Since I'm no literary expert I have learned a lot from Bloom's book the Western Canon and from his list at the end of the book on the greatest works from ancient times to when the book was written in 1994. Since then, he has added several more titles to his list like Phillip Roth's Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral and DeLillo's Underworld. What list(s) do you guys depend on??? I remember before I heard of Bloom I relied on the Cliff's Notes list.
http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html