Can you help me become more well read?

Join a book group. I have been in a group for seven years and read plenty of things I otherwise wouldn't have.

I would suggest giving the following books a whirl:

Life of Pi -Yann Martell
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon

God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Something by Dickens
Something by Steinbeck
A genre you have never tried eg Sci Fi.
Any poetry.

I'd recommend as classics that are still quite an easy enjoyable read
David Copperfield - Dickens
Yes to all the Jane Austen recommendations, maybe start with Sense and Sensibility
I'd avoid Thomas Hardy for now - very well written but all quite depressing reading
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons is very funny (once you realise it's a spoof)
My DP loves the 'Dance to the Music of Time' series by Antony Powell but I've not got to grips with it
I also love all the books by Nancy Mitford - very posh and funny
EM Forster also lovely
Lots of great modern books about too - I've just read Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies and loved them both, long but absorbing reads.

Rose Tremain is excellent. She has written several great novels set in the past - particularly Restoration and Music and Silence - but perhaps start with The Road Home, set in the London of today and telling the story of Lev, an economic migrant from Eastern Europe trying to make a new life in a strange place.

I also love Sue Gee, particularly Earth and Heaven and The Mysteries of Glass. Both are excellent.

You could also look at Secret River by Kate Grenville, telling the story of a convict sent to Australia with his family, and Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, a fascinating fictional account of the villagers of Eyam during the plague.

The majority of the novels above are set in the past, but because they've been written recently, the language and the style of writing generally is more immediately accessible than that of 19th century writers ... and I say that as a fan of Victorian literature, but I do agree that you should maybe break yourself in gently

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme.

An easyish classic is Silas Marner by George Eliot. It's not very long, compared to some of her other novels, eg Middlemarch.

Margaret Forster is extremely readable, modern but not at all trashy. My favourite is Keeping the World Away. Anyone read that? Also her Shadow Baby. And almost anything by Penelope Lively.

Totally agree with whoever said it wasn't necessary to start with the classics, there's plenty of good recent stuff, too.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is a 'modern classic', but really gripping and easy to read.

Wilke Collin' s 'The Woman in White' or 'The Moonstone'
I'm just starting 'Testament of Youth' by Vera Brittain it's a bit hard going but I'm only on the prologue. Excellent for dropping off to sleep.
My favourite book is 'Pride and Prejudice'. I was trying to explain to one of the girls at work, who reads very little and thinks Fifty shades is the ultimate love story, how incredible passionate Jane Austins books are without the use of erotisism or porn.

Classics:
The Catcher in the Rye
The 39 Steps
Of Mice and Men
Catch 22 (hard at first but please persevere!)
Brave New World

More recent:
Chocolat
Captain Corelli's Manderin
Room
Time Travellers Wife
and anything by Margaret Atwood

I see that Anthony Trollope was one of the first recommendations... and that's what I was going to recommend!

I like The Eustace Diamonds as a starting point for his books. Or Barchester Towers. Barchester Towers had me laughing out loud. Every time I read a book by Anthony Trollope I thank him for having been so incredibly prolific. I still haven't read them all. Hooray!

Although the Russian names can be a bit confusing, I would recommend Anna Karenina. Best book I've ever read. It was so good that the next couple of things I read (Anne Bronte and Mark Twain) seemed weak and blah after it. Tolstoy writes like God. I mean he literally writes like God. Amazing.

Lolita by Nabokov is the second-best book I've ever read. It will mess you up and make you ache and make you feel things that you're not sure how to handle. And it's beautifully written and hilarious.

Like most kids growing up in America, I had to read The Great Gatsby in High School. Re-read it again last year and it blew me away. A fantastic book. I also enjoyed Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises but I think the collection of short stories including Snows of Kilimanjaro is even better.

If you like short stories, check out Flannery O'Connor. She wrote hilarious and absurd stories set in the American South. They're full of rather grotesque and awful people encountering grace in a very humorous way.

Imho you need to first get into the habit of reading something other than trashy novels. Classics can wait.

What do you enjoy? Would you be interested in reading novels with a bit of math and science in them? I'm thinking of a novel in part about Alan Turing & cracking of the Enigma code during WWII.

For enjoyable, irreverent and fairly accurate history, try the Flashman series.

Oh good call bobbi.

Somerset Maugham! Razor's Edge / of Human Bondage

Somerset Maugham! Razor's Edge / of Human Bondage

Dickens? Oliver, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield.

Steinbeck? Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden.

A Clockwork Orange
Something by Hardy - Jude the Obscure, I suggest
Something by Dickens - Tale of two Cities?
1984
Keep the aspidistra flying
Midnight's Children
Brideshead Revisited
Rebecca
My Cousin Rachel
Wuthering Heights
Lord of the flies
Brave new world
Fahrenheit 451

What kind of stuff have you not enjoyed and stopped reading? Might help us think of the alternatives if you see what i mean?

History books, try antonia fraser. Her eleanor of aquitaine biography is very readable. Found her wars of the roses bit tougher going, there were quite complicated.

Have you thought of trying modern classics at all? Or do you really fancy some Victorian tome?

Ooh and EM Forster :)

how about modern classics, so you aren't put off by the language? George ORwell's novels are superb - Burmese Days/ Coming Up for Air / 1984 / Keep the Aspidistra Flying and teh non fiction Down & Out in Paris & London. Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies / all the Nancy Mitford novels. American writers? how about Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth. Or F Scott - Great Gatsby / Beautiful & The Damned / Tender is teh Night.
If you want to delve further back, Vanity Fair is utterly, utterly brilliant - and you can't beat some comedy Dickins - Pickwick Papers perhaps

Ah, I thought you meant non-fiction history, not historical novels. For the latter I propose the CJ Sansom Shardlake series

For history the series of Roman history based novels by Colleen McCullough, eg Fortune's Favourites, are amazing page-turners. They are based on true events but jazzed up with sex and gossip

I only discovered Anthony Trollope recently on maternity leave, I bloody LOVE him! I would start with Barchester Towers (it comes after The Warden but that is not quite as good and you don't have to have read it to understand BT.)

YY to Jane Austen too, also Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and maybe some Thomas Hardy eg The Mayor of Casterbridge? And Moll Flanders (think it is by Daniel Defoe but not sure.)

The Sherlock Holmes books are brilliant too.

I prefer Antonia Fraser to David Starkey for history.

For historical novels I like Philippa Gregory, but they are trashy middle ages novels really