Here are my favourite 20 books of all time. How many have you read? And which favourites of yours have I missed out?

Numbers 20-16

20 - Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

A gloriously imaginative story about a boy call Pi who is trapped on a boat with a Bengal tiger. This short sentence doesn't do the scope of the book justice: I vividly remember a fight to the death between a hyena and an orangutan, an island in which the meerkats escape into the trees at night to avoid being eaten by the vegetation and the deliberately equivocal reply from Pi towards the end: "And so it goes with God".

19 - A Dry Spell (Clare Chambers)

I discovered Clare Chambers (like so many others) when I read the excellent Small Pleasures, and am now working my way through her back catalogue. A Dry Spell contains her usual superb use of English and wit, but also four ill-matched students taking a memorable trip through the Algerian desert, along with some profound insights into the nature of marriage and relationships.

18 - To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

In my dreams I am Atticus Finch, having the courage to defend the (black) Tom Robinson against a racist all-white jury in the Deep South of the US. This combines a coming-of-age story (as Atticus's daughter learns how life really works) with a profound moral (that even when you know you're not going to succeed, you should still do the right thing).

17 - Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)

A collection of 6 stories loosely bound together, some more gripping and readable than others, but all showing a gifted writer at the height of his powers (my opinion: I think I've read all of David Mitchell's books, although his last work - Utopia Avenue, about the music industry - was published 6 years ago now).

16 - Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)

Starting with one of the most famous opening lines in literature - "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" - this tells the story of Maxim de Winter and his new wife (whose name we never discover). Overshadowing everything is the memory of Mr. de Winter's first wife Rebecca, who it turns out wasn't quite the person his new wife initially takes her to be.

15 - The Poldark series (Winston Graham)

If you want something to take on holiday with you, start with Ross Poldark and work your way through the 12-book series. Winston Graham (like virtually all of the authors in this list, I hope) is a master writer, knowing not just what story to tell but also how to tell it. A little piece of my heart still belongs to Demelza Poldark, I confess.

Numbers 15-11

15 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

I've read a few other books by Douglas Adams, but none of them are as good as the first 3 books in the HItchhiker series, containing immortal lines like these:

The radio series, books and TV adaptations have given us so many points of reference, including of course the answer to life, the Universe and everything being 42. Plus I went (for a while) to the same college at Cambridge as Douglas: I hope he enjoyed it more than I did.

14 - The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)

This story of a butler gradually realising that the man he serves is a dyed-in-the-wool fascist - and that he has wasted his adult life in the service of something he doesn't agree with - sounds to me like the author screaming at his readers to get the most out of life. Excellent advice - and it's beautifully written, too.

13 - The Magus (John Fowles)

Many reviewers say that this is a book to be read while you're a student, but I re-read it a few years ago and still loved it. Maybe I've never grown up? If nothing else, the book will make you want to take the next plane out to a Greek island. John Fowles writes beautiful English (you'll see this is a theme of these choices), and manages to keep the air of mystery and suspense going at the right pitch without ever losing the reader's interest.

12 - The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

I'm a huge fan of Barbara Kingsolver's earlier books. I loved The Lacuna, which people may have heard of, and The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven (which are less well-known), but it's her description of the descent into madness of the preacher Nathan Price in the Congo - and the tragic consequences for his wife and 4 daughters - which is surely her greatest achievement.

11 - The Fault in our Stars (John Green)

If you've never listened to The Anthropocene Reviewed podcast from John Green, do so - or else buy the book based upon it. He's one of those authors who could make a shopping list interesting. Looking for Alaska and Turtles All the Way Down were great books for young adults (I think I read them in my 40s), but it's The Fault in our Stars which had me alternatively laughing and sobbing. And the best thing about all of his work is that it's never exploitative; his latest book is on the history of TB, based on his voluntary work in Sierra Leone, and many of his books draw on his struggles with mental illness.

Numbers 10-6

10 - A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (Julian Barnes)

I've read nearly everything John Barnes has written. He writes beautiful, economical English: you know that every sentence has been honed until it is perfect. This, however, is my favourite, telling 10 (and a half) short fascinating stories based on history, art and life in the most engrossing way.

9 - The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)

The Lord of the Rings was good, but it's long, and you do need to get your head round a lot of Middle Earth history and strange names to do it justice. For me The Hobbit is Tolkien's greatest achievement, and one of the best stories ever written. I can still remember the scene where the last light of the autumn sun sets on Durin's Day illuminating the keyhole of the secret door into Smaug's lair, even though I last re-read the book a fair few years ago. What a shame that the film jettisoned some of the best scenes and lines!

