell (2000, 2003)
3. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
4. Thatcher and Sons, by Simon Jenkins (2006)
5. Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality by Jonathan Aitken (2013)
6. Billy Elliot by Melvin Burgess (2001)
7. The Downing Street Years by Margaret Thatcher (1993)
8. Diaries by Alan Clark (1993, 2000, 2002)
9. Not for Turning by Robin Harris (2013)
10. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel (2014)
 
16 September 2015
Top 10 literary biographies
1. Henry James by Leon Edel (Five volumes: 1953 to 1972)
2. James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (1959)
3. Edith Wharton: A Biography by RWB Lewis (1975)
4. The Life of Langston Hughes by Arnold Rampersad (two volumes: 1986, 1988)
5. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes (1974)
6. Dickens by Peter Ackroyd (1990)
7. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt (2004).
8. Tolstoy by A N Wilson (1989)
9. The Imperfect Life of T S Eliot by Lyndall Gordon (1998)
10. The World Is What It Is by Patrick French (2009)
 
09 September 2015
Top 10 schoolchildren in fiction
1. James Steerforth in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
2. Nanda Grey in Frost in May by Antonia White
3. Kenneth Widmerpool in A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell
4. Sandy Stranger in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
5. Charles Fox in The Young Desire It by Kenneth Mackenzie
6. Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
7. Törless in The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil
8. Claudine in Claudine at School by Colette
9. Piggy in Lord of the Flies by William Golding
10. An anonymous student in Shyness and Dignity by Dag Solstad
 
02 September 2015
Top 10 cricket scenes in fiction
1. The Go-Between by LP Hartley (1953)
2. Netherland by Joseph O’Neill (2008)
3. Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon (1928)
4. Playing the Game by Ian Buruma (1991)
5. Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams (1982)
6. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (1836-37)
7. Half of the Human Race by Anthony Quinn (2011)
8. Psmith in the City by PG Wodehouse (1910)
9. Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers (1933)
10. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)
 
26 August 2015
Top 10 dogs' stories
1. The Odyssey by Homer
2. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
3. The Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol
4. Kashtanka by Anton Chekhov
5. Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
6. Investigations of a Dog by Franz Kafka
7. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
8. Her Dog by Tobias Wolff
9. King by John Berger
10. Unleashed: Poems by Writers’ Dogs. Edited by Amy Hempel and Jim Shepard
 
19 August 2015
Top 10 conservative novels
1. The Good Comrade (1907) by Una L Silberrad
2. Castle Gay (1930) by John Buchan
3. Adèle and Co (1931) by Dornford Yates
4. Gaudy Night (1935) by Dorothy L Sayers
5. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales (written up to 1937: this collection published 2011) by HP Lovecraft
6. Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940) by Angela Thirkell
7. Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh
8. Tory Heaven (1948) by Marghanita Laski
9. The Blessing (1951) by Nancy Mitford
10. Dr No (1958) by Ian Fleming
 
12 August 2015
Top 10 books about food
1. The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher
2. Pow! by Mo Yan
3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
4. Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
5. Cheap Novelties by Ben Katchor
6. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
7. Beard on Bread by James Beard
8. Good and Cheap by Leanne Brown
9. Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles by Jonathan Gold
10. Honorable Mention: The Sun and Moon Guide to Eating Through Literature and Art
 
05 August 2015
Top 10 literary hoaxes
1. Jonathan Swift – Predictions for the Year 1708 (1708)
2. James MacPherson – The Works of Ossian (1765)
3. Edgar Allan Poe – The Balloon-Hoax (1844)
4. Witter Bynner and Arthur Davidson Ficke – Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments (1916)
5. Theodore Sturgeon – I, Libertine (1956)
6. JG Ballard – Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan (1969)
7. Clifford Irving – Autobiography of Howard Hughes (1971)
8. Binjamin Wilkomirski – Fragments: Memories of a Childhood, 1939-1948 (1996)
9. Stewart Home – Confusion Incorporated (1999)
10. Laura Albert – Sarah (1999)
 
29 July 2015
Top 10 wartime love stories
1. The Odyssey by Homer
2. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
3. Beloved by Toni Morrison
4. To the End of the Land by David Grossman
5. Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
6. The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
7 . Neuland by Eshkol Nevo
8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
9 . Les Cerfs-volants by Romain Gary
10. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
 
