My Favourite Novels of All Time

The novels that changed my life, from Atzei Rimon publisher Chana Solemani.

It’s pretty hard to sit down and make a list of my ten favourite novels. Most readers have probably one or two official “favourites” that they can provide whenever presented with this question. But the top ten from my whole life is a lot harder to pin down. I ended up with a list that covers a wide range of ages and stages of life, moods, feelings, memories and reasons for making it onto the list.

1: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

This is the easy answer that I provide whenever anyone asks me what is my favourite book. The Time Traveler’s Wife is my immediate favourite for a number of reasons: one, it came into my life at a time where I wasn’t reading so much, and reignited that fire within me. Two, it has incredibly complicated, mind-bending time travel, and absolutely follows its rules in the most faithful and realistic way. Three, though it’s a fantastical subject matter when you describe it, the book itself does not actually in any way feel like a fantasy novel. It is a beautiful, gorgeous, evocative novel about relationships, yearning and meaning.

The other reason I love this book is it contains such realistic, almost visceral descriptions. It’s one of those books you can really feel and taste in your own mind. Especially taste - it contains the best descriptions of food, cooking, eating and deliciousness that I’ve ever found in a novel. Reading this book I wonder, tremble, laugh, cry, and taste chocolate and cigarettes on my fingers. It is the best. I cannot WAIT to read the sequel Life out of Order, which came out earlier this month, twenty-three years after the original.

2: Bloodtide by Melvin Burgess

This is the other title that gets an immediate mention whenever I am asked this question. I always answer that while The Time Traveler’s Wife is my favourite book I read as an adult, Bloodtide is the champion for my young adult/adolescent reading. It is not an exaggeration to say that I think about this book in small moments almost every day of my life. It is hard to see why a book I must have read more than twenty years ago, which takes place in a dystopian future London where the buildings are melted down for scraps, warring kingpins sell their daughters for peace, and a giant pig-like monster roams the wastelands outside, would have almost daily relevance to my life until today, but what can I say? I honestly think about it all the time. Sibling relationships, political negotiations, love, heartbreak, feelings of loss and confusion - they call come to the fore in this epic and beautiful adventure.

3: Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling

It seems almost silly to include a series like Harry Potter on this list, because it is so inescapably popular and visible that it is barely even a choice anymore to be a Harry Potter fan. Harry Potter just is, it exists in the world and in our permanent consciousness like water, oxygen or the Beatles. But I have to include it because the Harry Potter books weren’t just books that I loved, or a phenomenon that I need to acknowledge, but a phenomenon that I actively participated in by being a child in those exact years.

I grew up with Harry Potter, and my summers and end-of-school-year excitement were defined by the releases of each volume. Walking down the road from school not caring if I tripped over, because I read as I walked down the street, and so did my friends either side of me. Trying to ration the book so I wouldn’t run out of book to read, only to continue the book in my dreams and read imaginary chapters. Trying to ration the book so I wouldn’t run out only to see the face of my friends who had finished already, and unable to bear the anticipation, racing through the rest of the book immediately. Sleepless nights and heart-thumping discoveries of JK Rowling’s new website updates when we had just learned to use the internet. Being a realtime Harry Potter kid is a piece of history that will never be experienced for the first time again. What a great privilege it was.

4: The Chosen by Chaim Potok

The Chosen takes a place on my list because it quenched a literary thirst that I had been holding onto for many years. For the longest time, I had been looking for a book that was beautifully written, with a story that had real depth, and that also took place in the magic of the Jewish religious world. I honestly did not think these books existed. Until I stumbled across The Chosen.

It was everything I had been dreaming of finding in a book. Friendship, father-son relationships, the ups and downs of religious life, laid out with realism and all its flaws - but without at any points painting the religious world as a world of strangers or weirdos. Being religious, believing in God, having a relationship with prayer: these are absolutely not alien things in this book. Sometimes the characters struggle, but that is part and parcel of the real-life religious experience. Even without yearning for these religious depictions, the story and writing stand on their own merit. A beautiful, perfect novel.

