[Surfactant7]

Old Man and the Sea. Was forced to read it in high school and promptly forgot it. Read it again and it's amazing. A short but big story about wants vs. needs with a surprising but inevitable ending.

Before that, The Great Gatsby. Same thing - forced to read earlier, then decided to read again. I missed so much about it the first time around.

It's kind of sad how education can tarnish classics in this way.

To re-iterate another commenter, Code by Prezold is surprisingly good (based on first few dozen pages). I had low expectations based on what seemed like hype, but so far it's holding up. It reminds me of the way that James Burke in his series Connections wove what seemed to be entirely disconnected technological threads together.