The Dresden Files
Hyperion Cantos
Neuromancer
The First Law
The Book of the New Sun
Snow Crash
Cryptonomicon
Anathem
Tarzan
The Forever War
A Princess of Mars
The Fellowship of the Ring
I, Robot
Foundation
Mistborn: The Final Empire
American Gods
The Player of Games
Assassin's Apprentice
The Eye of the World
At the Mountains of Madness
Some of these are trilogies or series obviously.
They're all baller as fuck and for the most part pretty damn contemporary.
If you want even more and in a wider range of genres and whatnot,
http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading
honestly has a shitload of the essential books for pretty much everything.
Finally, this may get my head chopped off, but it honestly isn't worth reading A Song of Ice and Fire, it's about 1.4m words or some shit in which absolutely dick all(of sustenance) has been resolved and which may actually not be finished at all(it's been how many years since Dragons now? And there's 2 more still to go.)