I'm currently on the Algebraist by Iain M Banks. I wanted to try some of his sci-fi sinc eI like his fiction so much, and got told this was a good one to get into it because it's similar to his 'Culture' series but outside it, lets you get a taste for his brand of sci fi. And my god was it dull for about 200 pages. Just this immense feeling of it not going anywhere fast, the alien species the book deals with heavily, the Dwellers, aren't that believable, the main character this isn't terribly likeable and I found the stuff he's describing really hard to envisage. I was really struggling to slog through it. hit about page 300 and it kicks into gear, finally. Starting to turn into a bit of a page turner, finally!
I've been wanting to investigate another book, House of Leaves, thats meant to be a bit of an enigma. Worth a look on up on it to see whether it might catch you're interest. It's written in a very odd way, the text's layout becomes reflective of the plot and events, so for example a chase scene sees a single word on each page for 20 odd pages . The whole book deals with the idea of a labirynth (sp?) and the way the text is laid out is supposed to encourage that feeling of being lost and confused. It's apparently a very interesting read, a bit of a horror with a load of storylines going on on the same page, footnotes made by one of the protagonists, codes and things in the text... I think that'll be my summer reading. And I fully expect someone to come and say 'It's crap' or 'that sounds awful' quite soon .