Khaleesi, I'm halfway through A game of thrones. I didn't like the beginning much because there were no likeable characters so I decided to shrug and root for the Lannisters as the closest thing to magnificient bastards. But by now there are loads of awesome characters (you, Arya Stark, Jon Snow) and the book is delicious, though not nearly horrible enough yet (maybe something about that hound and that mountain...). I like the grey and black morality, the psychological realism, the varied cultures, the "toss the reader in and wait 200 pages to mention variable-length seasons" style, the descriptions (seriously, that guy describes food and clothes and it doesn't bore me). It sticks very closely to the conventions of fantasy for no discernable reason (I'd do away with the prologue and slip the plot-relevant bits elsewhere), but that didn't bother me past the beginning. Most people should read it.

I recommend The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It's a a short-ish fantasy novel that takes a more realistic look at it's own thinly disguised versions of (first) Harry Potter and (second) the Chronicles of Narnia, a bit like a more cynical flip-side to HPMoR. It's a great read if you don't mind something leaning a bit more pessimistic, but it's not without hope. It's also quite funny if you like dark, sometimes subtle humour.

All the Christopher Hitchens I can get my hands on. Even as a political journalist and literary critic - someone who dealt entirely in words, not numbers, and had no understanding of science, despite being a deeply appreciative fan of it - he sincerely did his best to think and write clearly and to pass this value on. It's also reminding me to put care into the shape of every sentence. Pity he appeared never to have heard of Bayes ...

I'm reading

• "I am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter, (beautilfully written and it's nice to see what I grokked and what I didn't grok from GEB described much more matter-of-factly)

• "The Better Angels of our Nature" by Steven Pinker, (I'm impressed by the thorough research, but I don't have a head for recalling stats, and this book is much more stats and matter-of-factish, as opposed to theoretical and narrative than his previous books. Less entertaining than his previous books so far, but the message seems important and his argument so far convincing.)

• "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift (so far very fun; I'm only a few chapters in)

• "Elbow Room" by Daniel Dennett (the first chapter is exciting, but I feel confident enough with my own understanding of the solution to the subject already. Dennett uses rhetoric and his "intuition pumps" very beautifully and effectively, though; I'm interested in observing his method and hoping to learn a bit from it.)

Having listed these books all out here, though, I notice that the theme currently very narrow. The three nonfiction authors I just listed are excellent, but highly, highly in agreement with each-other on most things.

I love the works of Lois Bujold. She's great at portraying the inner lives of people who want to win, and showing the emotional struggles they have. (Especially Mirror Dance, but that book is not a good entry point into the Vorkosigan universe because it assumes a lot of the background from the earlier books). Many of the Vorkosigan books are available online.

Curse of Chalion is also great, and includes an interesting portrayal of what religious institutions might look like if gods were real and intervened to improve human life, but were not omnipotent. (i.e. the institutions would suck a lot less).

Ah, I love reading, and have found a lot of good suggestions from earlier discussion on LW. Looking forward to what comes up here. Having said that, some of my current reading:

• Thinking slow and Fast by Kahneman - excellent book; I've read a lot of the pop-psy stuff like Dan Ariely's, The Invisible Gorilla etc., which are also well worth reading, but Kahneman takes it a step further, and, while still very accessible, is going further in trying to explain things.
• The Portable Atheist and Hitch-22 by the late Christopher Hitchens; the books were on my list for a while, but Hitchens' death compelled me to actually start reading them. The former is a kind of reader into various (semi-)atheists of the last few centuries. Nothing like God is not great, but a bit more intellectual. Not really a light read, but interesting nevertheless. Currently reading his memoir, Hitch-22, which is interesting in its own right - I learnt a lot about the British far left in 60s/70s and his life as a school boy...
• REAMDE - Stephenson. (finished this mid-Dec 2011) I very much like Neal Stephenson's book, and I did like this one, around MMOGs and a kind of John-le-Carre story. However, I found there were a couple of things in the story line I did not find very convincing - and the Jihadist terrorists are described as sort-of 'generic' terrorists with a thin vereer of some Jihad cliches
• Then, reading The Checklist Manifesto, for my periodical reading of a productivity-book. The book's on the power of having (and following) checklists for any complicated process, So far, pretty good. It's a quick read anyway.