2016

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2018

27 December 2017
Top 10 experimental thrillers
1. The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet (translated by Richard Howard)
2. L’Amante Anglaise by Marguerite Duras (translated by Barbara Bray)
3. Cities of the Red Night by William S Burroughs
4. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
5. Cast in Doubt by Lynne Tillman
6. Off Duty by Victor Headley
7. Rip-off Red, Girl Detective by Kathy Acker
8. Pulp by Charles Bukowski
9. Anicet or the Panorama by Louis Aragon (translated by Antony Melville)
10. A Void by Georges Perec (translated by Gilbert Adair)
 
20 December 2017
Top 10 books about the unconscious
1. From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing by Adam Crabtree (1993)
2. Beyond Freedom and Dignity by BF Skinner (1971)
3. Face Value by Alexander Todorov (2017)
4. The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler (1967)
5. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)
6. The User Illusion by Tor Norretranders (1998)
7. A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness by Merlin Donald (2001)
8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (1984)
9. The Illusion of Conscious Will by Daniel Wegner (2002)
10. Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy Wilson (2001)
 
13 December 2017
Top 10 books about growing old
1. The Summer of a Dormouse by John Mortimer
2. A Positively Final Appearance by Alec Guinness
3. I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
4. These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach
5. Coda by Simon Gray
6. Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill
7. Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
8. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
9. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
10. The Old Boys by William Trevor
 
06 December 2017
Top 10 novels about God
1. The Gospels translated by Richmond Lattimore
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. Roger’s Version by John Updike
4. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
5. The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch
6. The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis
7. Omensetter’s Luck by William H Gass
8. The Spire by William Golding
9. Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
10. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
 
29 November 2017
Top 10 books about high-tech
1. From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog by Martin Campbell-Kelly
2. Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove
3. Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech by Sally Smith Hughes
4. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
5. The Dream Machine: JCR Licklider and the Revolution that Made Computing Personal by M Mitchell Waldrop
6. The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
7. Neuromancer by William Gibson
8. Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine
9. The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon by Steven L Kent
10. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave by Ruth Schwartz Cowan
 
22 November 2017
Top 10 books about mental hospitals
1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
2. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green
3. Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America’s Premier Mental Hospital by Alex Beam
4. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
5. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
6. It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
7. I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
8. Great Apes by Will Self
9. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
 
15 November 2017
Top 10 talking animals in books
1. Behemoth in The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
2. The Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
3. “Ungeziefer” in The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
4. Maf in The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan
5. Napoleon and Snowball in Animal Farm by George Orwell
6. Bagheera in The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
7. Red Peter in A Report to an Academy by Franz Kafka
8. Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
9. The Cowardly Lion in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
10. Sharik or Comrade Sharikov in The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
 
08 November 2017
Top 10 books about royal families
1. Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K Massie (1968)
2. An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick by Hannah Pakula (1996)
3. The Ruin of a Princess as told by the Duchesse d’Angoulême, translated by Katherine Wormeley (1912)
4. Bertie, A Life of Edward VII by Jane Ridley (2013)
5. The Three Emperors by Miranda Carter (2009)
6. Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey (1921)
7. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory (2009)
8. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)
9. The Royal Road to Fotheringhay by Jean Plaidy (1955)
10. The Story of My Life by Queen Marie of Romania (1934-35)
 
31 October 2017
Martin Luther's children: the top 10 Protestants in fiction
1. The Reverend John Ames in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (2004)
2. Harry Angstrom in John Updike’s quartet of Rabbit novels (1960-90)
3. Christian in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)
4. Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
5. Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719)
6. Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850)
7. Joseph in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847)
8. Silas Marner in George Eliot’s Silas Marner (1861)
9. Mother in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
10. The Reverend Frank Fenwick in Anthony Trollope’s The Vicar of Bullhampton (1870)
 
25 October 2017
Top 10 books about pastoral life
1.The Forgiveness of Nature: The Story of Grass by Graham Harvey
2. Much Ado About Mutton by Bob Kennard
3. The Farming Ladder by George Henderson
4. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
5. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
6. A Country Calendar of Rural Rhymes: Poems chosen by Robin Holmes
7. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer
8. Farmer’s Glory by AG Street
9. The Development of the Organic Network by Philip Conford
10. Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O’Sullivan (with an introductory note by EM Forster)
 