22 July 2015
Top 10 books about migrants
1. The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol
2. My Ántonia by Willa Cather
3. A Question of Power by Bessie Head
4. The Great Partition by Yasmin Khan
5. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
6. Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish
7. Pinjar by Amrita Pritam
8. Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rølvaag
9. Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
10. Zebra Crossing by Meg Vandermerwe
 
15 July 2015
Top 10 books about spies
1. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1900)
2. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers (1903)
3. Inside the Company: CIA Diary by Philip Agee (1975)
4. My Five Cambridge Friends by Yuri Modin (1994)
5. The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden and James Risen (2003)
6. A Spy for All Seasons by Duane R Clarridge (1997)
7. The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré (1997)
8. Fallout: The True Story of the CIA’s Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking by Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz (2011)
9. Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda and the CIA by Morten Storm (2014)
10. Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius (1987)
 
10 July 2015
The 10 best books about cycling
1. Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman (1968)
2. Samuel Beckett, Molloy (1951)
3. Alfred Jarry, The Supermale (1902)
4. HG Wells, The Wheels of Chance (1896)
5. Luigi Bartolini, Bicycle Thieves (1946)
6. Tim Krabbé, The Rider (1978, trans 2002)
7. Paul Fournel, Need for the Bike (2001)
8. James Waddington, Bad to the Bone (1998)
9. Matt Seaton, The Escape Artist (2002)
10. David Rose, Vault (2011)
 
08 July 2015
Top 10 gleeful adulterers in literature
1. Abraham in The Bible
2. Zeus in pretty much every Greek myth
3. Francesca and Paolo in Dante’s Inferno
4. Nicholas and Alison in The Miller’s Tale by Chaucer
5. Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
6. Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
7. Edna Pontellier in The Awakening by Kate Chopin
8. Molly Bloom in Ulysses by James Joyce
9. Rabbit Angstrom in Rabbit, Run by John Updike
10. Ada Vinelander in Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
 
01 July 2015
The top 10 books about the mafia
1. Primitive Rebels by Eric Hobsbawm (1959)
2. The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia (1961)
3. The Godfather by Mario Puzo (1969)
4. Mafia and Mafiosi by Henner Hess (1973)
5. Global Mafia by Antonio Nicaso and Lee Lamothe (1995)
6. Excellent Cadavers by Alexander Stille (1996)
7. Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano (2006)
8. Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb (2007)
9. Mafia Brotherhoods by John Dickie (2014)
10. Mafia and Antimafia by Umberto Santino (2015)
 
24 June 2015
The top 10 summers in fiction
1. The Magus by John Fowles
2. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
3. The Last Weekend by Blake Morrison
4. The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell
5. Atonement by Ian McEwan
6. Skios by Michael Frayn
7. Nemesis by Philip Roth
8. Becoming Strangers by Louise Dean
9. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
10. The Go-Between by LP Hartley
 
