What are your favourite books of all time?

[politicat]

21. Top ten

Not in any discernible order:

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. A fantasy set in a not-quite Spain during Al-Andalusia. Protagonists are an almost Jewish female doctor, a one step from Islamic poet/ambassador/all-around badass, a nearly Christian El Cid general and his soldiers (and his completely amazing wife). They fight crime. (Well... War and genocide are crime, right?)

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. The neglected princess slays dragons.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. It's not a romance, it's about economics and class and grief and displacement and power dynamics.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke. Because magic plus Napoleonic Wars plus class and informational warfare and fairy tales and Lady Poole.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Have aliens build Venice from glass about 2000 years ago and leave just enough of their technology that the follow-on civilizations will be inspired to great technological/alchemical/semi-magical feats trying to reverse engineer their crap. Let the follow-on civilizations advance and then start wallowing in decadence. Throw in massively organized organized crime. Now follow the con artists whose cover identity is petty thievery, and who happen to be priests of the god of thieves. Also, they cook. And swear.

At Home by Bill Bryson. How we got our houses and everything in them. With footnotes.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. An anthropological look at money, debt and social relations.

Worlds at War by Anthony Pagden. The best one volume analysis of why Western Civ and Eastern Civ have been fighting for 5,000 years and why we keep watering the conflict with ever more blood.

Plagues and Peoples by William Hardy McNeil. Exactly what it says on the tin. Along with Rats, Lice and History (Hans Zinsser) and the current epidemiological surveys.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley. Vampires should not sparkle, nor should they be romantic heroes. They're terrifying, and if they got a foothold, they'd probably own the world. Nobody escapes from them. The protagonist is an Everygirl, a baker in a coffee shop. The world is gorgeous and terrifying and pretty seamless.

And then there's The Diamond Age, and World War Z and Ready Player One and Shades of Milk and Honey and the Sam Vimes Discworld series and most everything Dorothy Sayers wrote, and the rest of the books by the authors above and pretty much all of Catherine Valente's work, and....