I second this.

I also recommend the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Just about to get into another trilogy by this pair I'll tell you how it turns up.

 

I must admit the Death Gate Cycle never captured me as much as Dragonlance did back in the day. It might be a nice setting but all the stuff you don't understand if you do not read the technical parts made it a strange read.

Anyway, if we are still listing books i'd Recommend the original Dragonlance Triology and maybe the Twins Triology from the same series.

Good books for light action filled reading are the latest books by David Gemmel, The Troja triology is very good.
His earlier works are a bit too stereotyped to be worthy of a recommendation.

 

The Ciaphas Cain novels for Warhammer 40,000. Ahh, here. I upload the first, second, and fourth of the novels (unfortunately I don't have the third novel yet ) and put them up on megaupload. Here's the link.

 

I've got the Ultramarines Omnibus and the Tyranids one by C.S.Goto and they're both very cool. Unfortunately some of them are a bit dry if you aren't a fan of that type of story.

I only read The Stand when I know I'm going to have nothing to do, I have to work myself up to reading it. First time I read it it took me six weeks on the bus to and from college, and sometimes in the lessons if they were particularly yawn worthy... Of course I did get the 'bit of light reading' comment in, which made it all worthwhile imo .

 

Heh. The Cain novels are a bit more lighthearted with a nice (dark) humor to it. The Wikipedia article talks a bit about this, though the wikipedia article has a large number of spoilers to the novels.

That said though, there are two insanely humorous WarHammer40K fanfics I would like to recommend. Valour and Mayhem, and its sequel Valour and Mayhem Mk II.

Spoilers for the sequel below.

Spoiler

“My lord! I am detecting a warp-real space insertion half a million kilometres off our port side!” One of the deck slaves cried out from the station where he had been fused to.

“Who is it and why were they not detected before this?” Gordorgo snapped irritably.

“Checking now my lord… they appear to have been hiding within our own warp wake, I have no idea how the survived. IFF and transponders unknown but… yes, image being brought up now,” the slave reported while deformed, elongated fingers danced over the input system. In the centre of the bridge a hololith flared into life, showing a smallish, arrow shaped vessel a little less than a kilometre long, much of its mass devoted towards enormous, oversized engines on the rear. Painted black, it declared its allegiance quite proudly with a titanic, stylized ‘I’ on the top.

Chuckling in amusement, Gordorgo replied, “It would seem that the Inquisition is on to us. Prepare a broadside…”

“My lord! Additional contacts appearing!” The slave screeched as additional forces began to drop out of the Warp and into sight. Many, many forces, at least three times as many as the fleet Gordorgo had at his disposal when they finally stopped appearing. Admittedly, the masses were probably similar and there was a major tech disadvantage, but the fact remained that Gordorgo suddenly had to deal with a massive ork fleet while his ships were preparing to dock.

“The Inquisition ship is broadcasting something on an open channel, shall I display it my lord?” The slave bound to the communications cistern asked while the crew scrambled to get to battle stations.

Already beginning to respond to the threat, Gordorgo waved dismissively and said, “Put it up.”

The hololith flickered from the image of the small Inquisition ship to a middle-aged looking Inquisitor staring at what was presumably the pict-caster that was recording the image on the screen.

“So I say again to every ork out there, this is what I and my comrades think of you,” the camera then panned over to gaze upon a gigantic, crudely designed axe that was clearly of ork manufacture.

Then the music started up.

The grey haired Inquisitor leaned into the shot and waved his finger mockingly before he said, “Can’t touch this.”

And thus began four minutes of the entire bridge crew, including Lord Gordorgo, staring in open mouthed awe as an Imperial Inquisitor dancing and singing about an ork weapon, telling the previous owners how they couldn’t get either the choppa or the Inquisitor. It was especially distracting because the man’s retinue joined in on the entire production. Various warriors, death cult assassins, hunched over scribes, Techpriests, even at least one Adepta Sororita, were all dancing about in accompaniment to the clearly insane Inquisitor.

 

Blood Music by Greg Bear which is a pretty good book.

Anything written by H.P Lovecraft

Somebody else recommended Dune, and while the first book is epic, I didn't find the sequels to be that good.

Artemis Fowl if you haven't read that.

2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels by Arthur C. Clarke