Requesting Book Recommendations!

Crossposted to my LiveJournal because my imagination is just that thirsty...

I'm grumpy. I have not read a new book in months...well, okay, weeks.
But it feels like years since I've read a new book, one that I've never read before, where that book really captivated me and brought me back to it.

The Queen's Fool moved too slow. I never finished it. The two sci-fi/fantasies that one of my colleagues lent me were good enough, but I didn't feel the urge to read them again. The last few Laurie R. King's Mary Russell mysteries just haven't thrilled me as the first ones did.

Books that I've read again and again include just about anything by J.R.R. Tolkien, the Harry Potter series, of course, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series in all its forms and her Crystal Singer trilogy, Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need, Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Firebrand.

I like sci-fi, fantasy, and historical fiction best. I am an escapist reader--I want a book that will carry me completely into another world, to the point where that world surrounds me. I want sympathetic, well-developed characters whom I connect with. And an exciting plotline, of course.

Can anyone help? What books have you read that completely swept you away, that you read over and over again? (The only stipulation I make is that if it's set in modern-day America or any other "everyday" setting, I probably won't like it. I thirst for magic and faraway lands or faraway times, past or future. I want my books to take me somewhere else.)

I'm thirsty for that torrent of magic and imagination. It feels like a long time since I've read a really good, really NEW book. Even Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was another Harry Potter. I liked it, but it's not really NEW anymore.