125 leading authors, including Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Peter Carey, have listed their top reads in a new book to be published by W W Norton in March called The Top Ten (full story at the Times Online: When serious writers relax, they’re always in the mood for a romance).

It struck me that of the top ten rated works there were three Russian authors (Tolstoy, Chekhov and Nabokov), including the two we’re currently looking at for the Culture Club. See top ten list below:

The Top Ten

1 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

2 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

3 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

4 Lolita Vladimir – Nabokov

5 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

6 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

7 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

8 In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust

9 Stories of Anton Chekhov – Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

10 Middlemarch – George Eliot