In an post-apocalyptic scenario, where you have five minutes to grab books from a library... what would you take?

"narcissus and goldmund," "the quiet room," Robert Frost(definitely,) a couple volumes of Durant, and "the essential Calvin and Hobbes"

that's "the story of civilization" by Will and Ariel Durant, a ten-volume set.

Do I have to bring them back? And can I take the foxy librarian from my local library to share my post-apocalyptic underground bunker with? As long as she doesn't mind of course.

The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse.

I won't be taking the school ma'am from my library into any bunker !

Depends if she's a shuffly old school rotting zombie or the newfangled running, blood-spewing kind. I know which one I'd prefer... Either way I probably wouldn't get much reading done.

I think I'd venture to the children's library. I would need some fairy tale reading in my bunker being this apocalyptic. Then I would definitely take H.C. (Andersen) and Lewis Carrol.

Obviously first choice would be How To: Survive the end of the World. Maybe a bible, just in case. As a practical man I'd probably go to the letter M section and rescue some Murakami, Magnus Mills, John Mortimer's Rumpole books, a little bit of Spike Milligan, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan, Walter Moers, and maybe venture into L for Jonathan Lethem and a quick trip into N for David Nobbs (can you imagine a world without Reggie Perrin). I'd also like to grab Plato's republic and Darwin's on the origin of species, but that would take some not inconsiderable misfiling. Mind you, if it's anything like my local library it'll just have to be 1001 things you didn't know about Crochet and Russ Abbott's autobiography and put in an order for the rest

Firstly some outdoor survival manuals. I don't think I'd take any fiction apart from The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare, The Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. I'd stick to poetry and spiritual texts because I'd probably need comfort and wisdom more than entertainment. I think I'd take selected William Blake and other Romantic poets like Keats, Wordsworth, John Clare, also Cavalier and Metaphysical poets and the complete poems of Emily Dickinson and The Tao Teh Ching and the Analects of Confucius. Anything that helps me survive internally.

101 Dalmatians. There's bound to be one I like.

The SAS Survival Guide The Beat Reader From Hell (graphic novel) As many short story anthologies as I can carry Anything by Chuck Palahniuk or Neil Gaiman The Tao Of Pooh The Tibetan Book Of Living and Dying

100 years of solitude 7 Gothic Tales Canterbury Tales 1001 nights J.K Rowlings Wuthering Heights Definetly Faulkner Pablo Neruda a couple of dictionaries the encyclopedia og Rock Tintin Astrid Lindgren Shakespeare I can't carry anymore How about DVD's?

Collected Stories by Raymond Carver and The Complete Short Stories Ernest Hemingway

You won't be able to borrow them at the library someth. Remember we have just been there ?

Anything by Cartland or Archer - and that Jaimie's 30 Minute Meals.

An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe On The Beach by Nevil Shute A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Gogol's 'Dead Souls' and Nabokov's book on Gogol, particularly for his fascinating analysis of the notion of 'pooshloost' - Russian word and a bit untranslatable, he says. When it comes to literature, 19th and 20th century Russians are the superpowers in my view. Yeah, okay, bung in a bit of Chekhov and bemoan the passing of the cherry orchard and feel it for the three sisters ... bless 'em.

Apollinaire Reverdy Ginsberg Kerouac Verlaine Neruda Paz Baudelaire Ferlinghetti Rimbaud

English to Spanish french german oh a bagful of pocket dictionaries, how to biuld a post apocalyptic igloo/boat/hut and garden for dummies, the paper from the copymachine, and the librarian.

If it's post-apocalyptic, it might be too late :) J/K, probably some Hemingway and some Vittorini.

nice lists -might we all congregate on top of a hill somewhere - build a new library? I've a coathanger, a spring, and some foil from a kit-kat wrapper for a new internet - and the librarian seems up for it..

Great idea ... Parliament Hill Fields? ... handy also for the Russian Teashop ... that place will definitely survive any holocaustic experience - just know it.

I would take all different languages, a book on what all the other animals need and something scary to keep me awake. Ofcourse if I see some my favourite stories I would grab them too :) hopeful fairytales like disney and the old fashioned gory kind and I will keep all my old books that they dont have in librarys.