The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. This book can be found on the Sybervision and the Norwegian Book Lists.
The Divine Comedy is broken up into three separate parts: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. The story follows the poet Dante as he travels through each of the three afterlife worlds, meeting many of the people who once lived along his travels. By far the most interesting and most commonly read was Inferno. I had read Inferno in one of my college classes and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The visualizations were exquisite and remain with you years after you read it. I still remember everything that happened upon reaching the furthest depths of Hell. However, having read this in one of my classes I was probably spoiled, because upon reading the remaining two books on my own for this list, I found them dull and incomprehensible at times. The contemporary illustrations were also well beyond my understanding, even with an annotated book copy that helped explain some of that stuff. It got tedious though to bounce back and forth between text and description. It could have been my translation was not the best (a good translation is key), but it could also have been that having someone knowledgeable about the book made it that much more enjoyable. My suggestion with this series is to do it with someone who knows what is going on, like in a college class.
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