I want someone to tell me what to read, okay? I don't like just choosing random books because they might be sort of good. I want the staples.
Crass like Irvine Welsh is fine but cliche like Chuck Palalalamnddndnniuk is bad. My favorite book ever is the world according to garp. Please no Poppy Z Brite or Girl, Interrupted. Please. I want to know what classics are actually worth reading, too. By classic, I don't mean the books you had to read in high school.

Thanks.

i like jorge luis borges, paul auster, kazuo ishiguro, peter carey, jonathan safran foer

i won't answer the classics part of your question

lol I automatically clicked on the thread title link, I fail.

read

the catcher in the rye - jd salinger
then his other books, mostly for esme with love and squalor

kurt vonnegut - slaughterhouse five, breakfast of champions, but really any of his

hit up some coupland. any will do but i suppose you could start with generation x.

i love Jane Eyre, DH Lawrence is great, sons and lovers is my favourite by him

read the fountainhead by ayn rand.

hunter s. thompson, fear and loathing, hell's angels.

tthe secret history, by donna tartt
these are my favourite.

if you read them all and like them all we might end up having the same brain.

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you'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking

I second Sons and Lovers and Slaughterhouse-5.

I'll add:

To Kill a Mocking Bird - Harper Lee
For Whom The Bell Tolls - Hemingway
Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
Homage To Catalonia - George Orwell

Although, this thread is totally subjective. No one's idea of a classic is going to exactly match yours.

agreeing with a lot of what others have said.

also, decline and fall by evelyn waugh and lucky jim by kingsley amis. they're funny.

my very faves are j.d. salinger and f. scott fitzgerald. swoon.

Cowboys: All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
Roman History: Julian, by Gore Vidal
American History and folklore: Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
War: All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque & A Farewell To Arms, by Ernest Hemingway & The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien
Mystical families and generations: House of Spirits, by Isabel Allende & One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
Sad Russians doing bad things: Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky & The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
Philosphical and sad romantics: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
Funny people: Leave it to Psmith, by P.G. Wodehouse or practically anything else by him
The mafia: The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
Grumpy people/existentialism: Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre & The Fall, by Albert Camus
John Waters: Shock Value, by John Waters

Even if you don't like the categories I still recommend each one.
I loved Slaughterhouse Five, too.

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You must live on land and I must live at sea.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
Let's Spend the Night Together - Pamela Des Barres (okay, not a classic, but amazing )

YES.

His Illegal Self is ace.

Everyone should read American Psycho.

And I agree on Great Gatsby, any Hunter S Thompson, Douglas Coupland and Catcher in the Rye.

Also *mong face* Bell Jar, even if it is morbidly depressing. Junky and Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.

YES, YES, YES. and whoever said slaughterhouse 5. Can i add the idiot by dostoevsky, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

I love those two especially Lucky Jim, the funniest book I've ever read.

ugh I hate how cliched my taste is

yes to kurt vonnegut

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Cunt by Inga Musico
When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone
Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Girly Brown

lots have already been said, but:

beloved by toni morrison
jane eyre by charlotte bronte
the history of love by nicole krauss
oscar and lucinda by peter carey
good omens by neil gaiman and terry pratchett (so fkin good and funny!)
the house of the spirits by isabel allende
seven types of ambiguity by eliot perlman
aaand steinbeck.

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i think there may be something on my head.

That was such a distessing book!

Ugh. I felt so scared for such a long time afterwards.

Also, a book I've just mentioned in another thread, Monster Love by Carol Topolski is quite a good read but again, it's quite disturbing.

I kept waking up my boyfriend while I read it for comfort!

Another vote here for Evelyn Waugh, and some non-cliché Orwell - by which I mean Down&Out or The Road To Wigan Pier. It's not ALL about 1984 pplz...

Read some de Sade, too... Justine is good. Also if you have the patience with her writing style, try Woolf's Orlando. It nearly killed me because I hate the way she writes.

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Oh and Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Fucking HILARIOUS and I had to put Rizla in all the pages to remind myself where the funny funny quotes were (see sig).

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Philosophy in the boudoir-Marques De Sade
Against Nature(A rebours)-Huysmans
Notes from the underground-Dostoevsky
Les enfants Terribles-Jean Cocteau
The city and the pillar-Gore Vidal

I'd also read proust and eurepides especially if you go for the more obscure tragedies!