Possession
By A.S. Byatt

When I was starting out in my career, I lived in San Francisco. My friend and I were unemployed for chunks of time, and we'd tell each other: "Instead of panicking, go read. You won't have another chance in your whole life to dive into books." I got a lot of books read during those years, and Possession was one of them. I love the way the two main relationships—one in the present day and the other between two Victorian poets—are intertwined and counterpoints for each other. The sentences are all drippy with words that you have to look up in a dictionary, but they're so beautiful that it's worth taking the time. It almost doesn't matter what the story is about—it's one sentence at a time. Just stop and enjoy every single one.