18 June 2015
Top 10 life lessons from books of the past
1. How to Tell if Someone Is Or Is Not Dead, c. 1380
A good starting point for most interactions:
“Moreover, if there is any doubt as to whether a person is or is not dead, apply lightly roasted onion to his nostrils, and if he be alive, he will immediately scratch his nose.”
• Johannes de Mirfield, Breviarium Bartholomei
2. How to Recover from a Dance Mishap, 1538
Inspirational advice from the Past: it’s not whether you fall on your face, but how you finish the dance that matters.
“When you fall, pick yourself up quickly, and go back to finishing the dance energetically without complaining at all: pa-trim pa-tro-lo! And if you don’t get up, you will not be able to fall any further: there is nowhere to fall for one who is lying on the floor.”
• Antonius Arena, Leges dansandi
3. How to Kill Bedbugs, 1777
Bedbugs are back from the Past, and the Past knows how to get rid of them. And your house while you’re at it:
“Spread Gun-powder, beaten small, about the crevices of your bedstead; fire it with a match, and keep the smoak in; do this for an hour or more; and keep the room close several hours.”
• The Complete Vermin-Killer
4. How to Avoid the Plague, 1579
Plague remedies always seem a little suspect. Luckily, this one actually instructs you to take it with a grain of salt:
“Whosoever eateth two Walnuts, two Figs, twenty leaves of Rew, and one graine of Salt, all stampt and mixte together, fasting: shall bee safe from poyson and Plague that day.”
• Thomas Lupton, A Thousand Notable Things
5. How to Pack for a Journey, 1480
This is perhaps the best travel advice I’ve ever heard. Just make sure your suitcase of patience is hand luggage, because otherwise it will probably get sent to Pittsburgh by accident.
“[A traveller] should carry with him two bags: one very full of patience, the other containing two hundred Venetian ducats, or at least one hundred and fifty … Above all he should take plenty of fruit syrup, because that is what keeps a man alive in extreme heat; and also ginger syrup to settle his stomach if it is upset by too much vomiting.”
• Santo Brasca, Viaggio in Terrasanta
6. How to Leave a Party, c1200
If the host tells you to get on your horse, it’s time to leave:
“When you are about to leave, let your horse be at the door; don’t climb on him in the hall, unless the host tells you to.”
• Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus magnus
7. How to Converse, 1646
It’s all in the eye-browes:
“Neither shake thy head, feet, or legges; Rowle not thine eyes. Lift not one of thine eye-browes higher than thine other. Wry not thy mouth. Take heed that with thy spettle thou bedew not his face with whom thou speakest, and to that end approach not too nigh him.”
• Francis Hawkins, Youths Behaviour
8. How to Sober Up, 1612
It’s worth noting that the Past did not have to deal with its friends taking pictures of its awkward attempts to sober up and putting them on Facebook:
“That one shall not be drunke. Drink the iuyce of Yerrow fasting, and ye shall not be drunke, for no drinke; and if you were drunke it will make you sober: or else take the marrow of porke fasting, and ye shall not be drunke; and if you be drunke annoint your privie members in vineger, and ye shall waxe sober.”
• The Booke of Pretty Conceits
9. How to Sweet Talk Your Lady, 1656
Need to impress that super-excellent lady? Careful with the 17-century spelling: it’s her waist you want to praise.
“Instructions for Lovers: teaching them, how to demean themselves towards their Sweet-hearts. You must not accost them with a shrug, as if you were lowsie: With, ‘your Ladie’, ‘best Ladie’, or ‘most super-excellent Ladie’: neither must you let your words come rumbling forth, ushered in with a good full mouth’d, Oath, as ‘I love you’… But you must in fine gentle words, deliver your true affection: Praise your Mistress Eies, her Lip, her Chin, her Nose, her Neck, her Face, her Hand, her Feet, her Leg, her Waste, her every thing.”
• Cupids Master-piece, or, The Free-school of Witty and Delightful Compliments
10. How to Dress for Bathing, 1881
How’s that beach body coming along? Who cares? It’s time to bring back the full-body beach swaddle:
“Flannel is the best material for a bathing costume, and gray is regarded as the most suitable color. It may be trimmed with bright worsted braid. The best form is the loose sacque, or the yoke waist, both of them to be belted in, and falling about midway between the knee and the ankle; an oilskin cap to protect the hair from the water, and merino socks to match the dress, complete the costume.”
• John H Young, Our Deportment
 
10 June 2015
Top 10 books about being alone
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
2. Pan by Knut Hamsun (1894)
3. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
4. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
5. Seymour, an Introduction by JD Salinger (1963)
6. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (1964)
7. Changing by Liv Ullmann (1977)
8. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon (1988)
9. An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel (1995)
10. Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner (2011)
 
03 June 2015
Jesse Armstrong’s top 10 comic war novels
1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
2. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
3. The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hašek
4. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
5. Red Alert by Peter George
6. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
7. Nineteen-Eighty Four by George Orwell
8. Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
9. Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall by Spike Milligan
10. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
 
27 May 2015
Top 10 unlikely friendships in fiction
1. H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
2. The Turning by Tim Winton
3. Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey
4. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
5. Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
6. The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
7. The First Bad Man by Miranda July
8. Harry Potter by JK Rowling
9. The Accidental by Ali Smith
10. Gorilla by Anthony Browne
 
20 May 2015
Top 10 rural noir novels
1. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by James M Cain
2. The Complete Stories (1946-1952) of Flannery O’Connor
3. Pop 1280 (1964) by Jim Thompson
4. The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
5. The Dave Robicheaux Series (1987-2013) by James Lee Burke
6. Joe (1991) by Larry Brown
7. Winter’s Bone (2006) by Daniel Woodrell
8. The World Made Straight (2006) by Ron Rash
9. American Salvage (2009) by Bonnie Jo Campbell
10. A Land More Kind Than Home (2012) by Wiley Cash
 
