This list is neither final nor total. I'll add to it as time goes.
American:
- Booth Tarkington, all novels, especially the Penrod novels and the Growth Trilogy
- William Faulkner, novels (esp. As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom! Absalom!)
- Robert Frost, poetry
- Richard Wilbur, poetry
- Bernard Malamud, The Assistant; The Natural; short stories
- Flannery O'Conner, Wise Blood; short stories
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms
- Willa Cather, My Antonia; Death Comes for the Archbishop
- Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March; Mr. Sammler's Planet
- Walker Percy, novels
- Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister; Pale Fire
- H.P. Lovecraft, short stories
- Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers; The Door into Summer; The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
- Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe novels
- Charles Portis, True Grit and The Dog of the South, among his other novels
British:
- William Butler Yeats, poetry
- T.S. Eliot, poetry
- W.H. Auden, poetry
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings trilogy
- Evelyn Waugh, Scoop, Put Out More Flags
- P.G. Wodehouse, almost all novels -- begin with Jeeves novels
- Tom Stoppard, plays
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; The Secret Agent
- G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday; Manalive; The Napoleon of Notting Hill
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- William Golding, The Lord of the Flies
- Graham Greene, Brighton Rock, The Human Factor, The Captain and the Enemy; The Quiet American and many more
- John le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- Muriel Spark, The Prime of Ms. Jean Brodie and other novels
Proceed with caution. In this list are books that can be handled well by a wise reader.
- John Kennedy O'Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; All the Pretty Horses; No Country for Old Men
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
