I know, very difficult. Off the top of my head and in no particular order;
Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Stand by Stephen King
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherwood
All for different reasons but mainly because I couldn't put them down!
Rebecca and David Copperfield, I have read (and agree, both are excellent), the others I haven't and must add to my 'to-read/must-read' list.
A book which I would class in the 'I couldn't put it down' category - though I am not sure whether I would class it as a 'top five' - was Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights".
I came to it rather late, and, having heard so much about it, was rather wary of it, for fear that it wouldn't live up to its stellar reputation. So many books don't.
It was on the bookshelves of an exceptionally well stocked private and personal library in a lovely nineteenth century apartment - parquet floors, modern art on the walls, high ceilings - belonging to an academic that I rented in the Old Town of Vilnius for a few months in the early 1990s - not long after the collapse of the old USSR - that contained many, many books in at least four languages.
Anyway, I picked it up one night, as I thought to make its acquaintance. (That same library contained almost all of the early works of Saul Bellow, which I read, needless to say, plus the superb 'Herzog'). I thought that now was the time to read this book, and see if it lived up to its reputation.
I am rarely breathless with suppressed tension - but that was one book I sat up reading through the night, and finished after dawn had broken over Vilnius. Extraordinary - and gripping - visceral in fact, - and powerful. I had to take a break every few hours to make a coffee and pace and prowl. Ooooof.
Well, perhaps, reading what I have just written, it may well merit a place in a 'top five'.
George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' would be in there, too. A terrifying political fairy tale, a masterful insight into questions of political philosophy and matters of power, a searing and centred moral compass, and a spare prose that is flawless in its deceptive simplicity.
Now, as to the others.......I must put some further thought into this....
