That's a rather dumb desire, if I may say so.

The King James Version. I smite Christians daily with it.

I recommend the Readers' Digest version. It's shorter. I particularly like the Eight Commandments.

Seriously, it kind of depends on whom you're dealing with. The KJV is considered by some in the "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ it's good enough for me" crowd to be special in some very hard to articulate way. Unfortunately, if you're not all that familiar with English as it was spoken at the time, it is a hard read and you can get a lot of mistaken ideas.

I am currently plodding through the New American Standard, pretty much for the same reason you are considering this masochistic exercise. I chose this version because the local Bible Bookstore had a copy with wide enough margins for me to write snide remarks.

If you're dealing with Catholics, you probably should use one of their Bibles. In particular, notice that the Catholic bible has some books that the Protestant ones don't have. Of course, some would suggest that if you're dealing with Catholics you really don't need to read the Bible at all until you've gone through the catechism.

I have heard from Numerous scholars that the best version is the RSV version. If all else fails have a copy of each. NIV,RSV, ASV, KJV,NKJV, Vulgate ect. That way you can hit them with each and every copy.

I have been giving this some thought of recent.  I did not grow up going to church or anything, so I haven't read the bible other than specific quotes and what not.  One of these days I need to sit down and read the thing front to back. 

I use "The New Oxford Annotated [Study] Bible with the Apocrypha, Augmented 3rd Edition." It will tell you about the dates that scholars think certain texts were written and parallels to stories in other cultures. For example, it clearly points out the connections to Enuma Elish and the Babylonian divinity Tiamat in Genesis 1. It describes the documentary hypothesis, which is very helpful. There's tons of interesting facts in it.

The best translation, in my opinion, is the NRSV. It's slightly better than the KJV but it takes the NIV over its knee and spanks it. And for goodness' sake, do not use the NIV. It is a horrible translation. When the Hebrew allows multiple interpretations they translate it in a way that excludes the other possible interpretations from showing up in English. When there are words that people aren't quite sure of how to translate--such as tsaphown--they assume that one translation is correct and others are incorrect, which doesn't make much sense. (The NRSV translates it as Zaphon, which allows the readers to make up their own minds.) In many cases, they deliberately mistranslate the texts. Isaiah 4.17 is a classic example of this. Isaiah was prophecying that a child would soon be born from a "young woman" (saying nothing of virginity) as a sign to King Ahaz that God was on his side against the Assyrians. King Ahaz was long dead by the time Jesus was born. The NIV has, then, introduced an unfulfilled prophecy into the text even though the source texts say nothing remotely close to a prophecy concerning Jesus. The NIV has mistranslated the text to make it appear as though it talks about Jesus, to cover Matthew's butt, and in the process introduce an unfulfilled prophecy. The NIV translators are incompetent.

Rich: Arg.  I would have expected a little more sympathy from a travelling man. I find the NIV to be more in-tune with fundie thinking than the RSV, thus practical for debates.  Honest enough to be usable, but not so far removed from the KJV that it alienates the audience.

That's a point where I differ with some of the RRS, though.  I believe it's better not to alienate the audience. 

It does, however it also gives the Greek in footnotes.  As per my favorite translation, aside from the RSV, ironically enough the NAB (Catholic Bible) is not only accurate per translation (of the Greek) but also includes apocrypha which some versions don't have.