Classics that make me jump and gibber with excitement include:
Melville’s Moby Dick
Woolf’s Orlando (for example)
Homer’s Iliad
Anything whatsoever by Arthur Conan Doyle
Anything whatsoever by HG Wells
Boswell’s Life Of Johnson
Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel
Oh, does Hammett’s Maltese Falcon count?
… and Winnie-the-Pooh, of course

Incidentally, for tons of free classics, go here:
http://www.digitalbookindex.org/index.cgi

Read Shakespeare for how he uses language and symbol and develops character with them — just ignore the stolen or broken plots.

Chaucer is magnificent — you have to read him aloud with a smirk on your face.

For poetry, I am Gerard Manley Hopkin’s bitch. What he does with rhythm and imagery is pure heaven.

Mann – Dark and masterful

Can’t stand Dickens, Brontes, Fitzgerald.

I’d like to think that David Foster Wallace would’ve joined the ranks of the great ones if he’d been more prolific. I reserve the right to dub Infinite Jest a modern classic. So there.

For Twain I want to jump up and yell Eve’s Diary and Adam’s Diary. Seriously. Get these. Read these. Thank me later. The man was a freaking hoot. He’s on my short list of “Dead Folks I Want to Dine With.”

I go back again and again to Doyle’s Complete Annotated Sherlock Holmes. I’ll go a few years and then haul out the ginormous book again and just fall in.

And I love Austen. She had a very sharp wit, and I’m generally not a reader of the classics written by chicks. The Brontes make me want to dig out my eyes with a fork, for instance.

Ender’s Game is a perennial fave in our house. As is Starship Troopers. Both of those stand out for me as perfect examples of the notion that all sci-fi is political.

On the one hand, Starship Troopers is sort of a cudgel, crude but effective. It’s not subtle, but given the original intended audience, that’s hardly surprising. It’s also not terribly surprising that it’s required reading for a large number of military academies.

On the other, Ender’s Game is a story of many layers. While I didn’t like the other books in the original four books, the Shadow series centered around Bean was terribly engrossing because it was about political intrigue and actual conflict rather than the bullshit internal conflict that Ender faced regarding his unnaturally long life and his grappling with his need for spiritual meaning, but I’m getting off on a tangent here. Ender’s Game is both visceral and cerebral and stands up well to multiple readings. I first read it when I was 11. I don’t think I fully grasped the entirety of Card’s message until I was in my early 20′s having read it a dozen times.

I picked up The Great Gatsby for the first time in ages last night and was stunned at the insight and beauty contained in just the first two pages. Not all of Fitzgerald is so gem-like, but there’s a reason that book’s a “classic.” I can’t resist just one line from it that rings in my brain and that I tweeted yesterday: “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.”

How economical, insightful, and relevant to the narrating character’s – erm – character that line is!

I didn’t get Austen in college, Chuck. I don’t blame you for not being a huge fan. I love her now but she is utterly female in her approach. Her humor is subtle, often buried in antique verbiage. She does really well when read aloud. I imagine an audio book of hers would be awesome.

The Blood of the Lamb by Peter De Vries changed my life in high school. Damn, I need to reread that one now too. Hilarious, humanist, sad, and wonderful.

Okay, how about Italo Calvino? Start with Invisible Cities. Then read If On A Winter’s Night a Traveller. You can send me a gift later.

And to the genius who suggested Vonnegut — bravo!