18 October 2017
Top 10 imaginary drugs in fiction
1. Soma (Brave New World by Aldous Huxley)
2. Melange (Dune by Frank Herbert)
3. Substance D (A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick)
4. Slug (The Final Circle of Paradise by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky)
5. Black Meat (Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs)
6. Moloko Plus (A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess)
7. “Drink Me” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)
8. Dylar (White Noise by Don DeLillo)
9. Weirdcore (The Destructives by Matthew de Abaitua)
10. The Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
 
11 October 2017
Top 10 modern Nordic books
1. Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson (translated by Lytton Smith)
2. Novel 11, Book 18 by Dag Solstad (translated by Sverre Lyngstad)
3. The Endless Summer by Madame Nielsen (translated by Gaye Kynoch)
4. Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo (translated by Herbert Lomas)
5. New Collected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer (translated by Robin Fulton)
6. Crimson by Niviaq Korneliussen (translated by Anna Halager)
7. Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors (translated by Misha Hoekstra)
8. The Tower at the Edge of the World by William Heinesen (translated by W Glyn Jones)
9. The Gravity of Love by Sara Stridsberg (translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner)
10. Inside Voices, Outside Light by Sigurður Pálsson (translated by Martin Regal)
 
04 October 2017
Top 10 human-animal relationships in literature
1. Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart
2. The Soul of the Ape by Eugène Marais
3. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
4. The Hunter by Julia Leigh
5. Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
6. The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
7. Let Sleeping Vets Lie by James Herriot
8. Amigo by Byrd Baylor
9. Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight by Ursula K Le Guin
10. /Xam texts from the Bleek and Lloyd archive by //Kabbo, /Han#kass’o and others
 
27 September 2017
Top 10 brothers and sisters in fiction
1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
5. The Child’s Child by Barbara Vine
6. The Black Path by Asa Larsson (translated by Marlaine Delargy)
7. A Room With a View by EM Forster
8. The Ghosts by Antonia Barber
9. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
10. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
 
20 September 2017
Top 10 books about consciousness
1. Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett
2. Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
4. The Centre Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R Saks
5. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
6. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul by Francis Crick
7. Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul by Giulio Tononi
8. Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World by Chris Frith
9. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by VS Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
10. The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness by Jeff Warren
 
13 September 2017
Top 10 contemporary short stories
1. Victory Lap by George Saunders
2. Pee on Water by Rachel B Glaser
3. Then Later, His Ghost by Sarah Hall
4. Fjord of Killary by Kevin Barry
5. The News of her Death by Pettina Gappah
6. Thank You by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell
7. The Green Zone Rabbit by Hassan Blasim, translated by Jonathan Wright
8. Track by Nicole Flattery
9. Finishing Touch by Claire-Louise Bennett
10. The Emerald Light in the Air by Donald Antrim
 
06 September 2017
10 of the best travel books … for National Read a Book Day
In Search of Nice Americans, by Geoff Steward
Epic Drives of the World, Lonely Planet
The Writer Abroad: Literary Travels from Austria to Uzbekistan Selected by Lucinda Hawksley
Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey, by Madeleine Bunting
The Last of the Light: About Twilight, by Peter Davidson
The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta, by Kushanava Choudhury
Land of Plenty: A Journey Through the Fields and Foods of Modern Britain, by Charlie Pye-Smith
Where the Wild Winds Are, by Nick Hunt
Amsterdam Tales Edited by Helen Constantine
Ascent, by Chris Bonington
 
06 September 2017
Top 10 books about teaching
1. The Lives of Children by George Dennison
2. Stoner by John Williams
3. To Sir With Love by ER Braithwaite
4. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
5. The Tempest by William Shakespeare
6. Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough
7. Plato’s Republic
8. Creative Schools by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica
9. Seven Myths of Education by Daisy Christodoulou
10. Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov
 
30 August 2017
Top 10 books on postwar France
1. The Journals of Janet Flanner (1925-1970)
2. The Tender Hour of Twilight by Richard Seaver (2012)
3. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (1967)
4. Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas (2003)
5. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan (1954)
6. On Leave by Daniel Anselme (1957)
7. An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Georges Perec (1974)
8. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy (1958)
9. Nairn’s Paris by Ian Nairn (1968)
10. After the Circus by Patrick Modiano (1992)
 