13 May 2015
Peter James's top 10 books about Brighton
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. The Clayhanger family novels by Arnold Bennett
3. The West Pier by Patrick Hamilton
4. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
5. Murder on the Brighton Express by Edward Marston
6. The Brighton Trilogy by Peter Guttridge
7. The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
8. Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi
9. Sugar Rush by Julie Burchill
10. Brighton Rock Picture Book: The making of the Boulting Brothers film 1946-8 by Maire McQueeney
 
06 May 2015
Lindsey Davis's top 10 books about ancient Rome
1. Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jérôme Carcopino
2. A Topographical Dictionary of Rome by Samuel Ball Platner and Thomas Ashby
3. Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum by Paul Roberts
4. Shopping in Ancient Rome by Claire Holleran
5. Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe
6. Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire by Ralph Jackson
7. Ancient Inventions by Peter James and Nick Thorpe
8. The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Ancient Egypt by Euphrosyne Doxiades
9. Orgy-Planner Wanted: Odd Jobs and Curious Careers in the Ancient World by Vicki Leon
10. How to Win an Election by Quintus Tullius Cicero (translated by Philip Freeman)
 
29 April 2015
Top 10 books about working life
1. Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel
2. All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work by Barbara Garson
3. Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval
4. Life As We Have Known It edited by Margaret Llewelyn Davies
5. Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
6. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
7. A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
8. The Crofter and the Laird: Life on a Hebridean Island by John McPhee
9. At the Works by Florence Bell
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
 
22 April 2015
Top 10 books about betrayal
1. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
2. Medea by Euripides
3. Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds
4. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
6. City of Angels; or, the Overcoat of Dr Freud by Christa Wolf
7. In Parenthesis by David Jones
8. Shroud by John Banville
9. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
10. Dear Life by Alice Munro
 
15 April 2015
Top 10 books about the British in India
1. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1900)
2. White Mughals by William Dalrymple (2003)
3. Up the Country by Emily Eden (1867)
4. A Matter of Honour by Philip Mason (1974)
5. Curry and Rice by George Francklin Atkinson (1860)
6. The Great Mutiny by Christopher Hibbert (1978)
7. The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell (1973)
8. Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett (1944)
9. A Passage to India by EM Forster (1924)
10. Staying On by Paul Scott (1977)
 
09 April 2015
The top 10 books about style
1. Noblesse Oblige: An Inquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy, edited by Nancy Mitford (1956)
2. One-Upmanship by Stephen Potter (1952)
3. Class by Jilly Cooper (1979)
4. The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook by Ann Barr and Peter York (1982)
5. ABC of Men’s Fashion by Hardy Amies (1964)
6. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
7. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
8. Stardom by Alexander Walker (1970)
9. The Nouveaux Pauvres by Nicholas Monson and Debra Scott (1984)
10. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger (2003)
 
01 April 2015
The top 10 books about Italy
1. The Italians by Luigi Barzini
2. An Italian Education by Tim Parks
3. Cosi Fan Tutti by Michael Dibdin
4. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
5. Christ Stopped At Eboli by Carlo Levi
6. Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb
7. The Sack of Rome by Alexander Stille
8. The Oxford Companion to Italian Food by Gillian Riley
9. Calcio: a History of Italian Football by John Foot
10. Italian Journey 1786-88 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 
25 March 2015
The top 10 treasure hunts in fiction
1. The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe
2. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
3. Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton
4. Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper
5. Masquerade by Kit Williams
6. Romanno Bridge by Andrew Greig
7. PopCo by Scarlett Thomas
8. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
9. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
10. Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
 
18 March 2015
Andrew Sharples' top 10 war memoirs
1. Memoirs of An Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
2. The Junior Officers’ Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey
3. My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd
4. Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean
5. Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab
6. Mussolini, His Part in My Downfall by Spike Milligan
7. The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn
8. Dispatches by Michael Herr
9. A Guards Officer in the Peninsula And at Waterloo: The Letters of Captain George Bowles, Coldstream Guards 1807-1819 by George Bowles
10. Wild Swans by Jung Chang
 
11 March 2015
Thomas Asbridge’s top 10 knights in literature
1. Beowulf, anonymous
2. The Quest for El Cid by Richard Fletcher
3. Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes
4. Richard I by John Gillingham
5. Life of St Louis by John of Joinville
6. Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine by Richard Barber
7. Book of Chivalry by Geoffroi de Charny
8. Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman by Frances Stonor Saunders
9. The Knight’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer
10. Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
 
