At this time of year everyone looks back on the new books that they read but I want to give books from the last 100 years a look-in. Is it because I’m a misty-eyed Classics Editor and most of my authors are too dead to partake in the annual round of backslapping in the broadsheets? Possibly. But you’ve only got to compare the Amazon rankings of Revolutionary Road (#8,947) to Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction (#61) to realise it’s a good idea to give not-new books a little more time to shine. These are the books that usually reside spine out on the shelf frantically trying to catch your eye as you wander the bookshop, whilst the new books, foiled up to the nines and belly up on the tables, hog all the limelight. So I’ve asked brilliant and knowledgeable booksellers which old books they would press into our hands if we were lucky enough to wander into their lovely shops. I hope this list inspires you to visit your local bookshop and enjoy rooting out these gems. Carouse, browse and be merry…
Stuart Hammond, The Riverside Bookshop (Hays Galleria, Counter Street, City of London SE1 2HD)
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Oh man: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 is one of my absolute favourite novels going. It's a perfect one to press on teenagers, or people who think they're not really all that into reading, or just any human being with a pair of eyes hooked up to a brain, come to think of it. Who could fail to enjoy Vonnegut's "short and jumbled and jangled" novel of his bogglingly harrowing experiences in Germany - and particularly the firebombed city of Dresden - in WWII? Dead serious and yet dead funny, witty and wise and weird as hell; reading Slaughterhouse 5 is like hanging out with your loveable favourite uncle while he spins yarns, cracks jokes, and reminds you that man's capacity for destruction and violence is so horrifyingly great that it kind of makes you want to laugh and cry and puke blood all at the same time.
Mary and John James, The Aldeburgh Bookshop (42 High Street Aldeburgh, IP15 5AB)
The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald
We read it when we first came on holiday to Suffolk and it suffused and enhanced our enjoyment of the East Coast so much that we bought the bookshop a year later and moved here from London. So the book really did change our lives.
Glenn Collins, Blackwell’s (100 Charing Cross Road , London WC2H 0JG)
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Firstly, both Jon Franzen in his essay, 'Mr Difficult', and William Gass in his introduction have extolled the wonders of this mighty novel about the real and the fake far more eloquently than I ever could. It's 956 pages long, it has Latin quotes that are not translated in the footnotes, there's lots of religious talk and theorising going on, pretty much all of the characters are chronically unsympathetic, and yet, alongside Infinite Jest, it is my favourite book. Certainly it's the funniest novel I've ever read, the big party scenes with all the cultured arty types talking nonsense at each other will remain with me for as long as I live. It's been described as Gravity's Rainbow's older, smarter brother, and I'd go along with that.
Nic Bottomley, Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights (14/15 John Street, Bath, BA1 2JL)
The Blackbirder by Dorothy Hughes
In search of lost pulp I came across The Blackbirder by Dorothy Hughes. Every bit as pacey as a Chandler or Hammett novel, Hughes’ World War 2 era thriller follows its heroine as she flees New York City after being spotted, on the very first page, by someone she really doesn’t seem to want to be spotted by. Variously nervous of, and potentially pursued by, the Gestapo, aggrieved family members and the law, the feisty Julie heads to Santa Fe in search of the shadowy blackbirder himself – the man who smuggles people in and out of America by air under cover of darkness. Julie’s complex and troubled past is drip fed into an energetic plot already stuffed with twists and turns. Cracking page-turning storytelling from an underrated mistress of the genre.
Eve Griffiths, The Bookcase (50 Main Street, Lowdham, Nottingham, NG14 7BE) 
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I am ashamed to say I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for the first time only a couple of years ago. Couldn't believe it had taken me so long to discover one of the greatest books ever! I suspect it will become one of those 'must re-read books'. Last year I had the delight of sharing it with my granddaughter who was studying it for GCSE and her enthusiasm matched my own and led us to go to the theatre for the stage adaptation and to watch the DVD together. A book which can bridge the generations in this way is very special.
Max Potter, Daunt Books (158-164 Fulham Road, London SW10 9PR)
Red Cavalry Stories by Isaac Babel
The stand-out not-new book of the year for me this year was Red Cavalry Stories by Isaac Babel. He’d nagged at me for a long time because his life as well as his work connected to a lot of other things I have loved, but I was completely unprepared for the quality of his prose and his approach to the subject. It is staggeringly good writing and seems to me to be a colossally important bit of work, and incalculably influential. The edition I read also had his notebooks where he jots down fragments and motifs to use in stories, and these read like a furious short-hand war correspondent’s Book of Disquiet. 10 pages in I walked up the aisle of the aeroplane I was on to tell my wife I had a new book in my all time top ten.
Anthony Smith, Slightly Foxed (123 Gloucester Road, London, SW7 4TE)
Woodbrook by David Thomson
I've finally got around to reading David Thomson's Woodbrook this year. Originally published by Barrie & Jenkins in 1974, there were only 1,500 hardback copies printed but it is now a Vintage paperback and should reach as wide an audience as it deserves. Thomson's memoir begins in 1932 when, at eighteen, he became tutor to an Anglo-Irish landowner's two daughters and arrived at the big house of Woodbrook for the first time. As the years pass, they provide opportunities to reflect on the terrible history of Ireland and British involvement with it, but also the chance to describe the platonic love he felt for Phoebe, the older girl, which is thwarted and tinged with tragedy. A beautifully written account of a time and a place evoked without sentiment or nostalgia.
Vivian Archer, Newham Bookshop (745-747 Barking Road, London, E13 9ER)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
I was so impressed with the new film of Jane Eyre that I went back to the book again. It retains its ability to move and inspire. Jane’s strength really shines through and will continue to sustain women for centuries.
By Laura Hassan, Vintage Classics Editorial Director