Bookshelf
A few books I've read and come back to every now and then; hopefully you find something useful to you!
Fiction
Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
French is probably best, but if you are stuck with English like me, I liked the earlier translation by Katherine Woods.
The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
The definition of a page turner.
The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
The new Lawrence Ellsworth translation is superb!
The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy
My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante
Modern classic, just about as good as it can get. The HBO show was very enjoyable too.
The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Solaris Stanislaw Lem
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami
Murakami's journey as he substituted a chain smoking addiction with running like a madman. And found some inspiration along the way. Great book. Way better than the runner propaganda you might be expecting. "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional" is a great line.
Uncle Vanya Anton Chekhov
Okay, the play itself was okay to read but I need to be in the right mood. Then I watched Andrew Scott do a live solo-performance with all the characters and now it has a special place on this list.
Non-Fiction
The Rise and Fall of American Growth Robert Gordon
Deschooling Society Ivan Illich
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital Carlota Perez
Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation E. H. Gombrich
Concerning the Spiritual in Art Wassily Kandinsky
On Photography Susan Sontag
A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway
Gertrude Stein had some weird (and hysterical) things to say, but it's crazy to have this account of what Paris was like back then. What a great read.