04 March 2015
Top 10 books about women in the 1950s
1. The Years of Grace, edited by Noel Streatfeild
2. Her Brilliant Career by Rachel Cooke
3. Small Island by Andrea Levy
4. Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s by Stephanie Spencer
5. Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes by Fiona MacCarthy
6. A Fine Day for a Hanging by Carol Ann Lee
7. Hidden Lives, A Family Memoir by Margaret Forster
8. A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
9. The Village by Marghanita Laski
10. Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
 
25 February 2015
Matt Sumell’s top 10 fictional troublemakers
1. The unnamed narrator in Henchmen by Marisa Matarazzo
2. Guy Grand in The Magic Christian by Terry Southern
3. The unnamed narrator in Letters to Wendy’s by Joe Wenderoth
4. Phillip Liebowitz in Murderers by Leonard Michaels
5. Aunt Bernie in Sea Oak by George Saunders
6. Fred in A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley
7. Djarf Fairhair in Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
8. Bobby Allen Bird in Saguaro by Carson Mell
9. Arthur “Duke” Wolff in The Duke of Deception by Geoffrey Wolff
10. Georgie in Emergency by Denis Johnson
 
18 February 2015
The top 10 books about rivers
Highland River, Neil M Gunn
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K Jerome
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey
Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain, Roger Deakin
To the River: A Journey Below the Surface, Olivia Laing
The Robber of Memories: A River Journey Through Colombia, Michael Jacobs
A Sleepwalk on the Severn, Alice Oswald
The Epic of Gilgamesh
 
11 February 2015
The top 10 books about addiction
1. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon
2. The Shining by Stephen King
3. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
4. Gordon by Edith Templeton
5. Love Junkie: A Memoir by Rachel Resnick
6. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
7. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
8. Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby, Jr
9. The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll
10. In My Skin by Kate Holden
 
04 February 2015
The top 10 novels featuring works of art
1. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
2. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
3. Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (1999)
4. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2013)
5. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Erdağ Göknar (1998; translated 2001)
6. The Moon and Sixpence by W Somerset Maugham (1919)
7. Headlong by Michael Frayn (1999)
8. Girl Reading by Katie Ward (2011)
9. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (1951)
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
 
28 January 2015
The top 10 books about returning from war
1. The Odyssey by Homer
2. Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
3. “Smile, There Are IEDs Everywhere” by Jacob Siegel
4. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
5. Regeneration by Pat Barker
6. Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
7. Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos
8. My Father’s Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain by Patricio Pron
9. Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali
10. Bedrooms of the Fallen by Ashley Gilbertson
 
21 January 2015
The top 10 novels about lost friendships
1. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
2. An Unfortunate Woman by Richard Brautigan
3. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
4. The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe
5. Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie
6. Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe
7. Travelling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker
8. How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
9. Young Hearts Crying by Richard Yates
10. Seymour: An Introduction by JD Salinger
 
14 January 2015
Neel Mukherjee’s top 10 books about revolutionaries
1. The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872)
2. Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev (1877)
3. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (1907)
4. Aranyer Adhikar by Mahasweta Devi (1977)
5. Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer (1979)
6. The Moro Affair by Leonardo Sciascia (1978; augmented ed. 1983)
7. The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing (1985)
8. Do and Die: The Chittagong Uprising, 1930-34 by Manini Chatterjee (1999)
9. Magic Seeds by VS Naipaul (2004)
10. Sally Heathcote, Suffragette by Mary M Talbot, Kate Charlesworth, and Bryan Talbot (2014)
 
07 January 2015
The top 10 books about the suffragettes
1. The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals by E Sylvia Pankhurst (1931)
2. Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote by Christabel Pankhurst (1959)
3. The Militant Suffragettes by Antonia Raeburn (1974)
4. Votes for Women by Elizabeth Robins (1907)
5. Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier (2001)
6. Votes for Women: The Virago Book of Suffragettes, edited by Joyce Marlow (2001)
7. Vindication! A Postcard History of the Women’s Movement by Ian McDonald (1989)
8. Sally Heathcote, Suffragette by Mary M Talbot, Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot (2014)
9. The Suffragettes in Pictures by Diane Atkinson (2010)
10. No Surrender by Constance Maud (1911)
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