But The Night Watch... It's a book, that I have rereaded over ten times in the last 3 years and will continue reading it. It is a time travel story, where the main commander of police forces goes back in time and has to be a part of a revolution. I mean, I can talk about it for ages, but I really don't want to spoil it, so go ahead check it out(although to fully grasp the ideas of the book you should read the first few books of the Watch series, but believe me all of them are worth it).
Something else that I loved to read when I was younger(12-14) was Winnetou, but my tries to check it again once I get into my 20s wasn't successfull, so maybe it was just a phase.
Chronicles of Amber is another great fantasy series which I would love to recommend, although the series wasn't finished and is left in a pretty huge cliffhanger, but yet the 10(shortish) books are all awesome and the world, that Zelazny has built is easily one of the best built world in fantasy scene.
Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoi): Intertwined tales about love and finding happiness that simply feels timeless. I think Tolstoi's greatest achievement is making the characters feel so human in this. For what it's worth i did not find it a difficult or heavy read at all.
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyesky): Them russians really have something with humanness. Where Anna touches love and happiness, karamazov contrasts religion and ethics, faith and reason. Once again, it feels like it could have been written today and still be as relevant.
1984, Orwell. Don't think I need to go into this one, but every time i read it, I find something. This novel was really deeply thought out, inventions like doublespeak really makes you think about how we think about and react to politics.
I realize most of those are likely required reading in american high schools, which to me is proof that your public school system is not entirely lost. I wish we had read some actual substantial texts in my schooling and didn't have to discover these in my early 20s.
One story I've heard about David Copperfield: in Russian monasteries, there are abbots who forbid novices from reading any spiritual literature until they've first read David Copperfield, because while the goal of the monastic life is to become more like God, first you have to become human.
For the Russians, especially Dostoevsky, if there is a translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, that's the one to pick. It makes a huge difference.
As a college senior, after devouring pretty much all of Dostoevsky, I read Anna Karenina largely because in On Moral Fiction it is John Gardner's favorite example of a great novel---and it was so boring. Now that I'm 38 I think often of re-reading it, if I can work up the gumption. I'm glad to hear you found it not so heavy.
A favorite English professor in his 60s told me he was still re-reading Crime and Punishment, but Brothers Karamazov didn't speak to him anymore, and he felt it was a young man's book. I've been trying for 15+ years to decide if I agree.
A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood. A beautifully somber story of a gay man dealing with loss in the 60's. When I read it as a kid, it helped deal with the sense of alienation I was feeling during my adolescence. Also the movie a few years back (while ending fairly different from the book), was awesome.
The Big Sleep - Chandler. Literary people all seem to prefer Hammett to Chandler, but for my money there's never been better prose written before or since. "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts" and "I never saw any of them again - except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them." are two of my favorite sentences of all time.
Before Night Falls - Reinaldo Arenas. It's technically an autobiography, but I read it as a novel. More alienation (this time in 1970's Cuba), but written amazingly well (even the English translation).
Dear Mr. Henshaw - Beverly Cleary. I'm not embarrassed to list a kids book as one of my favorite novels (considering how many people on here I'm sure loved Harry Potter). It's a story about a kid who's dad left him, and it's written as a series of one-sided letters to an author (the titular Mr. Henshaw). I re-read it about twice a year (it's a short book).
SPOILERS
A third option to alien contact. Not peace or war but simply indifference. Skewers the human hubris at the center of most sci-fi novels.
Fits my genre of novels, I love tech thriller in the present day.
And this book had everything for Computers, MMORPGs, Guns, Terrorism, Puzzles. It was the first +1000 page book that I've ever read and it kept me captivated all the way through.
Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate. It's the War and Peace of the second world war. All aspects of society and human relations are touched upon in profound ways. It's been a long time since my last (re)read; a lot of the particulars are missing from my brain now. A book of ideas, punctuated with the starkness of WWII.
Moby Dick - mentioning this one always raises some people's ire, I don't know why. I fall into the language, the story is gripping, the long side paths into biology, ships, and so on give so much insight into either life of the time, or scientific understanding of the time. It's an attempt at a great novel. We can argue about whether it succeeds, but the attempt is breathtaking to watch.
Robert Penn Warren's All the Kings men. It's a great story of political corruption and ambition in the southern US, the characters are so well done. A story of power. A book of ideas; it discusses original sin, how people are influenced by their circumstance, subjective morality, and much more.
Zola's Germinal. Probably my desert island book. I've read it so many times. A soul crushing portrait of life as a miner in France. I'm sitting here typing, getting tears in my eye just over the poor donkey that lived it's entire life in the mine, and that is probably one of the least sad things in the book.
Les Miserables. What is there to say about this one? History, Paris, the nature of love, redemption, politics, justice, everything important to being human is in this book.
Incidentally, another crusty old book that I've decided is also meant to be funny is the book of Jonah. That's one you can read in 10 minutes. Just read it. Here:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=3...
I won't give away the punchline, but I'm pretty sure it is a punchline.
"A River Runs Through it" by Norman Maclean. A best seller that got there by word of mouth, and was within an inch of a Pulitzer.
Because boxing.