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Foucault's pendulum, by Umberto Eco: the master of contemporary italian litterature tackles the historical complot. Dan Brown can go home.
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Agreed,
Eco has a writing style all to himself. His stuff is so deap I never know when he is veering from history/reality.
The Island of the Day Before really did my head in. All his stuff is great!
I love all the basic cannon:Tolkein, Howard, Lovecraft, Moorcock, Leiber, Burroughs. Actually I originally learned about many of these from the bibliographies of role-playing games.
Dune and
Starship Troopers top the Si-Fi list along with the
Foundation Trilogy. A less known gem is
The Earth Abides by Stuart, which is definately the best "after the bomb" (actually a disease) book I have ever come across. I may get mugged for this but I also really enjoyed
Battlefield Earth (The book not the movie).
Other books I have not seen mentioned are:
The Once and Future King by White.
The First Man in Rome series by McCullough (I mentioned this before on the "Rome" thread), This is an incredible series but a couple of very disturbing parts.
One of the best history books I ever read was
A World Lit Only By Fire
by manchester. Gives a really gritty feel to the Dawn of the Renaissance.
One history book that I found that is a great sourcebook for role-playing is
Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Life and Society in the West. If you can pick this up used and cheap it is as good as most real-world role playing suppliments and written in much the same style.