23 August 2017
Top 10 books about tyrants
1. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
2. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
3. It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
4. The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez
7. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
8. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
9. The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor W Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt Sanford
10. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
 
16 August 2017
Top 10 twists in fiction
1. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
2. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
4. Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson
5. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
6. Innocent Blood by PD James
7. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
8. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
9. The Secret House of Death by Ruth Rendell
10. Behind Closed Doors by BA Paris
 
09 August 2017
Top 10 books about birds
1. The Ladybird Book of Garden Birds by John Leigh-Pemberton (1967)
2. The Observer’s Book of Birds’ Eggs compiled by G Evans (1954)
3. I Am Lazarus by Anna Kavan (1945)
4. Spotting Birds by Jaroslav Spirhanzl Duris and Edmund Burke (1964)
5. The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory (1986)
6. A Convergence of Birds edited by Jonathan Safran Foer (2001)
7. Crow Country by Mark Cocker (2007)
8. The Falconer by Alice Thompson (2008)
9. The Goshawk by TH White (1951)
10. An English Guide to Birdwatching by Nicholas Royle (2017)
 
02 August 2017
Top 10 parties in fiction
1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
5. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
6. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
7. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
8. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
9. Some Hope by Edward St Aubyn
10. Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
 
26 July 2017
Top 10 female detectives in fiction
1. Antoinette Conway
(The Secret Place and The Trespasser by Tana French)
2. Kinsey Millhone
(The Alphabet series by Sue Grafton)
3. Anna Lee
(Under Contract, Backhand and four other novels by Liza Cody)
4. Elouise “Lou” Norton
(Trail of Echoes, Land of Shadows and other novels by Rachel Howzell Hall)
5. Claire DeWitt
(Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran)
6. Alex Morrow
(Still Midnight, Gods and Beasts and three other novels by Denise Mina)
7. Carlotta Carlyle
(Lie Down With the Devil, A Trouble of Fools and 10 other novels by Linda Barnes)
8. Darlene O’Hara
(Buried on Avenue B and Shadows Still Remain by Peter de Jonge)
9. Mary Russell
(Pirate King, Dreaming Spies and 15 other books by Laurie R King)
10. Smilla Jaspersen
(Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg)
 
19 July 2017
Top 10 opening scenes in books
1. A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
3. Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell
4. The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso
5. Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt
6. Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys
7. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
8. Speedboat by Renata Adler
9. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
10. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
 
12 July 2017
Top 10 secrets in fiction
1. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
2. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
3. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
4. New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani
5. Another Country by James Baldwin
6. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
7. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
8. Carol by Patricia Highsmith
9. The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
10. The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
 
05 July 2017
Top 10 books about swimming
1. Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas
2. Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
3. Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox
4. Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton
5. Swim – Why We Love the Water by Lynn Sherr
6. Man vs Ocean by Adam Walker
7. Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain by Roger Deakin
8. Swell – A Waterbiography by Jenny Landreth
9. The Swimmer by Roma Tearne
10. The Swimmer by John Cheever
 
28 June 2017
Top 10 Shakespearean stories in modern fiction
1. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov
2. Asterix and the Great Divide by Albert Uderzo
3. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
4. The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
5. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
6. Indigo by Marina Warner
7. The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Philips
8. Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis
9. Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson
10. Withnail and I by Bruce Robinson
 
21 June 2017
Top 10 books about lies
1. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (1886)
2. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein (1933)
3. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1957)
4. My Father and Myself by JR Ackerley (1968)
5. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1979)
6. Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee (1980)
7. Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (1985)
8. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (1995)
9. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)
10. The Secret Life by Andrew O’Hagan (2017)
 
14 June 2017
Top 10 modern epistolary novels
1. The Fan by Bob Randall (1977)
2. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
3. The Jolly Postman by Allan and Janet Ahlberg (1986)
4. In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster (1987)
5. The Girl in the Box by Ouida Sebestyen (1989)
6. Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock (1991)
7. The Mansion on the Hill by Rick Moody (1997)
8. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (1997)
9. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2003)
10. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher (2015)
 