8 - Enigma (Robert Harris)

I think I have read every book Robert Harris has written, and enjoyed every one of them (although I prefer the earlier works in general). But for me Enigma is the greatest, telling the story of the code-breakers at Bletchley Park so convincingly that you can feel the cold, ill-furnished rooms of the old manor house and its surrounding buildings. Robert Harris's research is excellent, his writing gripping and above all the plot about a secret within an already secret world is superbly constructed and executed.

7 - The Silver Sword (Ian Serraillier)

I don't know how many times I've read this book, but it was ... many. Yes, it's a children's book, but it addresses adult themes of love and loss, and I can still remember scenes from it even though I haven't read it since my childhood. You find yourself rooting for Ruth and Bronia, and even for the wayward Jan, and the book doesn't sugar-coat the difficulties the family will face after the war ends.

6 - A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

If you want to know what it's like being poor - really poor, on-the-breadline poor - you could read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, but A Fine Balance does the job even better and is an easier read. It tells the story of two tailors in Indira Gandhi's India in the 1970s, but its themes are - as they say - universal. There are at least three scenes in the book which have etched a permanent place in my mind, they are so memorable.

Number 5

Love Story (Erich Segal)

"Love means never having to say you're sorry". Most people who know this book at all will probably remember Ryan O'Neal saying this to his father at the end of the film, with the dum-dum-da-dum-dum piano music playing in the background. However, the book (as so often) is far better than the film.

"What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?", it begins. "That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.".

Many of us fall in love in our lives, and go on to marry the person we've fallen in love with, but time, children, life and work tend to erode the passion and intensity of our relationships. Love Story shows what happens if the love of your life dies in their prime - in well under 200 pages.

Erich Segal was a Yale professor of Classics. He wrote a sequel to Love Story telling Oliver's Story, which I thought was almost as good (it also had me in tears), as well as one called Man and Woman and Child in a similar vein. But it's the memory of Oliver Barrett IV and Jenny Cavilleri which is Segal's greatest legacy.

Fact: I'm married to a Jenny. Just saying.

Number 4

Alice's Adventures (Lewis Carroll)

I'm cheating a bit here, as really this is two books: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. However they are both short, and are usually published in the same volume, so I'm going to treat them as a single work.

What can you say about this work of genius? It's given us (among other things):

• The Mad Hatter's tea party

• The Cheshire Cat ("'Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice; 'but a grin without a cat!")

• The Walrus and the Carpenter (I used to know every word of this)

To find out more about the mathematical logic and satire hidden within the Alice books I recommend The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner, which has the text on one page and explanatory notes on the other.

Number 3

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

Not sure if Pride and Prejudice is for you? Here's one of my favourite excerpts (Mr. Darcy is talking to Elizabeth Bennett):

I fell in love with Elizabeth Bennett on first reading Pride and Prejudice, and remain a fan of hers to this day: along with the grotesque Mr. Collins, the unlikeable Mary Bennett and the charmless Lady Catherine de Burgh. There are many rags-to-riches girl-gets-her-prince stories in our culture (Shrek, Cinderella, Pretty Woman) but Pride and Prejudice is surely the greatest.

Number 2

1984 (George Orwell)

I think it's fair to say I'm a fan of George Orwell, despite his appalling behaviour to his wife Eileen (I recommend Wifedom by Anna Funder to see just how appalling this was). I dragged my wife up to Barnwood at the tip of the remote island of Jura just to see the remote cottage where Orwell wrote most of 1984.

I think there's a fair claim to Animal Farm being Orwell's easiest book to read, but 1984 is for me the one which is closest to genius. The world described in 1984 is becoming closer to reality all the time, with the ubiquitous surveillance in China, the cult of personality in many regimes and the splitting of the world into 3 great powers (the USA, Russia and China) each having their zones of influene.

But don't judge 1984 on its ability to foretell the future; judge it on its impact on the present. Here are just 3 things which this remarkable book has given us:

• Big Brother

• The word Orwellian

• Room 101

I personally will never be able to look a rat in the face again ...

Number 1

The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham)

What, you were expecting something more literary? Dickens, perhaps, or Tolstoy?

I have read every one of John Wyndham's books, including the short stories, but by far my two favourites are The Chrysalids (describing a world in which genetic mutation is rife, but punishable by death, and in which children can communicate by thought) and The Day of the Trifiids. The beauty of the premise for the latter is that it rests on just two things happening: an overnight comet shower of (presumably) human-generated weapons which blinds virtually the whole of humanity, and the creation of plants which can use three legs to move around and which inflict lethal stings with their tendrils.

I don't really know why I love this book so much, and why I've read it so many times. I think it's just that for a book about the destruction of society and a post-apocalyptic world, it's so remarkably cheering: it always puts me in a good mood when I read it.