Knowing that I read a lot, a friend asked for some recommendations. Looking through my list on Goodreads of all of the books I've read, I found it hard to give specific recommendations.
I've found that I've enjoyed 99% of the books I've read; it's rare that I finish a book and regret reading it. Take that as you may - I dont consider myself any sort of literary critic. Goodreads does have lots of good lists that can get you started. For me, starting with authors who have won (or been runners-up) for various awards like the Hugos and Nebulas has worked out pretty well.
Here's a list of books and authors that I remember well enough to recommend
Authors (my favorites that I'll read without even looking at reviews)
- Neil Gaiman
- Neal Stephenson
- William Gibson
- Iain M Banks
- Isaac Asimov
- Arthur C Clarke
- Greg Egan
- Alistair Reynolds
Space Opera/Series
- The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey
- Culture series by Ian M Banks
- Imperial Radch series by Anne Leckie
- Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett
- Zones of Thoughs series by Vernor Vinge
- Silo series by Hugh Howey
- Subjective Cosmology Series by Greg Egan
- Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
- The Space between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
- Lock In by John Scalzi
- Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
- The City & the City by China Miéville
- The Masquerade series by Seth Dickinson
- Snow Queen Cycle series by Joan D Vinge
- The Time Quintet series by Madeleine L'Engle
- The Missionaries by Owen Stanley
- Otherland series by Tad Williams
Djinn/Genies (not sure why I've set aside this specific category)
- A Master of Djinn by P Djeli Clark
- The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
- The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker
Mythology Remakes/Takeoffs/Alternative Tellings
- Ariadne - Minotar story told from point of view of King Minos' daughter
- The Just City by Jo Walton - Socrates and Plato and the Greek gods
- Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman - Norse myth
- Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
- The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley - A Beowulf adaptation
Russia
I'm fascinated by Russian stories because Russia is neither Western/European or Asian and I know so little of its history or culture. I'm not really into reading straight-up history books, but I do like novels set in Russia. The ones with Russian authors are available in multiple translations; I've found translations by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky to be well regarded.
- Classics
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Historical Fiction/Fiction
- Chimes of a Lost Cathedral by Janet Fitch
- The Revolution of Marina M by Janet Fitch
- Russka: The Novel of Russia by Edward Rutherfurd
- Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
As with the Russian novels, I also find reading novels by non-western authors interesting - both in the way they tell stories, but also because it reveals a little bit about their culture (of which I'm mostly ignorant)
African Authors
- Octavia Butler: Xenogenesis series, currently reading PatternMaster series
- Nnedi Okorafor: Binti, Nsibidi Scripts, Who Fears Death (these are all series)
Asian Authors
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
- Remembrance of Earth's Past - series by Liu Cixin, Three Body problem to be a Netflix series
- The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
- The Windup Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
