Today is my 50th birthday and despite being up to my oxters in reading and reviewing for Novellas in November, I thought it would be fun to compile a list of 50 novels that have stayed with me after all these years.

These are not necessarily my favourite books and a few of them probably wouldn’t survive a re-read. Also, I could probably create a list of 50 completely different books, but these novels represent reading experiences that changed my outlook, influenced my future reading, remind me of people who were important to me or books that I quite simply loved.

1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
2. The Bewitching of Alison Allbright by Alan Davidson
3. The Eyes of Karen Connors by Lois Duncan
4. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
6. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
7. London Fields by Martin Amis
8. The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
9. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
10. The Music of Chance by Paul Auster
11. Any Sweet Valley High book by Francine Pascal
12. Amongst Women by John McGahern
13. Generation X by Douglas Coupland
14. The Secret Island by Enid Blyton
15. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
16. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
17. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
18. Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
19. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
20. The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
21. We Have Always Lived at the Castle by Shirley Jackson
22. Number9dream by David Mitchell
23. Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
24. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
25. Tender by Belinda McKeon
26. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
27. Emily’s Shoes by Dermot Bolger
28. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig
29. Bel Canto by Anne Patchett
30. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
31. Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
32. Lamb by Bernard MacLaverty
33. Falling by Colin Thubron
34. The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers
35. Underworld by Don de Lillo
36. Light in August by William Faulkner
37. One by One in the Darkness by Deirdre Madden
38. The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers
39. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
40. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
41. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
42. Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
43. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
44. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
45. Beloved by Toni Morrison
46. Alma Cogan by Gordon Burns
47. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
48. Open City by Teju Cole
49. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
50. A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving

Are any of your favourites in my 50?

Uncategorized 50 birthday book list