Favourite books of all time (apart from Jane Eyre)

Having mentioned - once or perhaps one hundred times - before that Jane Eyre is my favourite book OF ALL TIME, I decided to review which books apart that hallowed tome were my favourites.  After excluding books I've read this year or last because I felt it was too soon to tell if they will be all-time favourites, I eventually came up a list of five books that I still think about years after first reading them. 

1. Wild Swans by Jung Chang
This epic memoir reviews the lives of three generations of women in Chang's family - Chang's grandmother, Chang's mother, and Chang herself. A beautiful, absorbing tale of these women's lives and the major challenges they faced under Mao's communist regime.

2. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Mantel was so convincing in her account of Thomas Cromwell's rise to power under Henry VIII that I had to keep reminding myself that I was reading a fictional account of his life - that these weren't actually Cromwell's thoughts and feelings. The downside is that it completely ruined historical fiction for me. After reading Wolf Hall, I've struggled to enjoyed reading a historical fiction book (which I often did before) because it is never as good as this.

3. Overcoming low self-esteem by Melanie Fennell
To say that this book changed my life would be an overstatement - to even call it a favourite is an exaggeration. But, it really helped me overcome some "issues" shall we say. While I don't exactly have an abundance of self-esteem these days, I'm a lot more confidence because of this book.

4. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
A simply lovely book that charts the correspondence between a somewhat grumpy US writer and a UK bookseller. Read it to remind yourself that being yourself - even if you're grumpy and not that successful - is a perfectly fine thing to be.

5. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood 
This book within a book (click on the link as Goodreads will be able to describe it better than I can) has long stopped being a favourite for me; other books have pushed it from my memory. So much so that I wasn't going to include it in this list (which is why it's not included in the photo). However, I decided to add it in because I think it was one of the first literary fiction books that I ever read. Retrospectively, the book opened my mind to what writing could be; how stories - that weren't classics - didn't have to follow a set formula but could challenge your expectations. Given that I primarily read literary fiction these days, it seems only fair that I include it in this list.

All things Jane Eyre

I recently decided - for no other reason than because I felt like it - to read all things pertaining to Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece Jane Eyre, including both fiction and non-fiction. However, that was before I realised quite how many books there were out there that had something to do with Jane Eyre (94 according to this Goodreads list). As I have neither the money nor the time to read all of these books, I have decided instead read one book from each of the following categories: prequel, actual, retelling, sequel, and spin-off. 

Prequel - Wide Sargasso Sea by Rhys
There can no other prequel to read than Rhys' well-known novella, which documents how Antoinette Cosway - aka the first Mrs Rochester - ended up being called Bertha and locked up in an attic.

Actual - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Well, obviously, there'd be no point to this project if I didn't use it as an excuse re-read my all-time-favourite book would there?

Retelling - Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
I have always thought the accusation that Rebecca was a reworking of Jane Eyre a little unfair to Du Maurier. Certainly there are parallels with Bronte's work, but it's a magnificent book in its own right. The only reason I am choosing to re-read it for my "retelling" book is because it's the most famous retelling and the other ones on Goodreads looked pretty ropey (one has five one-star reviews; not a good sign).

Sequel - Reader I Married edited by Tracy Chevalier
Technically this is a collection of short stories that are inspired by Jane Eyre rather than a straightforward sequel, but it does have some that purport to be sequels. Plus, I already own it and as I've already bought three books specifically for this project, I need to rein things in a little.

Spin-off - The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
This comic crime novel about a "literary detective" called Thursday Next who has to enter the novel Jane Eyre stop a crime seems completely bonkers and, thus, a must read.

My goal after reading (or in some cases, re-reading) these books is to look at how the character of Jane in these books differs. However as Jane is only briefly referenced in Wild Sargasso Sea, I will look at  how Rochester in this book (though never actually named as such) compares with Bronte's version.