Where to begin? With all of literature's jewels heaped up in front of you, what on earth do you choose?
My favourite authors include Dickens, Rosamund Lehmann, Ernest Hemingway, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Truman Capote, Emily Bronte, Edmund White, Marina Warner, Norman Mailer, Zoe Wicomb, Alice Hoffman... but it doesn't end there. The list is endless, so you can expect to be bored by my enthusiasms.
Recently I've read Rebecca West's Saga of the Century, Claire Messud's Woman Upstairs, and an account of a Kurdish woman who went to Iraqi Kurdistan to fight against ISIS.
So although there are some books I will always go back to, I don't believe in absolute top tens and will be changing this list from time to time. They are certainly not in any order. Numbers are inappropriate in valuing literature:
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Truman Capote - In Cold Blood
Elizabeth Jane Howard - The Cazalet Chronicles
Edward St Aubyn - Never Mind - oh, and the other Patrick Melrose novels except the second one, which drives you mad.
Zoe Wicomb - David's Story
Edmund White - The Farewell Symphony
Marina Warner - Indigo
Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls
Rosamund Lehmann - The Weather in the Streets
Norman Mailer - Armies of the Night
Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
That's not ten? No, numbers have no place in literature!