Top 100 Books | Big Issue relaunches the list

Are these Britain’s most loved books?

     Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkein

     To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

     Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

     Lanark, Alasdair Gray

     Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

     His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

     Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke

     Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

     Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

     The Road, Cormac McCarthy

With over a million paperback sales in Britain alone, David Nicholls’ bittersweet romance One Day is one of the best-loved books of the moment. The film is out this week - which is why the book is appearing on the covers of magazines.

But what are the best-loved books of all?

The Big Issue is this week relaunching my off the cuff bid to compile a Top 100: the books you couldn’t live without.

I’ve been running the poll for the past few weeks right here. But now the magazine sold by the homeless is taking the idea to a national audience via its own websites www.bigissuescotland.com  and www.bigissue.com.

Together, we want you to list the ten books you think are the best you've ever read. The ones you believe are genuinely memorable and entertaining.

The responses I’ve received so far have been extraordinary: diverse, unusual and challenging.

But even with a small sample it was clear that a few titles were appearing again and again.

From these I have compiled a Top Ten – reproduced here. And it’s hardly a surprise that perennial favourites Lord of the Rings and To Kill A Mockingbird are neck and neck at the top.

But notice that there is no Dickens, JK Rowling or Agatha Christie – despite the fact they are the biggest selling authors of all time.

Instead, readers went for cultish books like Lanark, Gormenghast and the bleak American masterpiece The Road.

What makes the final list depends on you.

Email your top ten to top100books@bigissue.com.

There are no boundaries. All genres should be considered - just vote for the books that mean the most.www.bigissuescotland.com

Everyone who has voted so far will have their lists folded in to the new campaign. Over the next few days I'll break down the list of titles I have so far to give you some ideas, and to create talking points.

What has become obvious is that the more people who take part in this poll, the more meaningful the final list will be so please share this link with your friends on social media and encourage others to take part. We are all really looking forward to seeing what the final top 100 will look like.

Darren Shan | Horror | Edinburgh International Book Festival

For a man who spent his formative years as a vampire's apprentice, Darren Shan looks like a man who loves reading and snacking more than running full pelt through a forest in pursuit of a rogue pack of werewolves.

Then again, perhaps those books were more fictional than they first seemed.

Shan was joined @EIBF (today, Saturday August 20, 1.30pm) by Alexander Gordon Smith and Barry Hutchison to discuss horror (their love of reading and writing it) with the extreme bearded comic writer Philip Ardagh.

Together Ardagh and Shan showcased how to do it: a reading event aimed at YA, that is. When it came to delivering an exceprt of his own latest novel (Lord Loss, about Demons being eaten by crocodile dogs, it would appear) he performed a scene with barely a glance at the script in front of him. He knew it off by heart. Similarly, his opening extract - from a book that inspired him - was brilliantly delivered: the scene when the vampire boy comes to the window in Salem's Lot. I doubt Stephen King himself could have done it better. The other authors were interesting in their own right, but both could learn from the well chosen and well executed manner of Shan's readings. Perhaps he, as the best known of the trio, has simply had more practise.

It underlines however just how much of a showman you have to be these days in publishing. There's no point churning out the words if you can't sell them too. For many, many authors (there are exceptions) book festivals offer their biggest chance to reach a wide audience directly. Hutchison and Smith must have snatched at the chance of appearing next to a multi-million best seller like Shan.

Shan - a Londoner who speaks like a city barrow boy, and who sticks his tongue out expressively when he laughs or even sometimes just to punctuate a sentence - also had the best answer to the event's best question. One lad asked 'have you ever had a fight with another author?' Which seemed appropriate enough considering the fantasy violence these guys all write about. Shan recalled criticising Anne Fine for a review of another author's book - Melvyn Burgess I think - which she said was so bad it ought to be pulped. He also mentioned squaring off with Philip Pullman for sniffily saying that "no one should write in first person, you miss so much".

Actually, that was only the second best answer to the 'fight' question. The best was from Barry Hutchison who 'revealed' that he had once punched Jacqueline Wilson in the face. How we all laughed. But as Philip Ardagh said, she was probably asking for it...

