Getting it down to five books is difficult - and so, oddly, is ascertaining exactly what it means to 'enjoy' a book. There are some books I've read that I raced through at the time and can't remember a thing about now, and others that seemed comparatively hard work to get through but have lingered and even grown in my mind - so is the 'enjoyment' all in the immediacy of reading the book or does it include its afterlife in the mind?

Here's a fairly representative sample:

What was Lost by Catherine O' Flynn (funny, sad & conveys the atmosphere of modern suburban life better than any other book I can remember).
The Diary of a Nobody by George & Weedon Grossmith (hilarious - it's the book I dip into when I can't sleep at night).
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell (I really identified with this when I was young and angry - now I'm older and angry I can see that the main character is deluded. But that doesn't mean he's wrong [discuss...]).
A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys (this book is about as long as War & Peace & the author was clearly barking mad - it's like Thomas Hardy on acid in dialogue with Henry Miller).
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (I've only read this once & put off reading it for a long time because I thought the title was awful - but it's amazing & has been slowly growing in my mind over the past few years).

If I'd been allowed a few more books, I probably would have included Crime & Punishment and Anna Karenina, which were the first two really big, philosophically involving novels I ever read & was astounded by. Also The Catcher in the Rye, which I read as a rebellious 16-year-old at boarding school (no surprise that I identified with Holden 100% at that age). I'd also throw in some more Orwell books, Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square, one or two books by Elizabeth Bowen (perhaps The Death of the Heart), some P G Wodehouse, Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook (which I'm convinced is the best bio ever written), a bit of Alberto Moravia & possibly Of Love & Hunger by Julian Mclaren-Ross (because you can't beat a novel set in pre-war Bognor Regis where most of the characters are vacuum-cleaner salesmen, can you?)

Sally,

The Road. I don't think that it is the post-apocalyptic element of the book that makes it so astonishing, I think it's McCarthy's exploration of the father and son relationship and the anguish that the father feels to know that his son will not survive. I'm a hard nosed so-and-so, but I was on a packed tube train in London trying my hardest not to cry whilst reading this book, when a lady opposite tapped me on the knee and said, "Yes, it had that effect on me too."
I think as a parent it's a tough book to read, and as a father it's tough x2.

But each book is different to each reader. Joyce's Ulysses leaves me completely cold (as does Catch-22), but people rave about it as being one of the greatest books ever.

(Rod, may I say, you seem to like boy books. This surprises me. Not sure why. Please don't be offended. My surprise is - in my strange perspective- a compliment.)

Yes, I noticed that the books I've read again and again are by boys, if that's what you mean. On my longlist were Donna Tartt, George Eliot (that's a girl, right?), and Marilyn French, because The Women's Room changed my whole view of this world. But I didn't allow myself book I've only read once. Much of what I read recently has been by women, but I guess I'm a bloke and find it easiest to relate to male characters.

~Rod

God, I nearly signed myself, Rosy.

The Women's Room changed my whole view of this world.

S'OK, I'll let you off, then.

R x

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Maybe better add that, just in case you think I'm serious....

Rosy (feminist thought police).

Gosh, it looks like I need to read The Road. I'd love to write something that had people reading it on the tube on the verge of tears.

Catch-22 left me cold, too.

It may be a dad thing. I blubbed like a sissy. But then again, loads of women I know cried over The Road too. My girlfriend has vowed never to have children, but she returned my copy as a sodden lump of papier-mache.

Read it!

The Women's Room

Have you read that too, Rosy? It was a shocker. Blew the lid of my parents for me when I was about twenty. A sickening experience.

Ooh, ohh, I want to put What was Lost in my list too now!

I almost burst a blood vessel in my eye when I finished the Road because I blubbed so hard.

[quote]Have you read that too, Rosy?[/quote?

Have I read it??

But I haven't read The Road, and it now looks like I must, and soon.

R x

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Can't do italics OR quotes today. Must learn to type.