Mmmm...I don't think I can put them in order, but I will do my best at thinking of my favs

The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials Trilogy - Phillip Pullman
Tuck Everlasting - Natalie Babbitt
The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
The Book of Lost Things - John Connelly
Coraline - Neil Gaiman
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
The Dark Tower Series - Stephen King
Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

As you have probably noticed, there is a heavy slant there towards children's lit, as that is what I love most and what I studied at uni. There are others I would include for those who have children:

-anything by Madeleine L'Engle
-The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
- The Harry Potter books (duh)
- the Ramona and Fudge books (for younger readers)
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsen Burnett
- Tom's Midnight Garden (best read after previous listing, as SG is a huge influence on this text) by Phillipa Pearce
- The NIMH books
- Charlotte's Web - E.B. White - an absolutely beautiful and poetic book that I would even recommend to highly literate adults as it is flawlessly written and stunning in every way...probably should be in my top list - woops!!

Fave Picture Storybooks
Where the Wild Things Are
Diary of a Wombat
The Giving Tree

Fav Poetry for Children
Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky

Fav Poetry for Adults
William Blake, Christina Rossetti, Walt Whitman, and especially, Robert Frost

Fav Essayists/Philosophers
You can't go past Emerson and Thoreau!!

Fav Short Stories

#1 is definitely An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce (has been my favourite since I first read it in year 9)

The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
The Rememberer - Aimee Bender (From The Girl in the Flammable Skirt)
Rain - Steven Millhauser (from The Barnum Museum)
To Build a Fire - Jack London
The Rocking-Horse Winner - DH Lawrence
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
The Hitchhiking Game - Milan Kundera
The Sea Lovers - Valerie Martin (from The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories)


Happy reading!!