Some years back during a holiday visit, after several hours of hurtling titles about and filling out a spreadsheet, my family and I came up with the following list of classics: our list of books to read to have a good sampling of cultural literacy.
This is my list of recommended fiction. There are a great many more fiction books that I really enjoy, but this is a list of the books that go beyond mere enjoyment: these are the books that delighted me now or in the past, that I have been drawn to read multiple times, or books that I found to be profound in one way or another.