07 June 2017
Top 10 books about Westminster politics
1. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
2. No Love for Johnnie by Wilfred Fienburgh
3. Corridors of Power by CP Snow
4. This House by James Graham
5. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
6. House of Cards by Michael Dobbs
7. Diaries by Alan Clark
8. House Music: the Oona King Diaries
9. Chance Witness by Matthew Parris
10. The Knives by Richard T Kelly
 
31 May 2017
Top 10 books about Weimar and Nazi Berlin
1. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
2. The Artifical Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun
3. Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada
4. Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
5. Black List: Section H by Francis Stuart
6. Berlin Stories by Robert Walser
7. Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist by Erich Kästner
8. The 20th of July by Hans Hellmut Kirst
9. Berlin: The Land of Cockaigne by Heinrich Mann
10. The Queen of the Night by Marc Behm
 
24 May 2017
Top 10 unlikely romantic heroes in fiction
1. Jude in A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
2. Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
3. Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades novels by EL James
4. Amit Chatterji in A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
5. Dr Wilbur Larch in The Cider House Rules by John Irving
6. Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
7. Guy Pringle in The Fortunes of War by Olivia Manning
8. Boris in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
9. Professor Bhaer in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
10. Sirius Black in the Harry Potter novels by JK Rowling
 
17 May 2017
Top 10 novels about Pakistan
1. Mottled Dawn By Saadat Hasan Manto
2. The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad
3. Shame by Salman Rushdie
4. The Crow Eaters by Bapsi Sidhwa
5. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
6. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
7. Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid
8. Meatless Days by Sara Suleri
9. Home Boy by HM Naqvi
10. Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
 
10 May 2017
Top 10 books about psychoanalysis
1. Freud by Jonathan Lear
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
4. The History of Sexuality, Part One by Michel Foucault
5. Between Seduction and Inspiration: Man by Jean Laplanche
6. Freud: Biologist of the Mind by Frank J Sulloway
7. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
8. The Emergence of Sexuality by Arnold Davidson
9. When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D Yalom
10. Eros and Civilisation by Herbert Marcuse
 
03 May 2017
Top 10 campus novels
1. The Book of Common Dread by Brent Monahan
2. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
3. Publish and Perish or The Lecturer’s Tale by James Hynes
4. The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
5. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
6. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
7. The War Between the Tates by Alison Lurie
8. The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
9. Old School by Tobias Wolff
10. Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein
 
26 April 2017
Top 10 terrible houses in fiction
1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
2. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
3. The Castle by Franz Kafka
4. The Hospice by Robert Aickman
5. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
6. House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
7. Watership Down by Richard Adams
8. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
9. The Magus by John Fowles
10. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
 
19 April 2017
Top 10 books about trees
1. Howards End by EM Forster
2. Meetings With Remarkable Trees by Thomas Pakenham
3. The Dead by James Joyce
4. Outline by Paul Nash
5. Dante’s Inferno
6. Sylva by John Evelyn
7. Whispers in the Graveyard by Theresa Breslin
8. Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery by John Clare
9. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
10. Apple Acre by Adrian Bell
 
12 April 2017
Top 10 books about the Russian Revolution
1. History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky
2. Russian Revolution 1917: A Personal Record by NN Sukhanov
3. Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed
4. Through the Russian Revolution by Albert Rhys Williams
5. Year One of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge
6. The Commissariat of Enlightenment by Sheila Fitzpatrick
7. The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman by Alexandra Kollontai
8. Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in 19th-century Russia by Franco Venturi
9. Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia by Dominic Lieven
10. The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution/April Theses by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
05 April 2017
Top 10 books about Manchester
1. The Emigrants by WG Sebald
2. The Manchester Man by Isabella Banks
3. Cold Water by Gwendoline Riley
4. Mancunia by Michael Symmons Roberts
5. A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
6. The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels
7. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
8. Little Wilson and Big God by Anthony Burgess
9. The Adult by Joe Stretch
10. Adolphe Valette by Cecilia Lyon
 
29 March 2017
Top 10 books about fathers
1. King Lear by William Shakespeare
2. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
3. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
4. My Father and Myself by JR Ackerley
5. Grief Is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter
6. And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison
7. Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming
8. Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo
9. Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
10. Rebecca’s Vest by Karl Miller
 
