Besides PTerry, I read a wide variety of books (like most other afp-ers). My favourite is Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks, equally brilliant when writing SF and Culture novels with the M. and "real ones" without. My favourite is "The Crow Road". This is probably my favourite book and has been for some years. Not maybe the *best* book I've ever read (TLotR, anyone?) but that's not quite the criteria. Other authors I try to buy new books by include Arthur C. Clarke, Patricia Cornwell, Dick Francis, Stephen Fry, Sue Grafton, Stephen King, and Ed McBain . One of the best 'hard' SF trilogies is Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Recent additions to authors I like a lot are David Brin, Lois McMasters Bujold, Jonathan Kellerman and Ian Rankin.
I've also finally started to read Sandman. Better late than never. Same applies to Fritz Leiber, thanks to the new collected editions of his Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser novels.
The best of them all was J.R.R. Tolkien. I wish the Icelandic translation of the Lord of the Rings was better (not that I could do a better one myself). The Flying Hamster is the keeper of the Tolkien Site List and one of my personal favourites is this one.
P.G. Wodehouse, Isaac Asimov, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Frank Herbert are classic favourites.
Popular Science can be fun, read Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins on evolution, and John Gribbin is pretty good on physics. And, yes, I have read A brief history of time. The best book I am currently reading is Daniel Denning's 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea', a brilliant read, and a good critique of Gould.
Other authors that feature prominently on my bookshelves (but with varying quality) include Len Deighton, James Lee Burke, William Horwood, Clive Cussler, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, Bernard Cornwell, M.C.Beaton (her Hamish McBeth doesn't have much in common with the series starring the fantastic Robert Carlyle), Lilian Jackson Braun, Robert Rankin, John Mortimer, David Lodge, Tom Holt, and Robert B. Parker .
I also have a large collection of football books and football magazines (about 1500 of the latter)