Now The BBC have got in on the act, with the following 21 books making the shortlist for "The Nation's Favourite Book". James Joyce and Ayn Rand are both conspicuous by their absence :)

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Captain Correlli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

Catch-22 by Joseph L Heller

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë