Well, first off, do you want to stay in the sword and sorcery genre?
If so, Mickey Zucker Reichert has an interesting series in The Last of the Renshai. Pretty much anything by Margaret Weis is good, and, of course, don't forget Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series, or Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga. On a more classic bent, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow is a must read.Neal Stephenson is technoworld. Snowcrash is weird but highly recommended. Cryptonomicon is just released, and I can't think but it is anything less than wonderful.I have just started rereading H.P. Lovecraft. A little hard to pick up and read, but once you get the knack of his writing style, it goes very well.
Leonard Wibberley's The Mouse that Roared is a fun read, a whimsical look at the oddities of US foreign relations. There is at least one more in the "series", though the name escapes me at the moment.Michael Crichton's fiction is so believable that you want to keep looking at the cover to make sure it still says "fiction", but so engrossing that you can't bring yourself to do it. BTW, The Great Train Robbery, while seemingly factual, was not as engrossing to me, while Eaters of the Dead was believable and engrossing, and such a great idea that I modeled an AD&D campaign after it.Robin Cook has an excellent writing style as well, and though sometimes a little predictable, his protagonists usually get enough of a twist to keep it interesting, especially as the point of view keeps shifting to other characters, giving you a real feeling of all the events coming to a head. IMO, his earlier stuff is better.
Richard Bach. What can I say. There is so much food for thought that the more you reread the stories the more you find.
The Merchant of Venice. A portrayal of women as the superior gender, in a play written in the late 1500's. Shakespeare was ahead of his time.Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince is a little hard to get into, (OK, a lot hard to get into) but definitely a book every thinking person should read once.Lastly, Nevil Shute's On the Beach. Wow. I haven't read it in at least 20 years and I got goosebumps just thinking about it. Not scary, just haunting. But since its set "down under", it probably was required reading.Well, that's all for now. Let me know if any strike your fancy, and I'm sure I can flesh out a list of several more in each category.
Keep your stick on the ice.
[This message has been edited by Thorfinn (edited 07-28-99).]