By the way, a very similar discussion thread in this group:
http://vkontakte.ru/topic-12648877_22997191
There is no such thing as the most useful book. You can'l learn English with one book only. You'll need at least a hundred books of different kinds (including really bad ones) before you know English.
11.I don't think so,there is some books are only emitations of the good ones,and let us not forget the factor of time.
I agree with you that you can not learn from one book,and you can't also learn from all of them,some books are really waste of time
Reader's digest...well, is not a book, but it's really a very good source to learn english. They use normal words (not so much difficult ones, like in some books), and also keep you updated and entertained. Also the dictionary)))
You'll think I'm nuts for saying this, but you can't go wrong learning English vocabulary and writing style from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books. Burroughs was a wonderful writer, with a wonderfully descriptive style, and used a lot of 'big' words. I read all his books when I was in my early teens.
Another great writer in English, even though she was Russian, was Ayn Rand. Her 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'Fountainhead' are continued bestsellers in the US, 50 years after they were written.