If you'd like to list your favorite books, you should do so (somewhere else, though, since it would be off-topic here). But scorning someone else for not sharing your taste violates the spirit of this site, not to mention was guaranteed to lead the thread further into off-topic bickering.
Like in this example, these books I have mentioned are not even a matter of opinion, they are such masterpieces, without which no list could be considered worth having.
You probably pissing up the wrong tree.
In software engineering there are other aesthetics. The famous maxim "for people to read and accidentally for machine to execute" sums up almost everything. Clarify, conciseness, readability, modularity, compossibility, loose coupling, design around protocols and interfaces - every decent programming guidelines, such as Google's Common LISP or Python style guides will show you a set of variables to optimize. Norvig's LISP style guide is also nice read.
Like it is in arts, each genre has its own aesthetics, and there are universal ones, such as non verbosity, clarify, following standard, familiar idioms. So, some artifacts are objectively better (according to certain human-universal aesthetics or those derived from laws of complex systems of Nature) than others no matter what conditioning you have in your head. Haskell's syntax, for example, is aesthetically better than Java's no matter what opinion you, or even majority hold.
Do you have sheriff's bage or something?
Oh what a terrible person, to have not read everything in an arbitrary list of authors and books that I feel like name dropping.
For me, it bears comparison with Ulysses in that both are works of epic length and a singular uniqueness. Sometimes when I read a book I can conceive, even without being a writer myself, of how it came into being; with Infinite Jest I just can't even begin to imagine how that book appeared.
One criticism I hear quite a lot is that DFW's own writing on the topics of addiction and depression are shallow and not representative, though I can't really say how true this is for lack of experience.
The thing that worked for me in I.J. was that Wallace managed to combine elements of comedy and tragedy, not just in alternating parts but often within the same body of text. Some chapters are so tragic as to be darkly comic, in particular some of the descriptions on the backgrounds of members of AA.
Plus, don't forget that Infinite Jest isn't his only work :). I haven't read The Pale King but have heard that it does away with a lot of the verbosity of I.J. and feels a lot more focused, and there are other works of fiction and also his more journalistic essay-ish type pieces, for example those from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (the collection, though the titular piece in particular I found very funny).
I'd also highly recommend Oblivion: Stories, even if Infinite Jest didn't gel with you, as I think it's as emotionally powerful but a lot more focused than Infinite Jest. It doesn't attempt the comedy/tragedy mix that I.J. seems to try for, and as a result the stories are shorter but just as affective.
I'm barely half way through the book, but some of the chapters written in ebonics are atrocious. He starts out the chapter totally over the top and it seems like he forgets he was writing in ebonics by the end. There's just so many places it feels like his editor just said "fuck it".
There are definitely a few sections that I get lost in, but they are so few are far between. I could probably count them on one hand. More than half the book I am pretty neutral about and then there is a significant portion I read and just look up and think, this author is full of shit. I guess its just his style, but when he was describing "eschaton", he has no idea how the game would actually be played. I guess the way it ends up kind of describes that the depths of the game were really beyond those playing it, but thats kind of pattern throughout the book. He has this grand idea and exposition, but it just sort of devolves out of laziness, or style, or I don't know what. I'm kind of terrified I'm going to reach the end of the book and he's going to devolve again and introduce some stupid non-sequiter to wrap things up cleanly, without any introduction or background.
I forgot Philip K. Dick and Yukio Mishima!
Oh, sorry, because it is His list it must be exceptional.
I think it would be fair to argue that he, himself, was an exceptional character. It's very human to want to try to understand exceptional people. Is that wrong of us?
"Diff'rent strokes, for diff'rent folks."
If you don't like Bowie's list, you can make your own.
I had enough of philosophers and internationally acclaimed authors in high school. Literature teachers have their own canon of books that must be read, and I hated having someone else's idea of an influential book forced down my throat. While it isn't quite as bad as "stop liking things I don't like," an unsolicited "you should like more of the things I like" is still irritating, when I'm not in the right mood for it.
I find it more useful to organize influential works like trees rather than as lists. That way, you can find a branch that you like, and walk up and down its nodes.
For instance, if you like Twelve Monkeys, you could walk up the branch to Brazil, further up to _1984_, sidestep to cousin _Catch 22_, skip to uncle _The Trial_, and go up to _Crime and Punishment_ and _The Brothers Karamazov_.
Whereas if you like The Magnificent Seven, you might walk up the branch to The Seven Samurai, sidestep to Yojimbo, and go back down to A Fistful of Dollars.
When you put out lists of finite length, featuring only the brightest stars in the sky, you lose quite a lot of detail in your constellations.
Now you see, how many worthy titles are curiously missing?)
That is why I think it is more useful--and more polite--to discuss one's own favorites, rather than criticize another's set of favorites for its omissions.
And the primary utility of such an exercise is, in my opinion, to help other people discover works that may appeal to them. So the closer your set of favorites aligns with Bowie's, the more likely it is that you may enjoy those works on the list that you haven't yet read.
(Read L'Étranger, it's great!)
You can't be serious.)