So Who Really Cares?

In high school and college I had to read books that were considered the classics: The Scarlet Letter, Farewell to Arms, The Red Badge of Courage, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Nigger of Narcissus, Slaughterhouse-Five, Wuthering Heights, A Tale of Two Cities, Sons and Lovers, Gulliver's Travels, etc. Some had a moral, others made you think, but most were just BORING. I've come up with a list of fiction that I think would be both educational and enjoyable to read. I limited myself to just one title per author.

The Ox-bow Incident, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
The Magus, by John Fowles
Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
Youth, by Joseph Conrad
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Texas, by James Michener
The Man Who Would Be King, by Rudyard Kipling
A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
Hounds of the Baskerville, by Arthur Conan Doyle
Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
Patriot Games, by Tom Clancy
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
The Precious Present, by Spencer Johnson