World Book day is right around the corner, and we suppose if you got absolutely no sleep between now and March 5th, you might be able to read all the best books of the last 20 years.
The titles were chosen by a panel of literary experts to mark the 20th anniversary of the Independent Bath Literature Festival, and they chose one book from ever year from 1995 all the way through to 2014.
These were books that may have been awarded prizes in the year and are well known (a few have become movies already), or they were a popular choice from the panel members and may not have been recognised at the time.
1995 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
1996 Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
1997 American Pastoral by Philip Roth
1998 England, England by Julian Barnes
1999 Disgrace by JM Coetzee
2000 White Teeth by Zadie Smith
2001 Atonement by Ian McEwan
2002 Any Human Heart by William Boyd
2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
2004 Small Island by Andrea Levy
2005 We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
2006 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2007 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2008 The Outcast by Sadie Jones
2009 The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
2010 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2011 A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
2012 State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
2013 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
2014 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
When it comes to the best of the best, the panel put 2010's Wolf Hall on top of the pile, saying that the list as a whole contained works that had transformed the literary landscape, and Wolf Hall has done that "with bells on".
Via i100. Main pic via Phil Roeder/Flickr
