"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all." Thoreau
Some of my favorite reads:
Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations (Maxwell Staniforth translation)
Beowulf Poet. Beowulf (Burton Raffel translation)
Buffett, Jimmy. A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Bukowski, Charles. Post Office
Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish Saved Civilization
Campbell, Bonnie Jo. American Salvage
Carnegie, Dale. How To Win Friends and Influence People
Carver, Raymond. Cathedral
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales
Cheever, John. The Stories of John Cheever
Chekhov, Anton. The Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov (Pevear & Volokhonsky translation)
Clarke, Arthur C.. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Crichton, Michael. The Andromeda Strain
Dahl, Roald. Fantastic Mr. Fox
Dahl, Roald. James and the Giant Peach
Davis, Terry. Vision Quest
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale: and Other Classic Stories
Dinesen, Isak. Out of Africa
Doig, Ivan. This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov (Pevear & Volokhonsky translation)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment (Jessie Coulson translation)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot (Pevear & Volokhonsky translation)
Dundee, Angelo. My View from the Corner
Fante, John. Ask the Dust
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby
García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude
George, Jean Craighead. My Side of the Mountain
Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea
Herbert, Frank. Dune
Hilton, James. Lost Horizon
Hinton, S.E.. The Outsiders
Homer. The Iliad (Robert Fagles translation)
Homer. The Odyssey (Robert Fagles translation)
Jones, Stephen Graham. The Only Good Indians
Jackson, Shirley. We Have Always Lived in the Castle
King, Stephen. Doctor Sleep
King, Stephen. It
King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
King, Stephen. Pet Sematary
King, Stephen. Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing
King, Stephen. The Shining
Klein, Marcus, and Pack, Robert, eds.. Short Stories: Classic, Modern, Contemporary
Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird
L'Amour, Louis. Flint
L'Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird
Lee, Shannon. Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee
Lewis, C.S.. The Chronicles of Narnia
Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend and Other Stories
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics
McManus, Patrick F. A Fine and Pleasant Misery
McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita
Ness, Patrick. A Monster Calls
Norris, Frank. McTeague
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried
Orwell, George. 1984
Ovid. Metamorphoses
Palahniuk, Chuck. Consider This
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club
Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago (Pevear & Volokhonsky translation)
Percy, Benjamin. Thrill Me
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Pollock, Donald Ray. Knockemstiff
Pollock, Donald Ray. The Devil All the Time
Proulx, Annie, ed.. The Best American Short Stories 1997
Pushkin, Alexander. Eugene Onegin (James E. Falen translation)
Raskin, Ellen. The Westing Game
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. The Yearling
Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
Steinbeck, John. Cannery Row
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and other writings
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit
Tolstoy, Leo. Master and Man (Constance Garnett translation)
Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilych (Constance Garnett translation)
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace (Pevear & Volokhonsky translation)
Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Sons (Constance Garnett translation)
Turow, Scott. Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty
Updike, John, ed.. The Best American Short Stories of the Century
Virgil. The Aeneid (Robert Fitzgerald translation)
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray
Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road