I've read Pillars of the Earth at least twice. I love it. It's not great literature, but the setting is just about the most perfect I could imagine (it follows the people and politics around the building of a fictional English cathedral in the 1100s). I first read it for a community college history class sometime 2003-04 and was immediately gripped. It's moving, exciting, brutal, and just so epic. Large personalities, large buildings, and characters I care about as if they were real.