Top 100 books

I have about a dozen posts half started in my head and really need to get them down on paper. Still haven't set up pc at home although have done a good bit of clearing up in my bedroom and have monitor and pc set up on table - just need to dig out bag of cables and keyboard and hook it all up now. Really hope it works, haven't used it since I moved house over a year and a half ago.

I've found a couple of blogs which I really like but will wait until I've more time to faff around adding in links and all that. One of them is called Garden in your Pocket and it's a woman in Brisbane who reviews books she has read. Kind of like an online bookclub for one. I've been intending to write occasional reviews of the books I read anyway (some of the dozens of posts swirling in my head) and this is the spur I needed I think.

I also want to compose a list of my top 100 books (partly to see if I even have a hundred to list!). These are books I've read and have (or will) re-read and will always want to have a copy of. I have to admit I'm not one of those people who reads a book and remembers it all immediately. My brother-in-law almost never reads a book a second time because he can still remember it even years later. I, on the other hand have loads of books I've read five or more times and have some books that I like to pick up every year or two for another read. So, I am going to start writing my Top 100 list and although I won't complete it now, I will come back to it and update as and when I find the time and inclination. This list will not be in any particular order (maybe one day when I have time I'll alphabetise it :) ) and I am allowing myself to count trilogies/series as only one entry.

1. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
2. Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb (and the Liveship and Tanwy Man trilogies)
3. These Old Shades/Frederica/Cotillion - Georgette Heyer (actually almost any of her historical romance novels, these are just three I particularly like - some of the few books to make me laugh out loud time and time again)
4. Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
5. The Crystalsinger trilogy - Anne McCaffrey
6. Dragons of Pern - Anne McCaffrey (perhaps only the first few books though)
7. Sparhawk trilogies - David Eddings
8. My Roots, a decade in the garden - Monty Don (have just finished this on loan from the library but want to buy my own copy to read again - can't believe how much I enjoyed this.)
9. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (and Alexandria's sequel, Scarlett - the book so much better than the dreadful TV version)
10. River Cottage Cookbook - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
11. Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
12. Skinny Legs and all - Tom Robbins (as much sentimental value for the time and place I was given this as for the book)
13. Across the Nightingale Floor - Lian Hearn (just did a quick search and realised there are three more books in this series - more books to go on my must-read list)
14. The Bone Doll's Twin (Tamir Triolgy) - Lynn Flewelling
15. Harry Potter - JK Rowling
16. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
17. Narnia books - C.S. Lewis (although re-reading them a couple of years ago the religious symbolism seemed a bit too strong for my taste these days but they are still magical books)
18. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott
19. What Katy Did - Susan Coolidge (probably one of the first books I cried reading)
20. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
21. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (have only read once but really feel it's a book that'd be worth reading multiple times)
22. 1984 - George Orwell
23. Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
24. Chocolat - Joanne Harris
25. Making History - Stephen Fry
26. His Dark Materials trilogy - Phillip Pullman (if I had to choose a top book to read ever this and the Count of Monte Cristo would defintely be contenders)
27. The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton
28. What's eating Gilbert Grape - Peter Hedges
29. The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan
30. The Far Pavillions - M.M. Kaye
31. The Irish trilogy - Walter Macken (re-read the first of these recently and was dismayed to find that the religious aspect of these was far more than I remembered and again, that's just not to my taste these days)
32. The Children of the New Forest
33. The Little House books - Laura Ingalls Wilder
34. Seed to Seed - Suzanne Ashworth
35. Strumpet City - James Plunkett