[Billthedrill]

Idiot alert. Ulysses is a hoot and you don't have to "get it" to enjoy it. LOTR is immortal, period. War And Peace is a project that rewards the patient. I prefer Sense and Sensibility to Pride and Prejudice but Austen is indispensible for understanding her period. Read her against War and Peace and contrast bourgeois England and aristocratic Russia...and understand why the issues the characters dealt with are so much the same. Try War and Peace against Gone With the Wind if you want a really interesting contrast.

There's an awful lot of crap I'd throw up in place of these. You may dispense with Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Portnoy's Complaint, The Prophet, Lady Chatterly's Lover, and The Handmaid's Tale if you want to save some time that might be better spent clipping your toenails. (I have agreed to disagree with a FReeper I respect a good deal in respect of the last of these. YMMV.)

I suppose I ought to include An Inconvenient Truth as well. Why not? It's just as fictional as the others.

[Brucifer]

I like your list better than theirs.