There's a hole in my reading, dear Liza, dear Liza...

I'm going to halt you right there if you're going to say 'there's no such thing as books you must read'. There probably isn't, if one wants to stretch a point. But there are authors and novels I would feel, on my deathbed, lacking from my reading life, if I were not to try them. Ok? Ok. Lovely.

So, I'm getting into the literary confessional, and letting you know some of the authors I am a little or a lot ashamed not to have read anything at all by. (Feel free to rephrase that sentence in your head, so that it doesn't end with a preposition.) Some of these would be considered canonical - some are simply authors that people with my tastes love, and thus I feel I should have read. This is just, I think, British, Irish and American authors. If we started looking further afield than that, it would just get too embarrassing. Sorry if these authors are from elsewhere; blame my ignorance. And I'm sure I'll think of dozens more later - these are just the ones who come to mind first.

If you spot a name and think "Wow, he hasn't read anything by that author, he MUST read THIS RIGHT NOW" then do tell me with which title I should start.

Anthony Trollope
Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
W.M. Thackeray
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
Jonathan Swift
Wilkie Collins
L.M. Montgomery
Aldous Huxley
Mark Twain
V.S. Naipaul
Christopher Isherwood
Beryl Bainbridge
Kingsley Amis
Martin Amis
Paul Auster
William Golding
Toni Morrison
Robert Louis Stevenson [EDIT: oops, forgot about Dr. J & Mr. H, I have read that!]
Rosamund Lehmann
Beverley Nichols
Henry Green
Winifred Holtby
Vera Brittain
Margaret Forster
Margaret Drabble
Dorothy Parker
Salley Vickers
Anita Brookner
Anita Shreve
Salman Rushdie
E. Arnot Robertson
Radclyffe Hall
Penelope Mortimer
W. Somerset Maugham