I would expect one, but I have not found a thread similar to the "What are you Listening to right now?" or "Binge Watching Series Recommendations" threads here.

If my search-fu is particularly off, please move this post to the appropriate thread.

Otherwise, I would like some recommendations, as I think I'll need something else to read by the time of my upcoming trip to Japan and Taiwan in May.

I'm currently reading Les Misérable, which I picked up about half a year ago. I'm about 350 pages from finishing, and the enjoyment has been all over the place. The chapters on character development and action were enjoyable, and I actually didn't mind the 60-page introduction on Bishop Myriel and the 70-page segue on Waterloo. The discursion on various monastic orders was just about tolerable, but I just couldn't take another page of the discursion on Parisian argot and skipped 10-15 pages thereof. The various chapters on the courtship of Cosette and Marius was also a big meh, but I think with a lot of action still to come, the next 350 pages should go relatively fast.

I don't have too many restrictions on things, but I think I might not do well with modern fiction. I really enjoyed reading Dicken's Bleak House, but I just couldn't gain any traction with Oliver Twist. I hobbled through Tale of Two Cities and found it incredibly dry until the last quarter of the book. I did go through Robert Ludlum's Bourne Trilogy quite rapidly. So perhaps I should be looking at something by Le Carré?

As for non-fiction, I haven't finished any "serious" works in more than a decade. In my twenties, I read mostly non-fictions, and my favs were American Prometheus (on J. Robert Oppenheimer) and The Power Broker. Reading the latter somewhat spoiled me, as I have yet to find a non-fiction that was as engaging. It probably helped that I was living in NYC at the time, which made the book all the more relevant. That's probably the last "serious" non-fiction I finished, where the book was consumed for pleasure (as opposed to more expedient reasons). I guess for most biographies (even the well-regarded ones), they become mostly just stories of the person detailed and don't have many additional dimensions, and the eventually gets to me. In contrast, I think both American Prometheus and The Power Broker have enough others things going on to keep the reading interesting. One topic I think I might be interested in is the dynamic of East and West Berlin.

Suggestions greatly welcomed.