The following books are my favorite artistic, literary and/or philosophic books:

Algren, Nelson. Chicago: City On the Make.

Andreasen, Nancy C, MD, PhD. The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius.

Auburn, David. Proof.

Buck, Pearl. Pavillion of Women. 

Byatt, A.S.  Possession.

Cather, Willa. My Antonia.

Cather, Willa. Song of the Lark.

Clay, Cynthia Joyce. Vector Theory and the Plot Structures of Literature and Drama.

Dahl, Roald.  George's Marvelous Medicine.

Danto, Arthur C. Beyond the Brillo Box.

Dewey, John.  Art As Experience.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment.

Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie.

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch.

Forester, C.S.  The Horatio Hornblower series.

Frankl, Viktor. Man's Search for Meaning.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Faust.

Greene, Graham. The Power and the Glory.

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea.

Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Sons.

James, Henry. A Portrait of a Lady.

Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Painted Bird.

Langer, Susanne. Feeling and Form.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird.

Lethem, Jonathan. Motherless Brooklyn.

Lewis, Sinclair.  Main Street.

London, Jack. The Call of the Wild.

Margolis, Joseph.  What, After All, Is A Work of Art?

Maugham, W. Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence.

McCullers, Carson. The Member of the Wedding.

McCarthy, Cormac. No Country For Old Men.

McCourt, Frank.  Angela's Ashes.

McLean, Norman. A River Runs Through It.

Merton, Thomas.  Seven-Story Mountain.

Miller, Arthur.  Death of a Salesman.

Mishima, Yukio. Spring Snow.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon.

Nagel, Thomas. The View From Nowhere.

Orwell, George. The Road To Wigan Pier.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Tell-Tale Heart.

Proulx, Annie. "Brokeback Mountain."

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Selected Poetry.

Ruhl, Sarah. A Clean House.

Raven, Francis. Inverted Curvatures.

Russell, Bertrand. Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays

Sarjapi, Marjane. Persepolis.

Shakespeare, William. King Lear.

Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

St. Vincent Millay, Edna. Collected Poems.

Stecker, Robert. Introduction to Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath.

Thomasson, Amie. Fiction and Metaphysics.

Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Webber, Thomas L. Flying Over 96th Street.

Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome.

Wharton, Edith. House of Mirth.

Wiesel, Elie. Night.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Wilde, Oscar. The Nightingale and the Rose.

Williams, William Carlos. Collected Poems.

Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire.

Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson.