The Times asks whether you have "ever wondered what books your favourite authors would choose as their favourites." No, not really. Anyway, here's more:

Leading writers from Britain, America and Australia have been asked to list their top ten works of literature, and the results will be published in a book next month.

The top-rated work was Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. His other great epic, War and Peace, came third. Two other Russians also made the top ten. Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous novel Lolita came fourth and the stories of Anton Chekhov ninth.

Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary came second. Shakespeare was the highest rated British author, coming sixth with Hamlet. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was voted the greatest American novel. The only woman to make the top ten was George Eliot with Middlemarch.

Nobody chose Shota Rustaveli's ვეფხისტყაოსანი (The Knight in the Panther's Skin)? That's a shame. No, I haven't read it; it's just that it's strange to look the Georgian and have no idea where Knight ends and Panther begins.

Surprisingly, none of the writers chose their own works. I noticed that Margaret Drabble had Chekhov's The [sic] Three Sisters as one of her choices. I don't think this is right. I have only ever seen the title as Three Sisters, without the definite article. The sense without the the is slightly different, although it is hard to explain why. More "take three sisters" rather than "the tale of three sisters", perhaps, and more suggestive of three sisters as individuals rather than a unit. I'm not sure, but I think it's better without the the.

"The The" is a band that seems to have been going for ever. It isn't just any old the, it's the The. If it were just any old the, it would be "A The".