Start with some that are short but powerful:

My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Catcher In the Rye
Wuthering Heights
Huckleberry Finn
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Hamlet

Start with Anna Karenina.

My two favorite books of all time are Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.

I also really enjoyed:
Heart of Darkness
Tale of Two Cities
Great Gatsby
Native Son (very depressing)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I also really enjoyed fables, mythology, fairy tales, and Sherlock Holmes as a kid.

To make up for lost time, I'd suggest listening to some of the classics:
https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=0&search_category=genre&search_page=1&search_form=get_results

Also, you should read something by Mark Twain and Shakespeare.

You must read Shakespeare!!!!

I enjoy reading classics not just because there is a good reason they are "classics" (most of them are really, really good reads) and are part our common cultural heritage (enables you to understand references and participate in cultured discussions), but also because I get transported to different times, places, cultures. If the latter appeals to you, then go for a variety of time periods and authors. Don't just pick some titles off an English-focused list.

Definitely read some Dickens (Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Great Expectations are my favorites) and some of English "lady authors" (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights). Less popular, but still one of my favorites is W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage, The Razor's Edge). Also great, Trollope's Vanity Fair. Also, try at least some Shakespeare.

Some French classics: Balzac (Pere Goriot, Lost Illusions), Zola (I love Germinal), Hugo (my favorite is Les Miserables), Flaubert (Madame Bovary). I'm not a huge fan of Dumas, but I like Queen Margot. If you like adventures, some of his other novels, Three Musketeer, Count of Montecristo, may appeal to you.

Read some of the Russian classics: Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment is my fave), Tolstoy (I prefer Anna Karenina over War and Peace). A more recent Russian classic, Doctor Zhivago by Pasternak. Lots of people don't like it, but I loved it.

Try some Latin American literature. Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera), Vargas Llosa (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The Feast of the Goat), the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar. If you like biographies/autobiographies, read Neruda's I Confess that I Have Lived.

Try to get through some of Don Quixote, as it is probably the world's first great novel, or as some academics call it, the first "modern novel." It is huge, but it's written as a series of episodes or adventures, so you don't have to get through all of it to get a taste. It is actually great fun.

Some American classics that I like: The Last of the Mohicans, To Kill a Mockingbird, For Whom the Bell Tolls (or The Sun Also Rises), The Jungle, Sister Carrie, The Grapes of Wrath, Catch 22

Well, that's quite a list, I got a bit carried away ...

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazier

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1984, so your eyes will be opened to what our country has become.

Snowden exposure-like?

Thoughtcrime.

Anonymous wrote:Lord of the Flies

I think reading Romeo and Juliet, lord of the Flies, Great Expectations, and Catcher in the Rye. But then call it a day and look at the NYTimes best seller list and pick from there. But really, read what strikes your fancy.

My 11 year old picks out my books any time we're at the library together. I've only not read one. She chooses based on the covers she thinks I'll like.

French lit major hear agreeing with English lit major*: Read what you like. A lot of classics are not my cup of tea. Currently reading Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. If you like biography, you might like memoir. Liar's Club (Mary Karr) and This Boy's Life (Tobias Wolff) are classics in that genre. Two of my favorite books. I also loved Gertrude Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It is one of the funniest books I have ever read in my life.

* Did you try Joyce's Dubliners? More accessible than the rest.

OP according to your. Riteria I'm not well read at all, even though I read 2-3 books each week. I have no desire to read any of those books, and it's never a problem conversationally. Just read what you like. Enjoy reading.

Lord of the Flies

Anonymous wrote:1984, so your eyes will be opened to what our country has become.

Snowden exposure-like?

1984, so your eyes will be opened to what our country has become.

It seems like OP is looking for more of a "Great Books" list rather than the modern American lit most of us are suggesting. I'm not into Allan Bloom, but OP might want to check out the reading list in "The Closing of the American Mind," sounds like it will be what you are looking for.

You know, I'm a literature nerd, a former English Lit major, and I never read much Joyce. Just didn't like it, didn't like the utter opaqueness of everything. So I didn't read him. But I love good story telling, so I read things with good plots. How about George Elliot? Middlemarch is one of my favorites. Or Virginia Woolf - Orlando is a kind of trashy romp, but something like To The Lighthouse is literary but lovely to read. Would echo To Kill a Monkingbird. Some scary weird wonderful stuff would be Clockwork Orange, Nineteen Eighty Four, or Farenheight 451. Another favorite is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Nele Hurston.

Really, if you try it and hate it, move on. There are wonderful classics out there that you'll love.