The OP said that they had read Dean Kuntz. To that I have to say I am sorry about that.
Anyways. I’ll chime in with two of my favorites Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground and Camu’s The Plague.
Notes will grab you from the first line and leave you devastated and amazed.
Camu in his novel just amazes me.
Some of these aren’t “classics” per se, but they’re books I love from a variety of genres. In no particular order:
[ul]
[li]The Odyssey by Homer[/li][li]Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein[/li][li]The Call of the Wild by Jack London[/li][li]The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon[/li][li]The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien[/li][li]Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West[/li][li]Tough Trip Through Paradise by Andrew Garcia[/li][li]Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain[/li][li]A Thousand and One Arabian Nights (I like Burton’s translation)[/li][li]The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benbet (short story)[/li][li]Dune by Frank Herbert (caution: hard science fiction)[/li][li]Tai-Pan by James Clavell (I thought it was better than Shogun[/li][li]Crow Killer by James Welsh[/li][/ul]
I’ll second the advice you received to toss aside anything you’re not enjoying. You’re getting lots of suggestions here, and you ought to be able to find some good books that you really like. With some of them, you need to give the book some time, though. I try to go 100 pages before I give up. With some stuff, like Shakespeare, it will seem totally opaque at first, but at some point the language will “click” and it will start making sense.
Beowulf. Just kidding.
Even non-Sci-fi fans seem to enjoy **Enders Game ** by Orson Scott Card. It’s definitely a page turner.
As mentioned previously, the **Harry Potter ** series is actually quite entertaining.
For non-Fiction, I thought **Guns, Germs, and Steel ** by Jared Diamond was darn interesting. And although some of it gets pretty heavy, The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene has some great explanations of Relativity and Quantum Physics…if you’re into that kind of stuff.
Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara is pretty cool. It’s about the American revolution, but told from a personal POV from various key players. In reading this I gained a profound and deep admiration for George Washington.
For semi-recent popular fiction, I thought the following were pretty decent reads:
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is very good.
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Another vote for Lonesome Dove
Secret Life of Bees by Sue Kidd
I just re-read the OP and realized you were looking for “essentials”. I don’t know if I could say what I listed was essential, but they certainly are good reads.
If you like “children’s” books, see this thread: It’s just a kid’s book!! Well, so are these. Bunch of classics there.
The Wizard of Oz.