Paradise Lost by John Milton
Like most contemporary non-believers, I've always found Greek mythology more alluring than Christian mythology. John Milton has helped me to see that the Christian stories make for just as good reading as the adventures of Zeus and company. Of course, as many have noted—whether or not this is what Milton intended, and whether or not Milton's contemporaries would have read the character this way—for a modern reader, Satan is the most sympathetic character. He's ambitious and a lover of liberty: he doesn't want to be under the thumb of an autocratic god-the-father, and makes a valiant attempt to get out from under that thumb. It's hard, at least nowadays, to fault him for that. The main reason, though, that Milton's Satan is so attractive is that he is the most richly drawn of all the characters, and this depth makes him fascinating in ways the other characters are not. Adam and Eve, for example, seem of little account, mere pawns (for all the big guy's clai...