My top 10 favourite books

(In no particular order)

• O. Wilde ("The Picture of Dorian Gray")
• D. Adams (HHGG etc.)
• M. Spark ("The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie")
• S. Nadolny ("Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit")
• J. Salinger ("The Catcher in the Rye")
• M. Twain ("The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn")
• J. Steinbeck (e.g. "The Grapes of Wrath")
• I. Denisen ("Out of Africa")
• S. Zweig (esp. "Die Schachnovelle")
• S. Clarke ("Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell")

The runners up

• E. Hemingway ("For Whom the Bell Tolls" - and only that one)
• S. Maugham (e.g. "Moon and Sixpence", short stories like "The Three Fat Women of Antibes", "Louise" etc.)
• A. Huxley ("Brave New World" - much better than Orwell's 1984 !)
• S. Thomas: "The End of Mr. Y", the only book I have read twice over - in a row
• F. Kafka (mini: Vor Dem Gesetz/Kaiserliche Botschaft, short: Die Verwandlung ... all masterful)
• C. Dickens (any - they are all much the same)
• Th. Hardy (ditto) - but also because of poems like "Hap"
• H. Melville ("Moby Dick") - nautical, poetical, wonderful
• David Mitchell ("Cloud Atlas")
• A. Camus ("The Plague")
• P. Süskind ("Das Parfüm")
• R. L. Stevenson (e.g. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) - everything that Poe isn't
• D. Eagleman ("Sum") - Fourty Tales of the Afterlife. Clever ideas by Neuroscientist what Bible could have evolved into
• A. Burgess ("A Clockwork Orange)
• J.-W. Goethe ("Faust" - only part I)
• I. Welsh ("Trainspotting")
• J. Boswell ("Life of Johnson")
• P. Theroux (the travel books such as "The Happy Isles of Oceania" - and only those)
• M. Forster ("Have the Men had enough ?")
• O. Goldmsith ("The Vicar of Wakefield")
• A. Isler ("The Prince of West End Avenue")
• H. Lee ("To Kill a Mockingbird")

The Non-Fiction Winners

• Painting as a Pasttime, W. Churchill

    Why you need a Plan B - apart from work
• Big Secrets, W. Poundstone

    "The uncensored truth about all sorts of stuff you are never supposed to know"
• All the Secrets of Magic revealed, H. Becker

    How Houdini, David Copperfield etc. did their tricks
• Cheating at Bridge, J. Cameron

    Cards, Glasses, Radios everything
• The Curious Cook, McGee

    A chemist explains why soufflees collapse etc.
    A good cookbook is "The Cookery Year from Reader's Digest". But this is a better one.
• Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

    "Elisabeth David written by Quentin Tarantino" - The truth behind the professional cooking business
• Make your own Dinosaur out of Chicken Bones, C. McGowan
• Instant Memory, R. Harbin

    How to remember long sequences of things
• Hate Mail through the Ages, D. Carroll

    How to taunt creditors
• Pavlov's Heirs - Classical Psychology Experiments that Changed the Way we View ourselves, S. Schwartz

    How people like electrocuting others
• Home Workshop Explosives, Uncle Fester
    How to make Nitrogylcerin - in detail
• Lexikon der populären Irrtümer, W. Krämer

    Things you thought you knew (but don't)
 
• all my publications (although some may count as fiction ...)