My favorite book all time: The Fool’s Progress by Edward Abbey.
The Great Gatsby, of course.
I also enjoyed Anthem by Ayn Rand, if not for the content, for the style. It’s been a couple of decades since I read it, but I recall its being initially jarring, but then a relatively easy read.
The Illuminatus trilogy.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurice.
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is a must.
The Catcher in the Rye, mentioned by the OP. When I saw the thread title it’s the first book I thought of. Holden gets a bad rap. It’s a magnificent book.
William Henry Hudson’s Green Mansions.. I read it two years ago and can’t get it out of my head. In the good way.
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King. Not just told in first person but in the voice / vernacular of a tough, world weary woman born and raised in Maine. Definitely one of King’s best. And lest you think SK=horror, this book is dark but there are no supernatural elements. And he managed to come up with a decent ending.
I loved H.F. Saint’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
For short stories, it do not get any better than Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart.
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabakov. My favorite book in the English language. For something a little more contemporary (but still 20 years old), Motherless Brooklyn, a piece of crime fiction (which I do not have any specific interest in) by Jonathan Lethem, told through the first person viewpoint (minus a brief foray into the third person toward the end) of a detective with Tourette’s syndrome.
There is one “supernatural element”: Delores has some kind of psychic spell during an eclipse that seems to coincide with a similar incident with a character in another of King’s books (but I don’t remember which character/book. Sorry.)
BIP: Flowers For Algernon
Ever see the 1953 animation? It was an artistic breakthrough in American cartoons, and sports a dynamite narration by James Mason.
The Martian by Weir is written partly in the first person, in the form of log entries.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Haddon
Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle are narrated by Watson.
I, Claudius by Graves
Many of Poe’s stories, including “The Cask of Amontillado”
YES. One of my four or five very favorite books, and the only one with first-person narrator.
Edit: my brain isn’t working well today. Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire is also one of my five very favorites, also in first person.
:smack: I forgot about that. I think it’s Gerald’s Game, maybe? I can’t really remember the connection now.
I saw it in fourth grade, in class. Terrifying.
Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief
I know that is an outside the box pick, but I read it every single year to my students and it is an absolute home run. Probably my favorite “out loud” reading book.
Jane Eyre.
To Kill a Mockingbird: the impact of the first person narrator is evident when comparing it to the anonymous 3rd person narrator in the draft version, Go Set a Watchman.
If you like* Jane Eyre* at all, then Villette, also by Charlotte Brontë, is an interesting example of an unreliable 1st person narrator
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde is a lot of (literary) fun
The use of first person narrator in Agatha Christie’s *The Murder of Roger Ackroyd *is notable.
And not a particular fave of mine, but I know people who love it: *Life of Pi *by Yann Martel.
Reading Fight Club took my breath away. And yes, I knew about it before it was cool.