5: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

I wasn’t sure whether to include this title on the list and whether it really counts as novel. But I decided to include it as it had such a profound experience on me. I read this book when I was working in publishing, and it was the big book of the moment. Beloved author Siobhan Dowd had passed away with this book still in her list of ideas, and also-beloved author Patrick Ness took it on to write and complete it. I read it because it was being talked about and I wanted to stay abreast of the industry updates. What I didn’t realise, was that it would cut me deep and leave me openly sobbing at my desk. A Monster Calls tells the story of a boy called Conor who is dealing with his mother’s illness when a dark monster comes to visit him. I can barely even type out my description of this novel without feeling emotional. It works on its own as just a simple story of a scary monster, but what the monster later is revealed to represent, within Conor’s own feelings and understanding of them, is the most important and accurate description of childhood grief that I have found in literature.

6: My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

I had to include a Jodi Picoult title as I went through maybe about six months of my life where I absolutely read nothing else other than Jodi Picoult novels. For those who don’t know, Picoult’s novels tend to take on a similar structure to each other being that they build up a family/social conflict and/or mystery, before culminating in a court case where all the surprising truths are revealed and loose ends tied up. It was hard to include which Jodi Picoult novel to include, and special mention to Plain Truth, which I devoured at the intersection between my Jodi Picoult phase and my obsession with the Amish phase. Anyway, this book focuses on a young girl, Anna, who was originally conceived as a donor baby - to help save the life of her older sister who is battling leukemia. Anna takes her parents to court as she does not want to be her sister’s donor anymore. What follows is not only a fascinating insight into the rights of life, but also I was GOT GOOD by a surprising twist so devastating that, decades later, I STILL remember the absolute shock I felt.

7: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History takes a special place on my list as I read it when I was a young Classics student, fascinated that a book could have been written about such a boring group of people, Classics students. And the truth is that, perhaps because of these associations, I did actually find it a bit boring, and I only got a few chapters in before I put it down somewhere and forgot about it. Then a few years later I was on holiday in France with my friend and her family, and I picked it up again. When I say that I DEVOURED this book in that second reading. I think I in fact read it all in one sitting, while out for dinner at an extremely fancy restaurant in France with my friends’ parents. It was extremely annoying to everyone, but I just could not put it down. It was extra exciting, because of those years earlier where I had not realised the excitement that was waiting for me. It still doesn’t portray Classics students as the most likable or sympathetic, but certainly not boring in any way.

8: The Tulip Touch by Anne Fine

Here’s another novel that makes it onto the list thanks to the longevity of its presence in my mind. I haven’t picked up this book in probably thirty years, but I can still remember the characters running around that hotel, and I was running around with them in my mind. It was the first time I experienced what it is to feel charmed by the antagonist. As a child, I couldn’t understand why I found the titular Tulip to be so scary and chilling, but I also couldn’t help but root for her in her damaged, charming, totally evil way.

The Tulip Touch is a touch of darkness in a safe and still pretty wholesome way, but I can still feel the chills I got from that book.

9: The Subtle Knife — Philip Pullman

I wanted to put this entire series on the list, but I felt the need to specify the second instalment. Though I loved all three of the His Dark Materials trilogy, I wanted to call out this specific book as it has the rare achievement of being better than its precedent (in my opinion, anyway). I was gripped by Northern Lights and couldn’t to race to the next installment, but I had no idea how the second novel would not just be a continuation of what I loved, but expanded into different worlds and suddenly left the first book feeling small and narrow.

I loved everything about this book and how it expanded my universe that I had already loved. Suddenly there was so much more to it. Even aside from the excitement of the story, the world created is an imaginative triumph - even in the tiniest of ways, like alternative language quirks you don’t even need to notice. Everything about the world is perfectly crafted.

10: Jonathan Livingston Seagull — Richard Bach

Another one I wasn’t sure entirely qualifies as a novel, as it’s quite short and interspersed with pictures of seagulls. I remember hearing about this book over the years, and assumed it was about a character or real-life person called Jonathan Livingston Segal. But no, it is actually about a seagull. While it may seem like a hard sell to be convinced to read a short novel following a seagull’s life while looking at pictures of seagulls, believe me when I say this seagull could very well change your life. Jonathan Livingston is a seagull who isn’t satisfied with the regular existence of flying around, catching fish and squawking. So he starts to experiment with flight, trying death-defying and eventually reality-transcending stunts. This book is not just about a seagull who wants to fly higher, but it’s about life, existence, the world beyond, and how can our minds fathom it. Plus, the author was also a pilot or something, so the descriptions of flight really are so detailed and convincing, that you really start to transcend reality with this seagull.

Looking for your next favourite novel? Take a look at our upcoming publications from the Atzei Rimon Books and Pomegranate Press imprints.