Absolutely the best books you’ve ever read

Tell me what your favourite reading experiences have been.

It’s Book Week Scotland (http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-week-scotland), which leaves you, my long-suffering reader, at risk of being bored by me again wittering on about what a good idea it is to read books.

So I will attempt to not bore you, by contrast I invite you to tell me something interesting.

I’d like to ask which book, or three books, or more, you think other people should read. For enjoyment, for inspiration, for a rattling good read . . . you choose. They can be your favourite books, or your most uplifting books or books you think have changed the world, or amused the world, or damaged the world. Or any mix (or none) of those things.

Just tell me which books you think deserve being remarked upon. They certainly do not have to be highbrow or have that difficult-to-define tag of being “literature”. I’m never sure what the distinction between “a novel” and “literature” is. Possibly it depends on whether you think you are an intellectual or not.

In my opinion, what makes a great book is whether it is enjoyable to read. It doesn’t matter whether some university don or other clever person has declared it “significant”. I’m not asking anyone to be highbrow or clever, I’m just interested in the books you like.

Just to get us going, I’ll start.

In no particular order:

Antony Beevor’s Berlin. It is the story of the Red Army battling across Eastern Europe and into Germany, ending the Secnd World War. What greatly struck me about this it was that I’d grown up hearing stories, and watching swashbuckling films, about how Britain and the US won the war. But it was the Russians who did an awful lot of the hardest work. It was the Red Army that broke the back of the Wehrmacht and lost millions of lives doing so. Beevor mixes high strategy with personal accounts of street fighting and describes a momentous and terrible event, the fall of Berlin, vividly and intelligently.

David Gemmell’s Legend. It’s just a ripping yarn. A sword-and-sorcery epic that tells the heroic tale of 10,000 men defending a seven-walled castle against a horde of half a million bloodthirsty tribesmen. The horde intends to break through a mountain pass and conquer the civilised lands beyond. The 10,000 must hold out as long as possible to buy time for an army to be assembled to meet the threat. It isn’t a complicated tale, but is thrillingly well-told by a great writer with flawed heroes, frightened men who must fight or die and even a touching love story. I unreservedly love it and have re-read it many times in the 30 years since it was first published.

Moonfleet, by J. Meade Falkner. This was the book that set me on a lifelong path of reading. It was written in 1898 and I was handed it by my inspirational and brilliant English teacher when I was 13 years old and told: “Steven, I guarantee you’ll like this.” I certainly did and I’d like to thank that teacher, Mrs Law, a thousand times over. I must have read Moonfleet 20 times. Mrs Law insisted I keep the book because I liked it so much and I still have it, with the name of my school stamped on the cover. In 1953 it was made into one of the truly most appalling films of all time even though it has the rather fetching Liliane Montevecchi in it. It’s a tale of the sea, smuggling, adventure, daring and diamonds. I can’t hear the sound of waves on a pebble beach without being transported to the world of Elzevir Block fighting the undertow on Moonfleet beach. Just talking about it has made me go look it out so I can read it again.

What are YOUR favourite books?

Comment below or email sfinan@sundaypost.com