For me, right now it's Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin book series. Every time I start it, I have to read the whole 20 books. I think I'm on my 6th reading. It's not like Hornblower or Alexander Kent who also wrote books about the British Navy in the Napoleonic period are mostly military historical fiction. The Aubrey/Maturin books are half action, half character driven/storyline development Pride and Prejudice (for men? Dunno really, I've read most of Austen and liked them, just not repetitively).
My first read of
O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin was about 1991. I was in the Yale U. bookstore (business course, in my undergrad years I'd never have gotten in, heh..) and leaving on a train back home later that afternoon and I stopped by to pick up something to read and I saw these books whose covers reminded me of the old Hornblower books I'd loved as a teen, so I bought the first two of the series (first one seemed kind of small to me and I was afraid I'd finish it before I got back). The next day I was searching central VA high and low for more P.O.B. Now I've got 3 complete, different published sets of the series. I don't include the 5 volume omnibus set which is a travesty of typographic error and omission, and what a waste. The world needed a good omnibus edition of this. I have been contemplating buying the Easton leather set for a couple months - which costs about 1000 bucks. I'll probably keep contemplating it awhile longer. Unfortunately not available in ebook.
I agree about Armor, one of the best sci/fi I've read. I don't care so much about genre. I like character driven, well developed storylines and characters. I don't care if they're full of action or just someone wandering about experiencing life - though most are somewhere in between - just as long as they're thought provoking and the world they're in is accurate and well thought out and complete and if you offer me history or science, it has to be accurate or make sense. A big bonus is teaching me something - about history or science (and this includes sociology and psychology), or about how people are.. They might be set in 1800 like O'Brian and Austen.. or a fantasy world age like Tolkien, or 1500 like Dunnett or 2350 like Cherryh and Brin and Vinge or 1910 like Wodehouse. I just care about the story.
Now Pratchett, he's the exception to the rule - he just makes me laugh :P And Steinbeck, one of my favorites also.
Before 1991, it was Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe I kept rereading - but it's Patrick O'Brian now.