The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas is no writer of short stories. He writes long stories, filled with detail, and he writes them well.
The Three Musketeers is about d'Artagnan, the intrigues he gets mixed up in and how he meets and becomes a musketeer.
D'Artagnan is determined to become a musketeer and while trying to deliver his letter of recommendation to Monsieur Treville, he is attacked and the letter is stolen. He makes it Treville and explains that he had a letter, but it was stolen. Treville places him in the gaurds instead, under the command of his brother.
Meanwhile, he meets Athos (he was injured and d'Artagnan ran into him), Porthos (he had a gold sash and d'Artagnan ran into him and discovered it was only half gold) and Aramis (d'Artagnan noticed he was standing on a white, embroidered handkerchief and pulled it out from under his foot, forcefully, and thoroughly embarrassed Aramis in front of his guests), and is challenged to a duel by each one of them.
Long story short, (635 pages), d'Artagnan is accepted by Athos, Porthos and Aramis and becomes a very close friend to each of them, meanwhile discovering that the two women he loves are not what they appear.
The last scene with Lady de Winter is a moving one, very emotional.
The book is very unlike the 1993 movie, (which was awesome, dont get me wrong), but the book shows a completely different storyline and characters.
I highly recommend this book if your looking for a good old romantic adventure book.

I will update my reading list when I decide what I'm going to read next.

War of the Worlds by HG Wells

Another classic by HG Wells- What a wonderful writer he was!
What makes this even more interesting is his commentary on the scientific and medical aspects of the martians and their machinery. He was a very learned man and he would not write a book about martians unless he had some kind of solid belief in the fact that they could very well exist. He didn't have solid proof, but he believed that there was life out there, and at the time of this books writing, the focus happened to be Mars. He did a wonderful job writing this book.

If you haven't read the book, it's about martians coming to the earth in the late 19th century (approx. 1898-99). Several cylinders from Mars crash land in several places in and around London and reveal strange creatures who begin building machines so that they can walk around and destroy the land. They begin a rampage that goes for about a month, month and a half.
Now, the book differs from ALL of the movies in several respects:
First of all, in the book the martians DO NOT have sheilds on their machines. In the first hundred pages, three (if I remember correctly) martian machines are destroyed.
Secondly, in the movies, the martians succumb to the germs and diseases of this earth within a few days, in the book it takes a more appropriate 4 or 6 weeks for them to succumb.
Third, the martians are incapable of walking upright on the earth without great effort due to the severe change in the gravity of earth compared to Mars.

The book is a wonderful read. It's a fast read and written with a scientific knowledge of how things work (machines) and biology (the martians, red plant). He writes it very well as if it were a memory of his. I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys the classics. Definately a classic.

Next up on my list:
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (Wonderful!!!)
Faith of Our Fathers by N.C. Allen (put on hold)
Hiroshima by John Hersey (put on hold)
A Fresh Start in Fairhaven by Sharon Downing Jarvis (put on hold- cant get into it)

My book list seems to have dwindled. (on the interest side anyway.) I will look over some of the other books I have and update my list accordingly.

Pompeii by Robert Harris

First off, I give this book a "PG 13" rating. It's a great book, but has some questionable items in it. It was also a very slow read. That is, until the last 100 pages, then it got interesting. But you had to go through 100+ pages to get to the good part.
The story follows Attilius, the new Aquarius, who is in charge of the water supply to all the towns surrounding Vesuvius. Up until the day before the eruption, Vesuvius was thought to have been just a mountain peak, not a dormant volcano. As the water supply becomes "poisoned" and Attilius sets out to find whats causing it all, he discovers that Vesuvius may not be just a mountian peak at all.
The story follows him all the way up to the eruption of Vesuvius, and what happened afterwards.

Now, if you dont know anything about Pompeii or Herculaneum, then let me first remark that they were very much like Sodom and Gommorah. Debauchery galore. But I still have an immense interest in Pompeii, but then it really just a morbid interest of the body casts... (I know, I cant help it though...)

So, just be wary of reading this book if you are sensitive to sensual matters.