East of Eden is probably my favorite book ever. It makes The Grapes of Wrath look like it was written by an 8 year old in comparison, in my opinion. Good luck with the Quran. I'm of the mind that it's really only possible to get the full experience by reading it in Arabic. Our vocabulary is more verbose, some sentences only make sense in the language. I'd suggest listening to it in Arabic too, if you can. If you're looking for something more, innocent, I suppose, I suggest Brave Story. Very few books make me cry, that book was one of them.
East of Eden is my favorite book too. I'm a huge fan of Steinbeck though so I'm a bit biased towards his works. I've been slowly trawling through Team of Rivals and while it's not a policy setting book or anything of that nature, it's a fascinating look book at Lincoln, Seward, etc. and how they managed to work together. For other fiction books, The Crying of Lot 49 is a great post-modern book by Pynchon that will at times screw with your head.
Both incredible books, seconded. And Crying is only ~150 pages, though since it's Pynchon every word means something and it's not as fast a read as you'd expect. And of course East of Eden is a masterwork.I've been slowly trawling through Team of Rivals and while it's not a policy setting book or anything of that nature, it's a fascinating look book at Lincoln, Seward, etc. and how they managed to work together. For other fiction books, The Crying of Lot 49 is a great post-modern book by Pynchon that will at time screw with your head.