Paul Quarrington. (He wrote Whale Music.)
Not his best work, IMHO, but most of his stuff is fantastic, especially Civilization: It’s Part In My Downfall. I like him so much I even read what superficially appear to be sports novels.
Also Will Self. Dark stuff.
Oh yeah I love him! The book Jurassic Park was so much better than the movie!!
I agree with xanadu. James Merrill is an alum from our school, and his family is a big contributor, so we have periodic poetry readings by his son and other people who knew him. Absolutely incredible.
I also have to recommend Robert Frost. As much as you think you know him, a second look always clarifies for the better.
slight hijack-
Does James Merrill really have a son? I’m doing a report on him, and all of my research says that his regret of not having children was one of the themes of his poetry.
Second on Will Self, Larry. Great Apes is fantastic.
Donna Tartt, John Irving, and Tom Robbins are also authors I habitually recommend to my friends.
Let me add Philip K. Dick. And Joseph Heller, just because of Catch-22. And the playwright Christopher Hampton. And John Fowles. (Damn, so many recommendations!)
Diana Wynne Jones, as far as children’s books go.
Jean Anouilh, mostly for his version of Antigone.
Richard Hofstadter, Lewis Lapham, Thomas Frank, and Walter Lippmann, non-fiction.
Louis de Bernieres, author of Corelli’s Mandolin (and his better works, the Don Emmanuel trilogy)–a latter-day Borges.
Daniel Handler and Adam Cadre, both of whom have written wonderfully acerbic and intelligent novels about high school–The Basic Eight and Ready, Okay, respectively. More fun to read than any other books I’ve ever found.
IAIN BANKS - especially The Wasp Factory and The Crowroad. I have bought about 15 copies of the first and given them as gifts. The man is a bloody genius, and I feel sorry for those of you who live in the U.S. where it is difficult to get his books.
Cecil Adams The Straight Dope 
Barbara Kingsolver here also, particularly The Bean Trees.
Neil Gaiman, anything
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, any of their Liaden Universe works.
Currently:
Michael Connelly
James Lee Burke
Carl Hiassen
Hemingway
John Fowles
David Eggers “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”
Hannah Nyala “Point Last Seen A Woman Tracker’s Story”
Richard Brautigan
Sombrero Fallout, The Hawkline Monster, The Abortion, Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar
…sigh.
Chuck Palahnuik. Invisible Monsters, especially.
I’m a pusher of Iain Banks - in either of his styles.
I’d put in further recommendations for Will Self and Louis De Bernieres - again i feel that the Don Emmanuel trilogy are better than Capitain Corelli’s mandolin.
I’m surprised no-one’s mentioned JG Ballard. A superb writer who can tell us a great deal about society. Cocaine Nights is a blinder, Crash is - well you’ve heard about it and its not nice, but it is brilliant. In fact, if he’s written a duff book, i’ve n ot read it. He also does a nice line in thoughtful short sci-fi stories.
VS Naipaul, both his fiction and non-fiction are good reads. A Bend In The River was big about 10 years ago and quite good for the fiction side.
Beyond Belief, Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples is non-ficiton and full of people and stories. Guaranteed you won’t look at Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia nor Malaysia in the same light.
By the way, he also won the Nobel Prize for literature this year. http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/2001/press.html
Charles Bukowski is one of my favorite authors. I always give a copy of Women to buddies of mine who go through are real rough breakup. Post Office is amusing, and Ham on Rye details a really rough early life.
John Fante was one of Bukowski’s big influences and a great writer. Wait Until Spring Bandini, and Dago Red.
Alasdair Gray, a very idiosyncratic (and extremely entertaining) Scottish writer who illustrates his own books.
His best books are Poor things and 1982, Janine.
He has also written my all-time favourite short story, Five letters from an Eastern Empire, about two poets, one comical and one tragical, who are given the task of writing the ultimate poem in a highly original, dystopian version of ancient China. It’s hilarious and very sad at the same time. It has been published in a little book of its own, or you may found it in the short story collection Unlikely stories, mostly.
William Kennedy
Cormack McCarthy
Loren Eisley
[ul]
[li]Donald Harington. Anything up to and including The Choiring of the Trees, especially The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (a novel, despite the non-fiction sound of the title), and Let Us Build Us a City, which is non-fiction. The last several novels (Ekaterina, Butterfly Weed, Where Angels Rest) haven’t been up to the standard of the earlier work.[/li][li]Matt Ridley. Genome was quite popular, but I think that The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation] and The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature are, if anything, even better. In the same vein, I used to push Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee on people, but since the success of Guns, Germs, and Steel, I don’t fell like it’s as necessary.[/li][li]John Banville. In particular, his novels about important figures from the early history of science, like Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, Newton’s Letter, etc.[/li][li]Thomas Lynch. He finally achieved some renown for his book of essays, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, but I’ve been a fan of his poetry since finding a remaindered copy of his first book, Skating with Heather Grace, years ago.[/li][li]Dana Gioia. Another poet who’s become better known for his prose writing, in this case his essays arguing for a return to form in poetry. He won me over in his first appearance in Poetry (the magazine) in the early eighties.[/li][li]Derek Mahon. An Irish poet who hasn’t quite achieved the fame of Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, or even of Eavan Boland or Paul Muldoon, but one of my favorites nonetheless.[/li][li]Mikhail Bulgakov. Primarily for The Master and Margarita, though I do like the other novels, short stories, and plays.[/li][li]Dawn Powell. Everyone who’s ever lived, or thought of living, in New York for its intellectual life should read The Wicked Pavilion, The Locusts Have No King, and Angels on Toast.[/li][/ul]
I read that when it first came out, and I remember enjoying it tremendously. I re-read it several months ago and it had held up pretty well. I still think I enjoyed Vox more, but The Fermatta definitely wins the award for Nicholson Baker Novel I Would Most Like to See Made into a Movie.
Especially the bathroom scene.
For the classics or at least more well-known:
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis - the first American to win the Nobel (back when the literature prize still matters) - this book still resonates with the plight of the career man
Autobiography of Malcolm X, with Alex Haley - a truly amazing life
The Red and the Black - Stendhal - amazing, accessible book about the inner life of someone trying to rise above their beginnings
Less well known
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami - he is the biggest selling author in Japan, but Americans are less familiar (I don’t know about other parts of the world) - if you like adventure, noir and incredibly good, accessible writing - this is your guy
The Deptford Trilogy (starts with Fifth Business) or the Cornish Trilogy (starts the Rebel Angels) by Robertson Davies - super-entertaining, thoughtful books, rich with wisdom
Crossing to Safety - Wallace Stegner - another wise, incredibly easy book about friendships over time.
Neil Gaiman. Genius upon genius upon genius. Particularly appreciated by classics fiends like me.
Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children Series. Each one is better than the last.