The Best

Here's a list of some of the best literary works ever.

Books:
1984 - George Orwell
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
Airborn - Kenneth Oppel
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Vengance - George Jonas
Harry Potter - J.K. Rowlings
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
The Polar Express - Chris Van Allsburg
Einstein's Dreams - Allan Lightman

Short Stories:
The Child's Story - Charles Dickens
The Cask of Amontillaldo - Edgar Allan Poe

Poems:
If - Rudyard Kipling
In Flanders Fields - John McCrae
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost
She Walks in Beauty - Lord Byron

Comics:
Calvin and Hobbes - Bill Watterson
xkcd - Randall Munroe

Each piece is different and unique in its own respect, some incredibly entertaining (Harry Potter and Airborn) and others more mundane (the middle part of 1984) and serious. The one characteristic that all of the works share however is their ability to provoke thought. I think that if a book fails to engage your brain after its words are spent, its really not worth reading. I want my literary adventures to stay with me for a lifetime.