The first two books I ever sat down to read, which was always something I was reluctant to do (
just sitting there, turning page after page, is very boring/tedious for me and not something I could ever do much of), were 1) "1984" and 2) "Animal Farm" by George Orwell, so I guess those would have to be on my recommendation list. A guy called Stone on the TheNextLevel forums recommended them to me, that I would like the subject matter and so forth, so I finally bought both of them and committed to reading them all the way through.
Good thing about a well-written book is that it helps improve your English writing skills, for example, I didn't know how to use a semi-colon very well, but in "1984," Orwell uses it frequently so it kinda helped me get the hang of it. Several reasons, including these books, led me to make a very conscious decision to really try to improve my writing skills and I have, quite a bit from my early days on the Internet as a matter of fact when I used to think it was cool to type in compressed Internet lingo (e.g. "Hey, wat r u up to, dood ??")...
So yeah, it's true...reading books makes you smarter, if you're willing and not lazy like me...
