I'm very much a fan of the "classics" but I also appreciate contemporary writers, especially those with a wonderfully off-kilter take on the world like Hunter S. Thompson. My English degree exposed me to some great literary nooks and crannies I'd never dreamed of, including some of the following:

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher In The Rye

John Howard Griffin - Black Like Me

Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights

L. Frank Baum - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman

I also must champion some great poetical works like Atwood's "Journals of Susanna Moodie" or Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" and various works by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and everything that William Wordsworth wrote.