Carmen Reid | Secrets at St Jude's | the movie (kind of...)

It's time to blow a personal trumpet. No, that is an unfortunate phrase. What I mean is, it's time to tell you about someone close to me who is doing stonkingly well and who also happens to have yet another new book out.

Carmen Reid isn't just my wife, mother of my two children, light of my life, she also happens to be the author of the Annie Valentine Personal Shopper novels, as well as the Secrets at St Jude's teen series and a small battery of other titles with equally brilliant titles. She writes romantic comedy with a big big heart and she deserves to be better known.

This video is a little trailer we had made to promote the St Jude's series and the new book in particular. Follow the link here to her (all new) YouTube channel, where future, similar trailers and a few other things will soon materialise.

Edinburgh Book Festival | Video archive

I'm looking forward to heading through to the Edinburgh Book Festival later this week. In the meantime I've been whetting my appetite by looking through their video archive. You should check it out, and feel free to make a donation too.

Book festivals have exploded in popularity over the last decade, with many following where Edinburgh has been leading. Tickets are however hard to come by with many of the hotter events selling out well in advance. Indeed, often on the first day.

Which begs the question whether they will ever dare to make the festival bigger. Charlotte Square is a cosy, perfect sort of a venue. But why keep something limited to that space if there is demand? The Hay Festival has ballooned in recent years... Edinburgh has kept itself strictly within the Square's iron railings. As I struggled to find a top event with any availability left this week, I couldn't help but wonder that perhaps it is time to think big and move to larger premises.

Gary Shteyngart | Super Sad True Love Story video trailer | Author who can't read

Those of us aware of Jordan/Katie Price might not find it all that funny an idea that an author can't actually read. But Gary Shteyngart, who wrote one of the best books of the last year or so in Super Sad True Love Story, somehow makes the gag work.

There's been some great work done on making this quality little video trailer. And it's not his first for the title, either. Question is, does it make you want to buy the book?

A New Book List: your time is up...

Any latecomers out there?
If so, get your lists in pronto. I'm going to spend the next week or so working on a final run down and hopefully come up with a list that will get everyone talking.
Going by the raw data so far it's going to be an intriguing result. Perhaps not as daring as I thought it might be, but it has highlighted a few issues I want to address in the future, should we attempt to compile such a list again.
In the meantime I would like to say a big, big thank you to everyone who bothered to take part by sending me their favourite ever books.

One thing is clear: people love books. Keep reading...

The Worst Summer Read You Ever Read | Top 100 Books

The clock is ticking on our search for a new list of Top 100 Books. You have until the 15th August to send me your top ten. Don't think about it, just do it! That way, when you see the final list, you can't complain that you didn't have your say.

In the meantime I am on holiday. So I'll be blogging less, if at all, and reading slightly more. Hopefully.

It got me thinking about summer reads. The summer holiday is sometimes the best chance people get to sit down and read a book. Long lazy days soaking up the son with a copy of Lee Child in your hand, or a James Clavell, as it was when I was a lad.

Being an earnest sort, when I was eighteen I remember taking Moby Dick with me round Europe while travelling on an inter rail ticket. I told myself that wading through this American Victorian leviathan would do me some good while spending hour upon hour on trains. Well, the most I can say is that I definitely finished the book but it didn't enhance the travelling experience - and it didn't help me appreciate or be transported by Melville. I doubt I'd pass a multiple choice on the book now, albeit 25 years later (almost). Sometimes I think I'd like to try to re read the book, it is after all meant to be brilliant and I was very young at the time. Too  young, perhaps to appreciate it, and too distracted. But then the memory of a horse meat sandwich some fellow travellers kind of obliged us to eat under threat of who knows what while travelling through the Balkans comes back, and the association is just toooo strong.

But I doubt Moby Dick could have been the worst choice. I guess I could have set off with something a lot worse. But what? Let me know if you've had an even bigger summer read disaster.

* Update: @averydryfino tweets to tell me that Infinite Jest might be her holiday reading hell book. She's a third of the way in and struggling. Can anyone help her?