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Well I agree there are two different questions really: What we were required to read in school, and what are genuine classic? (subjective really). My experience in high school was that the best books were read in the GT and Advanced Placement classes.
Books I read for school (that I remember)
Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre
Native Son by Richard Wright
Othello, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest by William Shakespeare
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Madame Bovay by Gustave Flaubert
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sea Wolf by Jack London
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Light in August by William Faulkner
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
I recommend most of these books as pretty safe bets although I personally never really cared for Tom Sawyer. I read it again recently after many years and, while mildly enjoyable, I think Twain wrote much better books than that. My favorite of his was Recollections of Joan of Arc. Faulkner, Joyce are a bit tough and I'm not sure I ever got much pleasure out of them although I like Joyce better than Faulkner. Gatsby is a bit of a bore although it does have some nice use of language. I always found Tolstoy incredibly readable and Ilyich is pretty short.
For a more adventurous read, definitely go with Jack London.
Hope this helps.
Michael
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