I've done plenty of reading in my life, but mostly magazines and books required for school. I highly enjoy reading, but find that the internet takes up most of the "information-gathering" time of my days. Because of this, I'd consider myself to be luckily-unjaded when it comes to good novels, and can easily enjoy reading pop-culture books like Fight Club, The Beach, LOTR(?). I would love to read books before they become movies because I'm tired of seeing them first and realizing that they would have been a better read before hand. They obviously don't even have to be books that could turn into films, I'm just looking for those books that are so indepth and catchy that they tend to be transfered. My problem is that I've really got no friends that read and the book recomendation part of this forum seems to be pretty slow. I've attempted to pick up a few books that look decent at Barns and Noble but am yet to find something captivating like the novels I listed.
So what forum, what critic, or what authors should I stick to reviewing to find books like these that are a promising good-read? Underground is ok, odd is ok, I'm just looking for anything that you might be able to relate to these types of novels.
I apologize that this is kind of an unclear call. Fill me in if you can

-T