When Lucy hears noises from behind the wall she tries to warn her parents that there are wolves banging about. But her parents don’t listen. When the wolves finally take over the house and Lucy and her family are evicted to live in the garden, her parents realise perhaps they should have listened.

For weeks after first reading this, she wandered about the house banging on walls to see if there were wolves in them!

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab’s quest to avenge the whale that ‘reaped’ his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic.

But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab’s appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.

This is a novel I keep returning to over and again in these lists, one of those novels that has embedded itself in my psyche and mind. The characters – Ishmael, Starbuck, Stubb, Queequeg and of course Ahab, and The Pequod itself – and the philosophising and the language. Oh the language.

One boy, one boat, one tiger . . .

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan — and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of fiction in recent years.

Speaking of practical tips, I seem to recall some rather useful ones here including treating seawater, fishing, and of course managing the local wildlife: tigers and man eating trees included.

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy – Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light – traces the life of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power in Henry VIII’s Tudor England. It offers a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

Yes, a trilogy is definitely cheating – but wait until you see the next entry, it is just shameless! – but Mantel’s writing could transport you to the brutality of Cromwell’s childhood to the opulence of his successes. The sights, the sounds,the tastes… all the (Tudor) world is there!

Jane Austen called this brilliant work “her own darling child” and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.” The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen’s radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

This was the novel which I don’t think I was old enough for when I first read it at University. Compared to bleak and muscular Wuthering Heights, it felt pale and anaemic. But being stranded, I might discover what I missed before.

The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon iron gates reads:

Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn

As dusk shifts to twilight, tiny lights begin to flicker all over the tents, as though the whole circus is covered in fireflies. When the tents are aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign lights up:

Le Cirque des Rêves
The Circus of Dreams

The gates shudder and unlock, seemingly by their own volition.
They swing outward, inviting the crowd inside.

Now the circus is open.
Now you may enter.

Begun as an ambitious project by the versatile English courtier, diplomat, philosopher, and author Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century, “The Canterbury Tales” follows a group of people on their pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Saint Thomas á Becket. The Prologue introduces all of the pilgrims in great detail, and through these descriptions Chaucer provides the entire spectrum of social classes and professions of his time. When the group stops at an inn and the innkeeper introduces a competition for a free dinner, the pilgrims begin telling each other stories that reflect their stations, genders, purity, corruption, humor, tragedy, cynicism, and innocence. From the noble Knight and his Squire to the spunky Wife of Bath, from the antagonistic Miller and Reeve to the Prioress, Nun, and Pardoner, Chaucer reveals for modern readers a wonderfully vivid picture of medieval life in an impressive array of literary styles that uphold his reputation as the father of English literature.