1 - City of Thieves by David Benioff: fictional, but based off his father's life during WWII. It is his adventures in trying to find eggs in Petersburg and German occupied territory for a general's daughter's wedding.

2 - Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: post-civil war Barcelona, which gives us a rich atmosphere for this beautiful tale. I can't give a decent synopsis. Both this and the former book are rather funny, but neither is near a comedy; the stories are both too grave.

3 - Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe: a good sci-fi/fantasy book. It's broken into a tetralogy. Extremely deep characters and vivid descriptions. A very eccentric storyline, and deep.

4 - any Calvin and Hobbes book by Bill Watterson: I grew up wanting to be Calvin, yet I grew up near opposite. Still envy the boy. If you don't count comics, I'll throw in Stephen Bietsy's Man-of-War here instead, a book that lasted me my childhood, but didn't stay with me as Calvin and Hobbes did.

5 - Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood: futuristic; we grow chicken meat on plants, harvest human organs from pigs, create diseases, etc. Real biology advancement heavy. Focuses on the friend of a genius and the life he lived up until the disaster and how he attempts to reconcile with his relation to it.