Hmm... favourite books

Let's see, authors in no particular order:
Douglas Adams - utter geniosity
Franz Kafka - as someone's already mentioned.
Antoine de Saint Exupery - (most famous for the Little Prince) French war-time existentialism.
Samuel Beckett - the theatre of the absurd and most people around him (read: Harold Pinter) are absolute, sheer class. Essentially the genesis of Monty Python and, subsequently, the Hitchhiker's Guide.
Edgar Allan Poe - as someone's already mentioned, again, very good, very eerie.
MA Bulgakov - early Soviet-regime satirism
Oh and of course -
Ray Bradbury 
That's about all the good ones I can remember