The first book I read in English was "<em>The Picture of Dorian Gray</em>". Which, of course was a terrible choice because of the advance vocabulary that it contains. I remember that someone even told me that instead I should just pick up a beginners version of that book, and of course I got ofended hahah... so I went along with my reading anyways.
Needless to say that I lost track of the story pretty soon, and by the end of the book I didn't even know what the plot was about. But, on the flip side, I read it along with an audio version, which compensated my lack of reading comprehension.