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Chuck Munro
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Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett
Chuck Munro
My appreciation for this play only increases with age. It used to sound truly "absurd"; saw in on stage last year and now it sounds like conversations I have with my loved ones.
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee
I'll read or watch anything by Albee and this play may be always be the pinnacle of his achievements. Belongs on the list with Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Beckett, etc.
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
Read only recently. What talent Alcott had and how this book must have blown away readers in its time.
Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book 1
Dante Alighieri
Fascinating mix of religious belief, poetry, and scathing criticisms and social commentary.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
Studied in my senior high school English class and have never forgotten it.
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
Beautiful and vulnerable account of a head on collision with mortality.
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
Truly, one of the most cathartic stories of the pain neglect, betrayal, resentment, regret, and its release, every written.
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank
Life, eternal in this diary, that cannot be contained and stopped by death.
Foundation: The Foundation Trilogy, Book 1
Isaac Asimov
This book is pretty much the foundation of science fiction tomes that followed, such as Dune.
Molloy
Samuel Beckett
Undiluted, raging, stream of consciousness chaos before it was distilled into those beautiful plays. Very difficult read, but if you like, admire, or respect Beckett, worth it.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Frederick Douglass
Douglass left his personal account of American slavery that should be required reading.
Notes from Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I think this was (one of) the original anti-hero stories. It was my first Dostoevsky, and one I appreciated more than enjoyed, but has motivated me to read his classics soon.
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
Although this is not a great novel, and definitely not Dicken's best, it is essential as a source of both scathing social commentary of its times (and all time) and for its iconic characters that we still know and identify with whether we've read the novel or not.
Desert Solitaire
Edward Abbey
A mournful, beautiful account of the natural American Southwest and the last days of a river canyon before it is dammed to create Lake Mead.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake
The Hours
Michael Cunningham
It's not Woolf, but it does the job of helping us understand more about why we love her.
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon