I want to get a general, lucid idea of what was going on in Europe through the ages.
Looks like there are two (extremely ambitious) cover-to-cover treatments in existence: A Penguin History, and Norman Davies' Europe.
A guy told me I should start with a history of philosophy, but didn't know what to recommend.
What I don't want to read is soulless, unilluminating high school/college textbooks that present fact soup to fuel multiple choice exams rather than a story of what was going on.
Right now I'm leaning towards Davies' book, but am open to suggestions because it really doesn't look like a beginner book. The book came highly recommended by one of my history professors.
Read the Davies. It's a lot of fun...I've read it three times
If you are looking long term. Davies is an excellent place to start. If you are looking for more recent history, Postwar by Tony Judt is a great choice.
If you are looking for an intermediate level of detail between broad strokes and monographs, I really liked the Longman History of Europe textbooks, at around 4-500 pages per century, it is a couple of months reading for the whole series, but you certainly will understand the fundamentals well.