Thoughts on Literature

Recently one of those literary survey doohickies came around on facebook, and I being the listless literary geek that I am, I felt compelled to fill out its questions, and pass it around to my friends. While I was reading it, the inevitable question came up as to what what your favorite novel is and as usual, I without thought filled in "The Sun Also Rises." This is as most of my friends know, my absolute favorite work of literature. When I typed it in I thought to myself that this was the first thing in my life that I read that made me realize that there is in fact great literature in the world. The first time that I had a real experience where what I was reading made me think, deeply and introspectively about life and it was the first work I had read that made me realize literature as a true art form. I have a feeling that all great lovers of literature have a similar transcendental moment as this. The type of moment that just can't be delivered by your general run of the mill authors (i.e. The Twilight Series, Dean Koontz, etc) and can only be delivered by a true master of the written word. I am curious as to what some of those written works may be for the rest of you.