Well, nobody's mentioned it yet, so I'll go ahead
and chime in with it. Back toward the beginning of
the year I took a couple of weeks and read the first
four "Harry Potter" books. If you can get over the
mental hurdle of them being "children's books," you'll
find that they are remarkably engrossing and
well-written. If you don't get them all in, at least take a
couple of days and read "Sorcerer's Stone," the first in
the series. I think you'll be surprised at how good
it really is.
The other two books I have read
recently and enjoyed very much are the books two of my
favorite movies were based on: "The Hunt for Red October"
and "Contact." It's interesting to see how two (in my
opinion) very good movies can be so different from their
(in my opinion) very good books, especially in the
case of "Red October."