22 March 2017
Top 10 stories of obsession
1. Moby–Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
3. Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller (2003)
4. Wilful Disregard by Lena Andersson (2013)
5. Misery by Stephen King (1987)
6. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)
7. Possession: A Romance by AS Byatt (1990)
8. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
9. You by Caroline Kepnes (2014)
10. The Vegetarian by Han Kang (2007)
 
15 March 2017
Top 10 novels on rural America
1. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
2. Winter in the Blood by James Welch
3. Lila by Marilynne Robinson
4. The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
6. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
7. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
8. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
9. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
10. LaRose by Louise Erdrich
 
08 March 2017
Top 10 fantasy fiction universes
1. Akaran, from The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
2. Arda, from The Lord of the Rings and other works by JRR Tolkien
3. Eretz, from Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
4. Erilea, from Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
5. Filigree Street, from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
6. Herran, from The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski
7. The Known World, from A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
8. London Below, from Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
9. Lormere, from The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury
10. Miraji, from Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
 
01 March 2017
Top 10 books about adopted children
1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
2. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
3. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
4. The Cider House Rules by John Irving
5. The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare
6. The Bad Seed by William March
7. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
8. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
9. Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay
10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
 
22 February 2017
Top 10 Hollywood novels
1. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)
2. The Pat Hobby Stories by F Scott Fitzgerald (1940-1941)
3. What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg (1941)
4. The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (1948)
5. The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler (1949)
6. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (1970)
7. Force Majeure by Bruce Wagner (1991)
8. This Book Will Save Your Life by AM Homes (2006)
9. Me Cheeta by James Lever (2009)
10. American Dream Machine by Matthew Specktor (2013)
 
15 February 2017
Top 10 books about the Vikings
1. The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
2. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga edited by William Fitzhugh and Elizabeth Ward
3. Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan
4. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
5. Echoes of Valhalla: The Afterlife of the Eddas and Sagas by Jón Karl Helgason
6. Ohthere’s Voyages edited by Janet Bately and Anton Englert
7. The Long Ships by Frans G Bengtsson translated by Michael Meyer
8. Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas by Sabine Baring-Gould
9. Viking Raiders by Anne Civardi and James Graham-Campbell
10. Valhalla series by Peter Madsen
 
08 February 2017
Top 10 books about the apocalypse
1. The Stand by Stephen King
2. 100 Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses by Lucy Corin
3. Children of Men by PD James
4. Tenth of December by George Saunders
5. What Becomes Us by Micah Perks
6. Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
7. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
8. Gutted by Justin Chin
9. Zone One by Colson Whitehead
10. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
 
01 February 2017
Top 10 authentic romances
1. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (translated by Joachim Neugroschel)
2. Be Mine by Laura Kasischke
3. The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart
4. Sounds by Vladimir Nabokov (translated by Dimitri Nabokov)
5. Where the Sea Used to Be by Rick Bass
6. Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder)
7. A Balcony in the Forest by Julien Gracq (translated by Richard Howard)
8. The Possession by Annie Ernaux (translated by Anna Moschovakis)
9. Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig (translated by Anthea Bell)
10. The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen (translated by HP Paull)
 
25 January 2017
Top 10 books about voyeurs
1. It Had to Be Murder by Cornell Woolrich (1942)
2. The Executioners by John D MacDonald (1957)
3. Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959)
4. The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith (1962)
5. The Collector by John Fowles (1963)
6. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (1981)
7. Sliver by Ira Levin (1991)
8. Felicia’s Journey by William Trevor (1994)
9. Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller (2003)
10. You by Caroline Kepnes (2015)
 
18 January 2017
Top 10 megacities in fiction
1. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
2. The Bees by Laline Paull
3. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
4. The Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis
5. Saturday by Ian McEwan
6. The Carnivorous City by Toni Kan
7. Batman, DC Comics
8. Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai
9. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
10. Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta
 
11 January 2017
Top 10 books about wild women
1. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
2. The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy
3. Oreo by Fran Ross
4. The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish
5. Heroines by Kate Zambreno
6. Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger (translated by Cécile Menon and Natasha Lehrer)
7. The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley
8. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
9. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
10. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
 
04 January 2017
Top 10 unreliable narrators
1. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
2. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
3. The Three by Sarah Lotz
4. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
5. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
6. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
7. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
8. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
9. Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller
10. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
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