Not quite what you asked but I decided to give The Great Gatsby a second chance after I learned it was Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite book. The first time I read it was when it was assigned to me as a high school freshman so predictably I hated it for all the usual reasons.

Reading when I was older and doing so voluntarily made me change my mind. I still don’t think it’s the greatest book ever or anything but I feel like I get it and what it was trying to say now.

I’m reading The Secret History this month, because Babel by R F Kuang is a thematic response. I really enjoyed Babel, and I want to know what Kuang saw in Donna Tartt’s book.

When I was a kid I read Anne Frank because I had read a diary from a girl in the Bosnian war and they mentioned Anne Frank. I mean obviously I would have read it eventually but I read it before we learned about it in school.

Ayy, Meddling Kids! I loved that book and I don't feel like its talked about enough

To answer your post, I think the only time I've ever really come close to something like this is PJO and Rick Riordan really kickstarted my interest in different mythology, and I'd like to read more classics/myths that he utilized in his books

I didn't know she was inspired by the Secret History, though that makes sense from what I've heard.

I am definitely intending to read The Secret History because people have talked about how similar Babel was to it and I really enjoyed Babel

Elizabeth Peters. I was reading some Pink Carnations books from Lauren Willig and Emmeline Truelove books by Beatriz Williams and read somewhere that both authors loved Elizabeth Peters specifically her Amelia Peabody books and I can totally see in what ways the authors were inspired now.

This year I read and loved After Story by Larissa Behrendt. It referenced many other books, and in particular had a description of Orlando by Virginia Woolf that made me buy and read that book soon after.

Becky Chambers always talked about Ursula Le Guin in interviews so I finally got around to reading her books

I read 1984 first, then Brave New World, then We, but I believe We was the catalyst for them all. Loooved We but 1984 got me interested in dystopias

Currently reading "On Tyranny" (the original, and the graphic novel adaptation), one of Celeste Ng's several influences for "Our Missing Hearts"

I read Lord of the Flies because Stephen King mentions it a lot in both his fiction and nonfiction, particularly in Hearts in Atlantis. Somehow I was never assigned to read it in high school, so that’s how I finally got around to reading it.

Starting Don Delilos White Noise sometime soon after having recently finished infinite jest. Really excited

Hunger by Knut Hamsun because he influenced Charles Bukowski and he named him in the book I read previously, That Last Night of the Earth Poems.

In that book, Bukowski makes a list of his favorites authors and puts E. E. Cummings at the top, Ezra Pound second and Knut Hamsun third.

I like Stephen King's On Writing and read several recommendations from that. Character and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card was not a book I was interested in but read due to King and it was an excellent book on the craft.

I just read Pedro Paramo because it is credited as the first novel of the Latin American magical realism boom. It was fantastic.

Didn‘t know that but it makes sense. Fear and Loathing and Gatsby are all about the shallowness of the American Dream

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I started reading The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati when I learned that J. M. Coetzee had written Waiting for the Barbarians while inspired by Buzzati's novel. Now The Tartar Steppe is one of my favourite books. ❤️

Also I read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester when I learned that Stephen King had written The Jaunt as a homage to Bester's book. It's curious that Bester's novel, in its turn, is a homage to The Count of Monte Cristo. So The Stars My Destination is a great novel as The Jaunt is a great short story (and one of the scariest I have ever read).

Michael Chabon's Moonglow contains multiple references to Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, it doesn't hinder the story if you haven't read either of those two but they would be good follow-up reads if you liked it.

I brought "David and the Phoenix " after it featured prominently in tye Honor Harrington novel "At all Costs" by David Weber.

Mad King Sweeney is a character in Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, so I read Seamus Heaney's translation of the mediæval Irish book about him, Sweeney Astray.

The old Irish story itself reuses ideas from Apuleius's The Golden Ass and probably Ovid's Metamorphoses. I haven't read Ovid yet but as it's also the inspiration for Christoph Ransmayr's The Last World I have another reason to get it off the pile.

I decided to check out P.G. Wodehouse because Douglas Adams wrote an essay about him. They are very different genres but both involve absurd situations and humour I say that PG. Wodehouse is a literary sitcom whereas Douglas Adams is among the first to spoof science fiction.

Not sure if this counts but I read Between Two Fires which is a historical horror set in the plague with heavy emphasis on the religious aspects. So many religious terms and contexts I couldn’t fully understand, finished it and immediately picked up a general world religions book that I just finished. Much better understanding now!

The Tempest because it was mentioned in BNW (also where the title comes from). I did the same with the order you mention (Zamyatin’s We).

Almost done with my first read of Finnegans Wake. I reread Ulysses to prepare for it, as well as parts of Vico’s New Science and 1001 Arabian Nights. It’s been a summer project that I started in June. Also I consult Wikipedia, Online Etymology Dictionary, and Google Translate a lot.

A random college guy suggested I read Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake after he saw that I wanted to read Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I also tried to read Viriconium by M John Harrison for the same reason - less enthused with that.

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler is one of the other major starting points for 1984.

I read some Peter Straub after enjoying a lot of Stephen King. I went to the library and randomly picked out, "A Special Place." That was easily one of the most disturbing things I've ever read. I wish I'd never read it.

I read this YA book called The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand, which was inspired by A Christmas Carol by Dickens. Decided to read the Dickens story and loved it way more than The Afterlife of Holly Chase. I plan to read it every Christmas from now on.

If you read The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien then The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan then The Way of Kings by by Brandon Sanderson you get 3 generations of influence. It’s kinda neat really.

I also secured a whole complete works of Hamsun since he was Hans Fallada's favourite writer (whom I adore). I'd be great, having a complete overview of "all" authors with their respective top 3+ writers; tracking their influences, further immersing oneself with that "reading the same lines as they did" experience..

I think anyone the buy or checks out Catcher in the rye should be put on a list

I have read both Galactic Patrol and The Skylark of Space because of Ryk E Spoor's Grand Central Arena.