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

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marzipan marzipan marzipan marzipan

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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said thanks for the insults and compliments
you'll never forget my face no more

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.