Well, if you like elegant prose with superb writing I strongly recommend the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian. I have read and re-read these books and they are extraordinarily well done. You can pick a page at random and the paragraphs are so well crafted that they can stand alone. The movie, Master and Commander, is currently playing and is very decent -- but the novels have been called the best historical novels ever written, and are!!
