I read every day, which means that I make quite a few trips to the library.  I like romance, mysteries, biographiess, autobiographies, historical novels and just about anything in between.
When I was in high school and college, I read most of the classics, both American and English.  I have never been one to like to re-read a book or watch a movie more than once.
Lately, I have felt my reading was degenerating into the realm of cheap, pulp fiction, so the last time I went to check out books, I deliberately looked for novels by contemporary authors that I had not read before.
Anytime one begins a book with no prior knowledge of the author, it's a crapshoot.

 
One of the books, "Seven Types of Ambiguity", the second novel by  the Australian author, Eliot Perlman,  was 623 pages of stream-of-consciousness told by seven different people whose lives interrelated.  I waded through this, but I would not recommend it.  And on top of everything, the ending was confusing....ambiguous, if you will.

Another was "The Key To Susanna" by Hilary Norman.  This was a psychological thriller involving a very successful American super model named Susanna.  She has a hidden past so shocking that it is hard to imagine.  The only problem with this story is that it dates itself a bit.  The copyright is 1996 when the AIDS epidemic was at its height and there was still no effective means of treating it. 
The book opens when Susanna's photographer husband is dying from the disease.  She later opens a home for terminal AIDS victims.  But that is really all secondary to Susanna's story.  It really is only the device the author uses to introduce Susanna to a psychiatrist who is counseling her husband. This story is all about what the human spirit can endure and still emerge sane and intact.  This one I would recommend.

 
Finally, another which deals with the endurance of the human spirit is  " The Falls", set in Niagara Falls, New York.  But this is a much darker story, although the trauma is not as great as the previous one. 
The central character, Ariah Erskine, is not a stable individual and the story is partially about her descent into a state of near-madness. 
A secondary plot is the effect, both good and bad, that the falls have on the town.  It covers about a twenty-year period, including the time the town began to move and grow with all kinds of manufacturing.  It's that effect that the manufacturing has on the town that drives the story.     The author is Joyce Carol Oates, a Roger S Berland Distinguished Scholar at Princeton and a writer of some note. 
This book is filled with symbolism and reminds me of the type that might have been assigned as required reading when I was in college taking a course called  Contemporary American Novels.
Currently, I'm taking a break from the heavy drama and reading an historical novel centered around the Borgia family of Italy in the 15th century entitled "The Borgia Bride."