you are what you read

I work at a bookstore. My mind runs on books for many hours each day. Boxes of books, stacks of books, armfuls of books, shelves of books, tables of books, walls of books. I am also a list-maker. So I have decided to write my very own list of books I've read, and have read again and again, and can heartily recommend. That is the only thing these books have in common; they do not all appear on any public/literary critic 'best books' list, they are not all fiction, or classics, or bestsellers, they are simply good. Really good.

They're also not in any order of preference, I can't bring myself to rank some books over others, I can't compare them to each other. I would love to know which of these you have read, because you see this is more than a snapshot of my bedside table over the last 10 years, its a mini-portrait of my soul. To quote Greg Kinnear's character in You've Got Mail..."you are what you read".

1. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
2. Craven House by Patrick Hamilton
3. Persuasion by Jane Austen
4. Cranford, and other short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell
5. Vanity Fair by William Thackery
6. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
8. Good Wives (and the two sequels) by Louisa May Alcott
9. Pride and Prejudice (and the many sequels) by Jane Austen
10. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
11. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
12. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
13. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
14. Don't Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford
15. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
16. Consequences by Penelope Lively
17. 1939; The Last Curtsey by Anne De Courcy
18. Nancy Mitford (biography) by Harold Acton
19. Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher
20. Last Curtsey by Fiona MacCarthy
21. The Mitford Sisters by Mary S. Lovell
22. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
23. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
24. The Victorian House by Judith Flanders
25. Victorian Girls by Sheila Fletcher
26. Aristocrats by Stella Tillyard
27. Daughters of Britannia by Katie Hickman
28. Evelina by Frances Burney
29. Sense and Sensibility - Diaries by Emma Thompson
30. The Tale of Beatrix Potter: A Biography by Margaret Lane
31. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
32. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
33. The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
34. Master and Commander, and the entire Aubrey/Maturin series (21 books) by Patrick O'Brian
35. The Golden Ocean by Patrick O'Brian
36. The Unknown Shore by Patrick O'Brian
37. The Catalans by Patrick O'Brian
38. The Road to Samarcand by Patrick O'Brian
39. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
40. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
41. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
42. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
43. The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
44. The Hornblower series by C.S. Forester
45. The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith
46. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
47. The Liar by Stephen Fry
48. Moab is My Washpot by Stephen Fry
49. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
50. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome