A few folks have marked up this list of books(below). You know the deal: bold the ones that you have read. And this is easier then picking up the debate on Grand Stragies and conscription.
I found this via jaquandor who notes that it is like all such lists and leaves out some that should be there. So a couple items that I would add or change: add Kafka’s The Trial (or replace The Metamorphosis) and on the esoteric side add Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer. There are many more but, for now, I’ll leave them to others. Well, except for one: Jaquandor knows that I think highly of The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass.
I have read quite a few of these and l’d like to say that I could carry on a literate discussion about each and every one. Alas, this is not the case. Many of them I read long ago and as I lack an eidetic memory they have become shadows in the mists of time. They do look great in the book cases though.
It is also nteresting that the linkage trail is so short. After Jaquandor it goes like this: Jason who got it from Lynn Sislo who got it from Deb who got it from Misty. Is Misty the creator?
Update: Misty provides links to others in the comments.
See the list in the extended entry.

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua – Things Fall Apart
Agee, James – A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane – Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James – Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel – Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul – The Adventures of Augie March
Bront