[drjd]

Originally Posted by issybird

If self-mortification is your thing, wouldn't it be nicer just to go with a hairshirt?

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

LOL... keep in mind that there is more to SF than Arthur C. Clark. It's been so long since I've Rama that I really couldn't say how it was (or the plot, for that matter). I'm betting that if you tell us what you usually read we could come up with an SF author that would fit into your preferred style.

Originally Posted by meeera

Co-signed, heartily! Rendezvous with Rama is just ok for me, as a big ideas book, I liked it. But plot, character, and great writing style - things I looks for in all my books, including SF - are not really features. No way would I recommend it as a 'gateway' book to SF.

Tell us what else you like, and what you like about them, and let us help! (If you want.) Do you like pacey adventure? Deep character study? Comedies of manners? Detective stories?

That was a case of self motivation, to be precise.

Thanks everyone for offering your kind help to me. I am usually stuck with detective stories/crime fiction/historical mysteries besides other serious reads in the subjects of Physics, Astronomy, Archaeology and numerous autobiographies/memoirs. In the fiction genre, Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Arthur Conan Doyle, David Baldacci, James Hadley Chase, Sidney Sheldon, James Patterson, etc., are my favorite writers.

I have read some SF in the past. To name a few authors, Issac Asimov, Greg Bear, Philip K Dick, Poul Anderson, Terry Pratchett, and Gene Wolfe come to my mind. I would certainly request your guidance to read the SF genre in a proper manner to sequentially dive in the ocean of SF. However, I was particularly interested in Rama of Arthur C Clarke this time because it is the only SF book bought in this year , and I had been boasting to read it next in this thread for few weeks, and was finding one excuse or other for not reading it . So I made a loud commitment to myself again!