Cancer Ward by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

'On top of everything, the cancer wing was number 13.'  This was the first sentence in Cancer Ward, my second-favorite Solzhenitsyn. I spent the day I finished it reflecting. The ending was surprising as well as. . . well, confusing, but it was, I admit, a fitting ending.
The book begins with a man who might be considered a main character, though not the protagonist, entering the cancer ward. He is an official in the Soviet government of 1955, and a thoroughly annoying, though lovable, character. The rest of the book is mainly the relationships between the people in the ward, as well as the deaths of patients and philosophical and political discussions.
I noticed marked similarities between Kostoglotov, the protagonist, and Vorotyntsev, the protagonist in August 1914, and I believe that these were both very similar characters to the writer himself, as Solzhenitsyn was in a cancer ward for a time.
This was a very deep and moving book, certainly one of my favorites.

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

This was one of the best books I have ever read. It was also one of the first short stories I have read. It begins as told by some acquaintances of Ivan Ilych, reading about the news of his death. They all have the same thought: At least it's him and not me. It then moves on to the dead man's life, and finally to his thoughts in his last days. These were incredibly touching. It seems he lived his life contentedly, but as he dies he thinks of it all as going downhill from the bright days of childhood. Death is imminent and he is miserable, but on his last day, he finds what he had never seen before.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment was the first book I have read by Dostoevsky. It is the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a Russian student, who murders an old woman in the name of a theory he has formulated after the 'superior man' theories of Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche. This happens in Part One, and through the rest of the book, Raskolnikov is tormented by guilt. He seems to switch back and forth between sanity and insanity, raving mad at moments and becoming a selfless philanthropist at others. 
This was a very good book on the whole, quite cerebral.