East of Eden is probably my favorite book ever. It makes The Grapes of Wrath look like it was written by an 8 year old in comparison, in my opinion.

Good luck with the Quran. I'm of the mind that it's really only possible to get the full experience by reading it in Arabic. Our vocabulary is more verbose, some sentences only make sense in the language. I'd suggest listening to it in Arabic too, if you can.

If you're looking for something more, innocent, I suppose, I suggest Brave Story. Very few books make me cry, that book was one of them.

I don't know that I can recommend anything that shaped culture, policy or society that you haven't read, but a while back I did mention Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I'm still reading it, but the ideas are pretty striking, (for me anyway).

Don't read anansi boys until you've read American gods!