Favorite Books

Novelists

Author	Genre	Books & comments...
David Baldacci	Political Thrillers	for example "The Camel Club". All of his books that I have read so far are great, fast paced, realistic, political thrillers. With a hero pitted against near impossible odds.
David Gemmel	Fantasy	Great author with deep realistic world and characters. No good and evil, no megalomania, but real character in an, often, tough world. He has a sweet spot for pyrhic victory.
Peter F. Hamilton	Science Fiction	Great realistic characters, fantastic future world settings in which you want to live, believable aliens, and mysterious stories...
Jennifer Fallon	Fantasy	Australian writer. Good and fun book. I like the Tide Lord series (although book 3 is not as fun as book 1, IMHO)
Fritz Leiber	Fantasy, Thriller, SciFi	A great precuror of the genre, I love his Sword and Sorcery tales featuring two multi-talented swashbuckler / rogue / thief, travelling in a strange world and going through multiple carreer such as philosopher, duellist, evangelist, wizard's servant.
Dan Simmons	Horror, SciFi	I have only read SciFi from him. I recommend Hyhperion, it's a huge space opera which really take you somewhere else.

Sociology / Politics

Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel, how the environment shaped our societies.
Tim Flannery: Future Eaters, again, about the relationship between society and the environment.
David Cosanday, Le secret de l'occident (Rise of the West) a theory on what drive innovation, liberty, "success" or the opposite in societies

Good non favorites

The Unknown story of Mao (Jung Chang), The life and death of Democracy (John Kayne)