Via Terry Teachout and CAAF: “The rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.”
My list:
Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd’s The Time Paradox
Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty and Out of Sight (I count them as one book—so what?)
John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor
Rebecca Goldstein’s The Mind-Body Problem
Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy
Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum
Robertson Davies’ The Deptford Trilogy
Robertson Davies’ The Cornish Trilogy
Alain de Botton’s On Love
Richard Russo’s Straight Man
(I purposefully didn’t read either Terry’s list or CAAF’s before writing mine. If I had to add a 16th, I’d probably take How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, which definitely doesn’t fit with the list above.)
The Story's Story 
Catcher in the Rye
Hamlet
Little Women
Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Goodnight Moon
Beloved
Jane Eyre
The History of Sexuality Part I
Naked Lunch
1001 Questions and Answers
American Pastoral
You Must Remember This
The Straight Man
Never Let Me Go
Vindications of the Rights of Women
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With some cheating…
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Barthes S/Z
Mrs Dalloway
His Dark Materials Trilogy
Snow Crash
Flatland
Memoirs of a Dangerous Alien
The Iliad/Odyssey
Hamlet/King Lear/Macbeth
Portrait of Dorian Grey
The US Constitution
A Clockwork Orange
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
East of Eden
Franny and Zoey
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Upon past 15 min reflection, should have fit Slaughter House Five in there somewhere.
Also, not quite finished with George Orwell’s complete essays, but have been loving it – Good choice in the original post.
Alright, back to work…
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The Diviners
The Time-Travellers Wife
The Book Theif
Memoirs of a Geisha
Cold Mountain
Lovely Bones
Life Before Man
Thousand Cranes
The Outlander Series (that’s 6 books)
All the Names
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1. Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
3. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
4. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
5. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
6. The Plague by Albert Camus
7. Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer
8. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
9. Waterbabies by Charles Kingsley
10. Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
11. The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
12. Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
13. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
14. The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
15. Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg
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1. Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
2. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
3. Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
4. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
5. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
6. Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein
7. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
8. The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
9. The Gift by Hafiz
10. The Barsoom Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs
11. Selected Works of Langston Hughes
12. Our Town by Thornton Wilder
13. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
14. 1984 by George Orwell
15. Animal Farm by George Orwell
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Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond
Seven Pillars of Wisdom T.E. Lawrence
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
A Marginal Jew John Meier
Chaos James Gleick
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
From Dawn to Decadence Jacques Barzun
The Cornish Trilogy Robertson Davies
The Time It Never Rained Elmer Kelton
Sex, Time, and Power Leonard Schlain
Harry Potter J.K. Rowling
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
Longitude Dava Sobel
Flashman & the Great Game George M. Fraser
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To Kill a Mockingbird
Night
Great Gatsby
Wuthering Heights
Our Town
The Hidden Hand
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Great Expectations
The Twilight Series
Their Eyes Were Watching God
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