Book suggestions - a whole slew of them

[Nuentes]

Hey all!

First post, so be gentle. I'm looking for some people to suggest some books/authors for me to check out. I have been spending some time recently trying to find book forums that actually have recent posts, and this seems to be the one! I just recently started reading for my own personal enjoyment. I found that, contrary to what I learned in high school and college, reading can indeed be entertaining.

So just to clarily, I read for entertainment almost exclusively - fiction writing - not self-improvement, or anything even similar. My focus is generally in the mystery/thriller/horror genres.

With mysteries, I love novels with a main character that is NOT a cop or a PI. The main writers I have been reading for this style are Dan Brown, Harlan Coben, and Charlie Huston. The only exception I have to this rule is Jeff Lindsay's "Dexter" series... I absolutely LOVE these books - and the show.

I also really like Dan Browns use of breaking codes... if anyone knows of any other authors that utilize this tool, I'd really like to know.

For thriller and horror, I've been mostly reading Stephen King (which is always a good place to start), and now I'm running out of books of his that are rated 4 stars or better on Amazon, so now I have started to shift towards Dean Koontz. I was going to explore this genre with the "brute force" method. I have found several books that have collections of short stories by horror writers, and it seemed this was a good way to get a feel for several writers, and decide which ones to pursue further.

The latest surprise in my life recently is that I think I have begun to enjoy science fiction. I suppose it started last week when I completed Carl Sagan's "Contact". I really like sci-fi, but I'm not into the fantasy types of sci-fi. You know, stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars. The things that you can't even believe for one glimmering second. I guess I haven't read too many books in the genre, so I can't give good literary examples of what I'm looking for, so I'll compare to the (relatively) recent movies Contact, K-Pax, and Stargate. If anybody has any good ideas, my mind is open!

I really appreciate any help anybody can offer me with these!

-Andre

 

[Jez]

Given the authors you like, you might want to check out Michael Crichton. I haven't read many of his books, and what I have read was years ago, but you might want to try Sphere, Timeline, Eaters of the Dead, Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, etc.

You might enjoy James Rollins too. Subterranean, Map of Bones (I think this one is supposed to be similar to Da Vinci Code), Sandstorm (the only one I've read), Black Order, The Judas Strain, etc.

Maybe Codex by Lev Grossman or The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez.

Wish I could help more, but this really isn't my genre. Hope it helps.

 

[sparkchaser]

If you like more "realistic" sci-fi, then check out Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series (2001, 2010, 2063, and 3001). Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age is a really great utopia novel. William Gibson's Pattern Recognition was good too.

I'm sure I'll think of others later.

 

[Canker]

On the Horror side Robert McCammon is pretty good and I'd start with Swan Song, gets compared to King's the Stand all the time. Brian Lumley is another one of my favorites for his large Necroscope series which has a bit of everything in it. The first eight are great but they go downhill after that.