Top 100 Books | The sense of a list

My old Unwin Books paperback copy of The Hobbit. The drawing is by JRR Tolkein

Why make a list of your favourite books?
Think of it as a snapshot. In part it sums up who you are, what you like reading, what you have read.
In another sense it highlights what you might be missing out on. If your personal Top Ten are all sci-fi, or thrillers, maybe you should stretch yourself a bit and read out of those genres?
Similarly, if your list reads like an English Lit syllabus ask yourself the question: have you moved on since University?
Personally I would say that your Top 10 in 2011 should be completely different to your Top 10 from 2001, say, or 1991. as we grow older, our tastes change and our reading experience widens.
That said, there will be titles on every person's list which will have been with them since childhood. Reading is like that: a book is such a personal experience it can stay with you far longer than a film or a play can. It's like the narrative is hardwired into your brain. I heard a line the other day fromm The Hobbit - the audio book started playing unexpectedly in the car. The amazing thing is although I'd not read that book in years, I knew the line, could almost see it on the page.

What makes a book one of your best loved, though?
When I first mooted the idea of a list, I asked for the books you would recommend people read which didn't necessarily seem obvious. I wanted to uncover some hidden gems.
I still think the 'best loved' moniker can help do this.
When you send in your lists to Top100books@bigissue.com list the books you care about the most, not the ones that you feel will make you sound the smartest.
That way, the finished list will be an honest snapshot of what Britain is reading. And that will be a fascinating read in itself.

George RR Martin | A Dance With Dragons sends George RR Martin flying into charts | Books | guardian.co.uk

A Dance With Dragons sends George RR Martin flying into charts | Books | guardian.co.uk

I am going to have to plead a little bit of ignorance here. I was completely unaware of George RR Martin before the HBO series cropped up on Sky Atlantic, which I promptly did not watch, as I am a Virgin subscriber and disallowed from seeing said channel.

In the weeks since that series was launched, however, and perhaps because there is a general sense that with Harry Potter coming to its conclusion in the cinema that JK Rowling has, in a sense, left the building, George RR (do the initials stand for Rolls Royce?) has been cropping up with the sort of regularity you associate with Scandinavian Crime Noire.

Now the Guardian have run this article claiming that the fifth book in his long running series has cemented his position as the American Tolkein. That it really is very good. And that despite its 1000 pages in length it is set to be one of the biggest sellers of the year. If not the biggest.

So by my reckoning I've got some catching up to do. Because I hate to think of such a successful and apparently entertaining series trundling along out there without me being involved with it.

The only thing is.... can I really read it all? Is there an abridged version? Should I get the DVD box set and skip a couple of books?

If you've read it, or at least just a bit of it, I'd love to hear what you think.

Top 100 Books: what are the best selling books of all time? Tolkein? JK Rowling? Dickens? Or Agatha Christie?

Like football fans dreaming up their first eleven of all time, avid readers love compiling lists of books.

That's why we challenged readers to help us come up with a new list of the Top 100 books that are Must Reads.

We want you to tell us what books have meant the most to you. The ones you'd pass on to your kids. The ones you revisit over and over again or which stay with you for the rest of your life.

So far we've had some stonking suggestions. Many lists reflect just how eclectic modern readers are: a bit of sci fi, a few classics, some modern lit fic. Contrary to what you might expect, few people restrict themselves to one genre or time period. It is clear that avid readers are also adventurous and seek out new writers and titles all the time.

But what if the list was restricted to the best selling books of all time? What would that look like. Actually, that's pretty easy to see because a quick Google search will throw up lists based on sales. These are from Wikipedia and are, therefore, probably pretty accurate.

Top 5 best selling single volume novels of all time:

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859, over 200 million

The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkein, 1954-5, over 150 million

The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkein, 1937, over 100 million

Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, 1759-1791, over 100 million

And Then They were None, By Agatha Christie, 1939, over 100 million

No surprise to see Christie up there. Next to The Bible and Shakespeare, her books have outsold everything else by any other author, over four billion and counting - she wrote over 80 detective novels alone. Rather tragically for her and her family she signed away most if not all the rights to her work in return for a fat cheque in order to pay a large tax bill.

The others are not much of a shock either. Tolkein's bandwagon is huge and will get bigger with The Hobbit films when they are released in 2012 and 2013. Perhaps it is a surprise to see Dickens at the very top, but he was the original literary superstar and his writing was always accessible and readable enough for even a 150 years not to dent its appeal.

As to Dream of the Red Chamber... I must admit that's one I need to put on my Amazon wish list. It is one of China's four classic novels, written in the vernacular. It sounds intriguing and 100 million Cantonese speakers can't all be wrong.

Further down you find Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (80 million) and Catcher in the Rye (65 million). JK Rowling's Deathly Hallows is the top selling Harry Potter with over 44 million sales. Incredible really, for a book that's only been out four years. CS Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has sold 85 million since it was published in 1950.

Of course, our Top 100 Books list isn't about sales. It's about your judgement as to the value of a book: be that literary, entertainment, originality, the strength of the idea. Also it is meant to be personal and idiosyncratic. The resulting list will and should be a surprise to everyone. If it isn't we'll all have failed.

So what is your list? Leave it in the comment below and I'll integrate it with our master list. Over the next few weeks we'll be running the challenge in The Big Issue and hope to come up with a definitive Top 100. But all you need to do is think of five titles and authors, or ten if you can.

And please share the challenge with friends too. The more lists, the better the final result.