The 30 Best Books Of The Past 30 Years: How Many Have You Read?

As The British Book Awards announces its longlist for the 'best' book of the past three decades, check out our gallery and see how many you've read.

30 Best Books

by Rhiannon Evans |
Updated on

To mark 30 years of The British Book Awards (aka The Nibbies), the awards have announced they will give a one-off award for the 'best' book of the past three decades.

The award will be announced on 18 May, but before that, the awards have created a longlist of 30 books from the past 30 years. The list is made up of past winners at the British Book Awards, founded in 1990.

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Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller and chair of the judges at the British Book Awards, said: 'For 30 years the British Book Awards has celebrated and rewarded everything that is good about British publishing through its big, successful and prize-winning books. This is an opportunity to relive a few memories of these past three decades, to cherish the books, authors, illustrators, agents, and publishers that brought them to market and the booksellers and librarians that sought out readers for them.'

So, how many have you read?

Gallery

30 Best Books Of The Past Three Decades

30 Best Books1 of 30

A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle (Penguin)

30 Best Books2 of 30

Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (Picador)

30 Best Books3 of 30

Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)

30 Best Books4 of 30

Brick Lane, Monica Ali (Transworld)

30 Best Books5 of 30

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini (Bloomsbury)

30 Best Books6 of 30

5 Ingredients, Jamie Oliver (Michael Joseph)

30 Best Books7 of 30

Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama (Canongate)

30 Best Books8 of 30

Delia Smith’s Christmas (BBC Books)

30 Best Books9 of 30

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman (HarperFiction)

30 Best Books10 of 30

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres (Vintage)

30 Best Books11 of 30

Fifty Shades of Grey, EL James (Cornerstone)

30 Best Books12 of 30

Longitude, Dava Sobel (Fourth Estate)

30 Best Books13 of 30

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J K Rowling (Bloomsbury)

30 Best Books14 of 30

How to Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran (Ebury)

30 Best Books15 of 30

Northern Lights, Philip Pullman (Scholastic)

30 Best Books16 of 30

Normal People, Sally Rooney (Faber)

30 Best Books17 of 30

One Day, David Nicholls (Hodder)

30 Best Books18 of 30

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon (David Fickling)

30 Best Books19 of 30

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson (Quercus)

30 Best Books20 of 30

The Lost Words, Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane (Hamish Hamilton)

30 Best Books21 of 30

The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Picador)

30 Best Books22 of 30

Sahara, Michael Palin (Weidenfeld Nicholson)

30 Best Books23 of 30

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (Transworld)

30 Best Books24 of 30

The Art Book (Phaidon)

30 Best Books25 of 30

The Sound of Laughter, Peter Kay (Century)

30 Best Books26 of 30

The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt

30 Best Books27 of 30

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)

30 Best Books28 of 30

Wild Swans, Jung Chang (William Collins)

30 Best Books29 of 30

White Teeth, Zadie Smith (Penguin)

30 Best Books30 of 30

The Gruffalo’s Child, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

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