BY JOHN LE CARRÉ

"   R i g h t    H o,    J e e v e s   "    b y    P . G .    W o d e h o u s e

Michael Chabon: The Swimmer by John Cheever Jeffrey Eugenides: Portrait of a Lady by Henry James Mary Gaitskill: The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo Dwight Garner: On the Road by Jack Kerouac Denis Johnson: Fat City by Leonard Gardner Cynthia Joyce: Mating by Norman Rush Gary Kamiya: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Mignon Khargie: Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee Laura Miller: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis Joyce Millman: Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris Joyce Carol Oates: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Reynolds Price: A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone Andrew Ross: The Castle by Franz Kafka Scott Rosenberg: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Ian Shoales: The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles Finney Joan Smith: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Amy Tan: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Mary Elizabeth Williams: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Cintra Wilson: Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving

i always loathe answering this question because it's such a temptation to show off. How impressed you would be if, for instance, I told you I liked nothing better than to curl up with Bishop Ulfilas's translation of the Bible into Gothic. And how often, I suspect, do all of us -- writers and readers alike -- urge upon our luckless friends and children books we have never managed to wade through ourselves. First things first then. No library, however humble, is complete without its well-thumbed copy of "Right Ho, Jeeves," by P.G. Wodehouse, which contains the immortal scene of Gussie Fink-Nottle, drunk to the gills, presenting the prizes to the delighted scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School, built around 1416. From there, expand to Wodehouse's two great golfing masterpieces: "The Heart of a Goof" and "The Clicking of Cuthbert." That's just to remind yourself what fun reading is. Only then fan out. Ford Maddox Ford's "The Good Soldier" is a neglected gem, one of the saddest and greatest novels of our century or any other. "Love In The Time Of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is equaled only by his novella, "Chronicle Of A Death Foretold," which in turn compares pretty well with the greatest short story in the world, Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilyich." If you come into an inheritance, add the novels of Dickens and Balzac, Herzen's memoirs, Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Josephus' "History of the Jews" and Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina." When you have read them all you will be better qualified for a doctorate in human nature than three quarters of the idiots who have got one. John Le Carre's novels include "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." His newest novel, "The Tailor of Panama" will be published in October, 1996.