Books, of the Electronic Variety

I am currently reading Neal Stephenson's Reamde at the moment, Stephenson is one of the best SF writers out there and this book is no exception.  Though it is more action/adventure/thriller than SF but still excellent.  It prominently features a fictional MMO called "T'Rain" and there is lots of MMO related stuff in it too - plus some of the action takes place in B.C. so there is even a Canadian angle :-)

I am about to start Vernor Vinge's Children of the Sky, which is a sequel to his superb 1990's Hugo winner A Fire Upon the Deep.  I can highly recommend the latter and am really looking forward to the sequel which just came out a couple of months ago.

A couple of other Hugo winners from the past couple decades that are really good, and the first each of excellent respective series, are David Brin's Startide Rising and Dan Simmons' Hyperion.  Each can be enjoyed on its own though.

For fantasy, Brandon Sanderson is one of the best new writers in the field.  Not only is he finishing up the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (and doing an outstanding job of it too) but he has own books too.  Elantris and Warbreaker are really good single novels and his Mistborn trilogy is great too.

All available on Kindle, iBooks, Kobo etc.

The Dresden files are among one of my favorites. Modern-day wizard/private investigator battles crime and the supernatural in Chicago. The Harry Dresden character is great. Author is Jim Butcher. I definitely recommend getting them.

"Ready Player One". Awesome story about gamers, gamer culture, set in the future. Lots of 80's references, and one of the few books I have picked up recently where I literally could not put it down.

I also second Brad Sanderson, the Wheel of Time series, as well as his own stand-alone works.

http://www.baen.com/

Baen Books is a publisher of sci-fi novels. The founder of Baen is also an author. He not only encourages and embraces new technologies like e-readers, he is actively encouraging readers to buy and share their e-books. The Baen website has a large library of FREE e-books, most of them the first (or first few) books in a series to encourage people to buy the rest of the books in that series. A lot of John Ringo's books are in the Baen library for free. Ringo is definately not the best authour out there, but I do enjoy his books for the sci-fi-fluff that they are. A modern equivalent of the old pulp novels.

http://www.baen.com/library/

Hit up some free books, yo.  PROJECT GUTENBURG IN TEH HIZZY.

Rafael Sabatini, wrote adventure pieces like Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, which was made a movie starring Errol Flynn.  Several of his books were early Hollywood adaptations, including the novel about the French Revolution, Scaramouche who's famous first line was "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."  He wrote a lot of historical fiction, which I find endlessly fascinating.  Wiki page with links to relevant Gutenburg pages.

BTW, all and I do mean ALL of every Sherlock Holmes story by Doyle is there plus his other works which can be worth a go too.

H. Rider Haggard is the author of King Solomon's Mines and one of the first writers in the lost world genre.  His books are also an interesting look into British Colonialism and Africa of the time, although his stories are rather more sympathetic to the native peoples than other attitudes of the time.  Personally I found his hero, Alan Quatermain, to be rather human and vulnerable as opposed to the heroic John Carter archetype who never failed or faultered.  His wiki.

And speaking of John Carter there's Edger Rice Burroughs who wrote the Mars books plus many other very strange and weird stories in addition to Tarzan.  His wiki.