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50 best books

Jan Hallam - August 25, 2007
BOOKS are like old friends - always there when you need them. STM arts editor Jan Hallam picks of her favourite companions.
1. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte, 1847

Wilful tempestuous Cathy, wild Byronesque Heathcliffe and long-suffering dependable Edgar – this trio is permanently locked in this gloriously written, tragic love triangle that will break your heart time and time again.

2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1813

He’s rich, handsome and a snob; she’s poor, smart and pig-headed – of course it’s true love. It takes a lot of long walks through Hertfordshire and Derbyshire, many meaningful looks and pages of the sharpest social commentary, but Lizzy and Mr Darcy get to Pemberley in the end.

3. The Road, Cormac McCarthy, 2006

It’s nuclear winter when a father and small son hit the road in a landscape of grey ash, desiccated bodies and haunted people who eat each other to stay alive. The exquisite writing is the only thing that offers hope.

4. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960

Through the eyes of the lovable tomboy Scout, Lee prises back the shutters of small-town US Deep South with the innocence and ruthlessness of a child. It’s left to Scout’s dad Atticus to add the love. It’s a genuine classic.

5. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, 1927

Readers tag along with the Ramsays on their annual holidays to the Isle of Skye and witness, in a coolly detached way, the boredoms, frustrations and devastations of being human.

6. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee, 2003

A South African professor seduces a student and his reputation shatters. He retreats to his daughter’s farm in the Eastern Cape where his own disintegration is made insignificant in the face of the crumbling nation. Coetzee doesn’t flinch a muscle in this stunning portrayal.

7. Atonement, Ian McEwan, 2001
In this masterpiece of storytelling, McEwan captures one moment down by a fountain, layers misunderstanding with wilful misconstruing and the lives of these characters slowly unravel. Excruciating and blissful.

8. The Hours, Michael Cunningham, 1998

Before Nicole Kidman’s prosthetic nose, there was this magical book that is both a loving tribute to Virginia Wolfe and her novel Mrs Dalloway and a sharp and insightful look at intersecting lives. It’s a work of great finesse.

9. A Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967

It was not until 1970, when the English translation was published, that we discovered this breathtaking talent. This modern fable of life in a small Colombian village is like a dewdrop – apparently simple until you look closer.

10. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

Tortured writers make beautiful art and Fitzgerald shines like a diamond (as big as the Ritz) in his story of the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who transforms into a millionaire to win the girl he loves. An excoriating look at the brilliant but degenerate Jazz Age.

11. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932

Imagine a world where there is no war, no country and no religion too. John Lennon imagined it in 1971 but Huxley was there before him. Both were on drugs. However, Huxley’s Soma world is more nightmare than Utopia and it’s time to wake up. It’s scary.

12. Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell, 1949

Oceania is a fictional place located in a million cities across the world. In 1949, it was in its growing phase when Orwell imagined a society controlled to its terrifying conclusion. Now 2007 Big Brother comes into our homes and stays for dinner.

13. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902The densest short novel in the English language, "the horror" of Marlow’s journey up the dark reaches of the Congo turns a harsh spotlight on the evils of colonialism. It’s a helluva trip.

14. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence, 1922
Theres not a more illuminating, if opinionated, portrait of the ties that bind a mother to a son. Paul Morel, before teenage angst was invented, manfully tries but is doomed to fail. Every son, mother, lover of sons should read this book.

15. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955

One of the greatest writers in any language, Russian Nabokov plunges into the murky waters of desire and taboo and surfaces with this rare gem of tortured love and manipulation.

16. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway, 1929

War has swirled in many of the world’s intellectuals and Hemingway was one of the biggest hitters, in every sense of the word. On the bloody frontline in Italy in the dying stages of the Great War comes a love story with the heartbeat of a bird. Stunning writing.

17. The Outsider, Albert Camus, 1942

I had to read L’Etranger for my French Leaving exam. Imagine my delight when I discovered the English translation and one of the world’s great novels rolled into one. A powerful and embracable discourse on existentialism that was saved analysis in my poor schoolgirl French.

18. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier, 1938

Wide-eyed and in love, new bride Rebecca begins her married life in her husband’s family estate. Let’s just say there are more than three people in this marriage. If there is a scarier creature than the housekeeper Mrs Danvers, I don’t want to meet her.

19. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens, 1861

A master storyteller no matter when you happen upon the young blacksmith’s apprentice Pip and his confrontation with the Victorian class system. Pip learns about life and love, honour and integrity, but not before you want to take him out back with the Tickler.

20. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1818

Give me a man and find a monster, create a monster and discover the man – Shelley’s exquisite prose weaves a mighty, imaginative tale that lays down some immutable laws for horror and science fiction writers to come. It’s always possible because it’s all about us.


21. Peter Pan and Wendy, J.M. Barrie, 1911

Look out the window. See the pirate ship in the bay, the spunky little fairies and a boy who can fly? You, unlike Peter, may have to grow up but if you wish hard enough, a couple of chapters of this book every few months will be collagen for the soul.

22. Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922

It’s a big, untamed brute of a thing that changed storytelling forever. June 16, 1904 is Bloomsday, and Joyce leads a mind-spinning tour (loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey) of Dublin and the pre-Great War world with characters who have become part of the family.

23. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, 1926

The overweight bear with little brain pushes out witches, wardrobes and boy wizards because, even after four decades, each time time I see a bunch a balloons, or lines on the pavement, or a jar of honey, I think of Winnie and Chris and I’m in a happy place.

24. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937

Personally, I reckon JR(R) should have stopped with this magical introduction to the shenanigans of those hirsute hobbits of Middle Earth. Its a ripping adventure that, happily, ends, unlike its descendants.

25. On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957

Seminal, generational, iconic – is it any good? You bet. This book is about being free – to think, to be right, to be wrong, to be. Picks up where Hamlet left off and found a new path to self-discovery and destruction. It turns 50 this year. It’s time to hit the road again.

26. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965

Fact and imagination blur tantalisingly in this book based on the real-life murder of an entire Kansas family. Capote wraps you up inside this story, which never quite frees itself from its creator.

27. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951

Holden Caulfield, the poster boy for alienation, made it cool to find nothing in common with your parents’ generation and a goodly sum of your own generation to boot. All adult reading starts with this book.

28. Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut, 1969

A work of great finesse and brutality, Vonnegut’s time travel is modest, just back to 1945 and the bombing of Dresden from a world with a finger on annihilation. He sets out to discover where all the madness began.

29. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke, 1969

Novel and film are so deeply entwined that they are more collaborations than separate entities. No matter what ship you’re on, the story of Dave and Hal, the mechanoid version of Dr Strangelove, is a wild ride.

30. Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961

War stories for a generation that didn’t want to go to war at all. A sharp satire on the absurdities of war that has been copied but never exceeded.

31. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962

This is a violent punch to our spongy guts to remind us all that civilised society is as fragile as eggshell. Burgess’s sharp prose is unflinching, even when Alex sticks in the boot.

32. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie, 1981

This extraordinary book – Rushdie’s best – didn’t prompt a fatwa but it seduced thousands with its beauty and insight of a moment in time marked by the birth of a child on the eve of India’s Partition in 1947.

33. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, 1979.

Adams made us brave enough to laugh at the increasingly serious genre of science fiction by sending a bewildered human, still in his dressing gown, to the far corners of the universe. Theres a lot to love.

34. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, 1980

One of Eco’s more accessible books, and thank God for that because he makes me feel stupid most other times. A gothic murder mystery with a dose of semiotics on the side entertains and makes you feel clever while you’re at it.

35. The Stand, Stephen King, 1978
A rework of his short story Night Surf, this post-apocalyptic horror novel takes place over 19 days as the world confronts its own folly when a virus weapon, Project Blue, escapes the lab. Chilling and Kings best.

36. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, 1985

Women are breeders and domestics in this new order, so feminists have cleaved this novel close. But the male oligarchy that rules this world doesn’t look to check the gender when they brutally mow down opposition. What if, could be what is in a breath.

37. House of Spirits, Isabel Allende, 1982

Allende’s debut novel is a family saga spanning four generations, that began life as a letter to her dying grandfather. It has the literary sensibilities of Garcia Marquez with a totally involving plot.

38. The Magician, Raymond E. Feist, 1982

It all began with an undergraduate Dungeons and Dragons tournament and ended with a career as one of the best fantasy writers in the world. This book begins Feist’s all-powerful Riftwar Saga, with an orphan apprenticed to a magician.

39. Voss, Patrick White, 1957

White tosses out those myths about the Australian Outback and replaces them with a scorching vision of empty malevolence. Based on the doomed exploration of Ludwig Leichhardt, Voss did much to change our perceptions of home.

40. Schindler’s list, Thomas Keneally, 1982

Based on shocking fact, but imagined with a lot of courage and heart, Keneally’s vision of the Holocaust is from a different angle – the good German. There’s no wholesale rehabilitation of a nation, but it is moving and insightful.

41. Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey, 1988
Before Carey began writing about himself, he explored ideas about us. Two obsessive gamblers fall in love and, before you know it, the affair reaches Quixotic proportions that majestically sweep the reader up in its momentum.

42. God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, 1997

The success of this novel mirrors the flowering of stories in English from the Indian subcontinent. The colonial shackles have been broken; now we’re witnessing their aftermath. This is just one of the powerful stories to emerge.

43. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, 1991

This scorching portrait of the greedy ’80s makes Gordon Gecko look like a wallflower. It’s set in Manhattan where investment banker Patrick Bateman stops at nothing to satisfy every desire, whim or even an afterthought. Excessive and compulsive, just like this novel.

44. Perfume, Patrick Suskind, 1985

Darkly macabre and as tantalising as a scent on the breeze – beauty and ugliness are entwined in this gruesome thriller. Born without an odour, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille stops at nothing to acquire one. It will weird you out.

45. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, 1992

An exquisite story retold through the memories of a dying adventurer at the start of World War II. Poignant and aching, his story is teased out by a young nurse with stories of her own.

46. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth, 1993

This whopper of a book began life as a novella with the simple premise of a good Indian mother trying to find a good Indian boy for her good Indian daughter. But the story of India got in the way.

47. Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley, 1991A King Lear of the Midwest, an ageing father divvies up his farm to his three daughters and the winds begin to howl. It’s a contemporary rendering of a classical idea and it just may exceed the original.

48. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx, 1993

A master minimalist, Proulx steers the good ship humanity through a choppy sea up the north coast of North America to rest in Newfoundland with all the others who get washed up there. Beautiful portraits of flawed but loveable characters.

49. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks, 1993

The first in a trilogy for which Charlotte Gray is the last, it begins before the outbreak of World War I with a young man heading to France, meeting a girl and then returning home. The novel fills in the gaps with poignant beauty.

50. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 1999

It was all downhill after this third in the Harry Potter franchise. Rowling became an industry rather than a writer. But in this ripping adventure, she introduced the Dementors, which marked some literary genius. Any creature that controls by sucking out your soul has got some horror chops.
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