Books...

Not sure what you're looking for...  Catcher In the Rye?  Moby Dick?  Lord of the Flies?  Canterbury Tales?  Death of a Salesman?  Jane Eyre?  For Whom the Bell Tolls?  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?  Fahrenheit 451?  Slaughterhouse-Five?  The Iliad and the Odyssey?  Of Mice and Men?  Paradise Lost?  I'm sure I'll remember more later...
 
As for me, I like Ayn Rand's works like Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead.  Science Fiction is a big one for me too.  The Dune series among many others.
 
Steve will be along shortly (no pun intended) to suggest Fapula by Hand Stroker. 

Hemingway:
The Old Man and the Sea
 
Steinbeck:
Of Mice and Men
 
Stephen Crane:
Red Badge of Courage
 
Anything by Mark Twain
 
Ray Bradbury:
The Martian Chronicles
 
 
 

It's relatively new (1940's), but the 'Gormenghast' trilogy by Mervyn Peake is a stunning piece of literature;
 

 
 

I agree with anything by Ray Bradury or Kurt Vonnegut.  
 
Then there's this one that's a bit more modern, but fits the theme of How They Won The War thread:  
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.  
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces
 
 

Tastes vary, but I agree that P.G. Wodehouse was a genius. I could read his stuff all day (and I have). I also can't read enough Poe. On the other hand, Melville makes me want to use that DIY lobotomy kit. (Sorry, I'm not usually allowed in civilized company.) 
 
I would also include Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Jane Austen (yes, she's funny), Robert Louis Stevenson (What? I enjoy children's books, too), and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Mark Twain was  fantastic. H.G. Wells and Jules Verne had some great ideas. There are probably a lot more, but those are the ones that bubbled to the surface first.

all of my books are electronic now.
save a tree.
 
most recent:
 
Stephen Hawkings' "A Briefer History of Time", which is the updated version which includes string theory, quantum mechanics and more on the big bang theory
 
 
before that, bram stoker's "Dracula".
 
 
i'm also a sucker for music stuff,
 
several good recent purchases:
KEN SCOTT'S "ABBEY ROAD TO ZIGGY STARDUST" (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)
"KICKING AND DREAMING", ANN AND NANCY WILSON (HEART)
"A WIZARD A TRUE STAR: TODD RUNDGREN IN THE STUDIO", PAUL MYERS

I  love  sci fi and otherworldy books, that is , if they can take me somewhere or make me think I am somewhere else or I buy into the characters.
 
I like  books about things that people swear happened but science says it couldn't have happened. I have at least a dozen books in my reading area at home right now all started into a few chapters. I'll read some of one and then some of another.They all get read eventually unless they are really bad. When I go to the used bookstores I end up with books on just about anything,the Apollo missions, weird weather, ghosts,demons, scifi,electronic,recording and technical  books.
I have at least 10 copies of the good book lying around in different versions.I have already read it but I reference it a lot. Lately Ive been buying Kindle books because they are much less expensive than hardbacks. It seems odd the way you buy books for the ipad though.....the kindle app will only let you add a book to a wish list. I have an Amazon app on my ipad but it won't let me buy a Kindle book and the Kindle app won't let me buy a book...instead I have to go to the Amazon legacy site and buy books, then I have the option to decide which device I want the book sent to..... it would be nice just to buy a Kindle book from Kindle. Since the samples I read to decide on what I want to buy come from Kindle I do a lot of jumping around back and forth. Still a nice way to read a book IMO.

I really enjoyed this one book called Reality Challenged, but the author apparently hasn't made any additional offerings since, so I've gone back to reading a phone book from 1982 (some of the later editions have words that are harder to pronounce so I stick with the Classics). 

+1 for Jane Austin.  Most of the recommendations so far have not been pre-20th century.  I seldom read books that old, but I have enjoyed Austin quite a lot.  Some might suggest that she wrote "chick-lit".  But no - it's extremely sophisticated and witty prose.
 
Now, if you want recommendations on 20th/21st century SF and fantasy, just say so, and the floodgates will open!

