One Big Damn Puzzler - John Harding - funny and clever - it's about much, much more than a village elder trying to translate Shakespear's works into pidgin English, lots of al fresco pooing too...which will appeal to Fetchies....
On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan. A novella capturing the wedding night anxieties of a young couple in the early Sixties. Moving, devastating, wonderful. Beauifully written.
P.S., I Love You - Cecilia Ahern (a woman getting over the death of her husband with the help of her dead husband.)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson (drugs, drink and the state of the nation)
The Busconductor Hines - James Kelman (it's not just swearing, you know)
A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami (magic realism goes oriental)
The Rider - Tim Krabbe (you too can participate in a 137 km bike ride from the confort of your armchair)
Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (my favourite book ever - Fetch)
The Reader - Bernhard Schlink (short novel set in Germany but compelling and always surprising)
Northern Lights (plus the rest of His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman (allegedly for kids but very good for grown ups as well, they've been passed round my entire family, from 53 to 13 years old
)The Blue Afternoon - William Boyd (love, medicine and flight in the Phillipines)
American Pastoral - Philip Roth (novel bursting with energy and anger as it charts the manufacturing decline of 20th century USA. You won't believe gloves can be so interesting)
Money - Martin Amis (Funny, brilliant, inventive)
A Dance to the Music of Time - Anthony Powell (A 12 novel sequence, )
What a Carve Up - Jonathan Coe (Whodunnit with evil doing's in Thatcher's Britain)
The House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe (He never wastes a character)
Brazaville Beach - William Boyd (Chimps & Maths)
The Vintner's Luck - Elizabeth Knox (Angels and wine in 19thC France)
The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien (strange and surreal)
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Never let me go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffeneger (this is great !)
Cloud Atlas (lovely) - David Mitchell
We Need to Talk About Kevin (gripping and great twist)
The God Delusion
Dante's Divine Comedy
McCarthy's Bar - Pete McCarthy
Round Ireland With A Fridge - Tony Hawks
Over the Edge - Michael Bane
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Christopher Brookmyre - Quite Ugly One Morning, A Big Boy did it and Ran Away
Colin Bateman
Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend in a Coma
Douglas Coupland - All Families are Psychotic.
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man
The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart (very funny)
The Princess Bride - William Goldman (for a giggle)
Atomised - Michel Houllebecq
Alan Paton. Ah, But your Land is Beautiful
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
No News at Throat Lake by Lawrence Donegan
How Britain Made the Modern World, Niall ferguson ( The story of the British Empire and its foundation on the chemical rush of Sugar,Caffeine and Tobacco. The book will probably blow away your misconceptions of the British Empire)
The Blind assassin - Margaret Atwood
A Town Like Alice - Neville Shute
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
The Whale Rider - Witi Ihimaera
To Kill a mockingbird - by Harper Lee. (Very moving story of two children discovering the joys and heartaches of life).
An equal music - Vikram Seth
The Power Book - Jeanette Winterson
Boating for Beginners - Jeanette Winterson does humour
Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson (beautiful story, both love and not, poetic and yet not. The first time I finished it I almost cried as I felt as though I had lost something)
Life of Pi (fantastic book) - Yan Martell
Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller. (Not your average World War novel! Hilarious and devastating at the same time)
Four Iron in The Soul, Lawrence Donegan
Shop Girl - Steve Martin (lovely lovely book)
The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge (totally bizarre)
the woman who walked into doors - roddy doyle (hard to believe is written by a man)
The Five People You Meet in Heaven...Mitch Albom (lovely simple, easy to read, powerful - fantastic everyone should read it)
The Lovely Bones...Alice Sebold...(get past the first tough chapter and it's good and a bit teary)
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fford (heroine Thursday Next comes up against Jack Schitt in a parallel universe where literature replaces sport as the main cultural pastime - the crimean war is still being fought and Wales is a republic state)
The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (and the other two books after it - Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman)- Louis de Bernieres
If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things - John McGregor
The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-time
This Thing of Darkness - Harry Thompson (Fictional narrative of the voyages of Charles Darwin and the friction/friendship between him and the captain of the Beagle, Robert Fitzroy)
Beyond Sleep - WF Hermans
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulkes (set in 1st world war - brilliant writing - fave of all time)
Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (beautiful, memorable quotes from this one)
The Code Book - Simon Singh (Brilliant analysis of codes and codebreaking throughout history. Author has a rare gift for clearly explaining very complex details.
The Great War for Civilization - Robert Fisk (Excellent narrative on the recent history of the middle east).
Deterring Democracy - Noam Chomsky
Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier (Beautiful book about the American Civil War - don't be put off if you've seen the film, the book is far superior)
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
May contain Nuts - John O'Farell (Very funny. Gets a bit sily at the end but there are some real laugh out loud moments)
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Cannery Row - Steinbeck
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis (powerful, powerful book, the film was a tissue-thin, laughable imitation)
Spit Nolan - Story froma kids' book which made me sad as a child. Couldn't tell you who wrote it (it was Bill Naughton)
Feet in the clouds - Richard Askwith (really good book about fell running and the general madness of running tough hills !)
Bravemouth - Pamela Stephenson (biography of Billy Connolly. Very readable.)
A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian (I've seen so many people reading this and now I know why. Great book. Not paralysed-with-hysteria-funny but quite addictive.)
Small Island - Andrea Levy (lovely, lovely book)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt (cracking good yarn)
Birds without wings - Louis de Bernieres (his best yet, I think)
Join me - Danny Wallace (so uplifting and very, very funny)
Yes man - Danny Wallace (again, so uplifting and very, very funny)
Touching the Void - Joe Simpson (best climbing book ever and even better than the film)
On the road - Jack Kerouac (just brilliant)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe (read it - it saves you needing to take LSD)
Asterix and the big fight - Goscinney + Uderzo (pure comedy genius)
The Language Instinct - Stephen Pinkner (well written book about how we learn and create language)
The Crow Road - Ian Banks (best opening line of any book ever written)
Stories of Eva Luna - Isabelle Allende (fabulous South-American Fiction - read it, love it)
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (must be included cos wot it is fantastic... maybe wiki will have a more elegant way with words than me...Link (roll over me to see where I go))
Everything is Illuminated - Jonathon Safron Foer (its great... I curse my inability to express myself through words... I shall default to wiki again - Link (roll over me to see where I go))
The Kite Runner - one of the modern classics and he has just brought out a second - A Thousand Splendid Suns Kaheld Hosseini both beautifully written stories of life in Afghanistan
Let my People Go Surfing - Yvon Chouinard, inspirationa climber, environmental activist and businessman