TITLE: Best Algebraic Geometry text book? (other than Hartshorne)
QUESTION [76 upvotes]: Lifted from Mathoverflow:
I think (almost) everyone agrees that Hartshorne's Algebraic Geometry is still the best.
Then what might be the 2nd best? It can be a book, preprint, online lecture note, webpage, etc.
One suggestion per answer please. Also, please include an explanation of why you like the book, or what makes it unique or useful.

REPLY [4 votes]: I possibly cannot say what is "the best" book in this topic, but I've recently started studying it and found Hartshorne's book extremely difficult, so I went to study Mumford's red book of varieties. But other than these books that have been introduced I found the followings also helpful:
A Royal Road to Algebraic Geometry by Audun Holme is a newly published book which tries to make Algebraic Geometry as easy as possible for studetns.
Also, the book by Griffits and Harris called Principles of Algebraic Geometry in spite of being rather old, and working mostly with only complex field, gives a good intuition on this very abstract topic.