UbiquitousBubba
I can't stand that guy, Craigb...

 
(Someone has to use a cattle prod on badger pester hound annoy poke motivate you!  )

Rain
... Hence, I've recently started reading Shelley's Frankenstein in English for the first time in my life. Up next, obviously,  Stoker's Dracula ...

 
BEFORE, you read Dracula, you gotta reas a couple of things around that time, that are really quick reads and kinda tell you how Mary Shelley came to write her book. You gotta read Polidori's "Vampyr" and then Sherida Le Fanu's Carmilla. Along with The Castle of Otranto (Walpole) this was pretty much the beginning of "gothic literature" that was eventually furthered by the French Revolution and its gory public'ness.
 
There is a novel, by some guy whose name I can never remember, called "The Missolonghi Manuscripts" and it is about the week or two that these books were written by Polidori and Mary. And it also gives, although in a fictionalized way, a nice picture of those days and nights! Marvellous reading.
 
There is a critical book, called "The Romantic Agony" that is a magnificent write up about the literature that started that era.
 
 

Moshkiae
There is a novel, by some guy whose name I can never remember, called "The Missolonghi Manuscripts" and it is about the week or two that these books were written by Polidori and Mary. And it also gives, although in a fictionalized way, a nice picture of those days and nights! Marvellous reading.

 
Frederic Prokosch?

craigb

Moshkiae
There is a novel, by some guy whose name I can never remember, called "The Missolonghi Manuscripts" and it is about the week or two that these books were written by Polidori and Mary. And it also gives, although in a fictionalized way, a nice picture of those days and nights! Marvellous reading.

 
Frederic Prokosch?

I believe so. Have to find it and look for it and check it out again!
 
(Sorry ... so many posts!)
On the Gothic literature theme:
 
In school (Santa Barbara City College)  I once taught a 2 day course on the history of Gothic Literature, and it went from 1750's to 1970's and closed it with Ann Rice and Dennis Wheatley.
 
A couple of notes on it that make it more interesting and sometimes give away a little more history for it all:
 
- The French Revolution added a lot of gory stuff to the genre.
 
- Lord Byron wrote a vampire story. The Corsair, I think it was. But reading poetry is not everyone's cup of tea. I think Percy Shelley had one, but not sure which one it was. Polidori was their family doctor.
 
- Dumas fits into the "gothic" era but much later.
 
- Bram Stoker kinda closes the "era" with the ultimate story. However, the majority of its intense story is the fact that it is written in diary form and letters, and you keep waiting for the next letter of diary entry!
 
- Dion Fortune wrote several novels that are also difficult to read because of all the magic and ritualistic content in it.  This makes for difficult reading and understanding of what is going on.
 
- Aleister Crowley has two novels that are magnificent. "Moonchild" and "Diary of a Drug Fiend". The first I don't even know where and how to start a comment. The 2nd is the best study of addiction ever done by anyone and the only one that does not cop out on the drugs or himself. Excellent book, but difficult reading because of all the ritualistic and magic content.
 
- Ann Rice. The best work of hers, is not her well known material, but the stuff that she writes in her pseudonym, which has more sex, drugs and rock'n'roll than the more popular stuff which oftenn cops out at the worst moments. The other stories worry less about the sex and what not, and this helps the story flow a lot more clearly.
 
- Dennis Wheatley has some really "heavy" and totally insane stories in his "black magic series", and these are very difficult reading for most people, and the insanity behind it is even worse. An acquired taste!
 
Other than that, I have done a lot of reading lately on biographies of some of the progressive rock folks in the hopes of being able to put together my own book on the subject. I like to "know/understand" how an artist thinks, though this changes everyday like you and I know! A lot of the folks that came and went in our house, this was what their discussions were usually about, after the surface discussions were out of the way. I always liked how ... that's an interesting idea, and what happens if we ... which is something that a lot of musicians don't like to play with, because it interferes with their own ideas. It's not so much about interfering as it is about all of these ideas intersecting and making each other stronger!