Well you obviously want to read, and enjoy reading, but I think you should expand your horizons. One of my exceptionally few talents is the ability to get through a book in a day or two, and while I don't read as much as I used to in late elementary to early high school, I still usually go through 40 or so books a year.
So that being said, some advice, if you care:
Worry less about reading the next best seller or upcoming volume in a series, and just look around for something you really like. Best sellers perpetuate their sales, and the only reason things like Harry Potter and Da Vinci Code sell so well is because when the masses pick out their one book to read a year, they pick out the books that everyone else has told them is good.
Unfortunately, "everyone else" consists of a bunch of morons, so children's novels like Harry Potter are cited by illiterate 40 year olds as "the best books" they've ever read, and writers(and I use the term loosely here) like Dan Brown get to go around breaking records just over some controversy and word of mouth.
Even classics are overread, and often overhyped- most of them are not deserving of their stature. Frankenstein is certainly good, and well worth a read, however. But as you progress through High School you'll find that many of the "great american novels" you are forced to read aren't so great after all, and overanalyzing them only drives this point home furthar.
The best thing to do is go out and find something YOU think looks good, and give it a chance. This can be somewhat difficult and daunting in a bookstore, and depends more on the person I suppose. I'm pretty good in judging whether or not something will be good when I pick it up, but- oh nevermind. I'm rambling.
Back to The DaVinci Code... I think you'll find with some more books under your belt that it is not the masterpiece many think it to be! A few suggestions follow.
Here's some other novels and their respective authors who write things in that vein, the key difference being they are actually good
Cyclops by Clive Cussler - One of many Dirk Pitt novels(and one of the best), most of which are very good, and the worst of which is still far better than anything Dan Brown has ever written.
Here..
Ice Station by Matthew Reilly, the fastest action writer I've ever encountered. Screw James Bond, this is the stuff of what an action movie should be. It's the first of his books(novels are too classy for this) to feature Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield, and while the third book entitled just "Scarecrow" is by far the best, this is the starting point and is nearly just as good.
Here...
Subterranean by James Rollins, his first novel involving a cave expedition that gets ****ed halfway to Sunday. My personal favourite of his. His more recent books have taken place in the same universe and feature a miltary funded group known as Sigma Force, and they have(much to my dismay) been compared to the writings of Dan Brown(Crazy, as he's been at work far before Dan Brown was on the map- but I guess those marketing guys have to sell it somehow).
..And here.
Anyway, I'm bored. So I'm off. Merry New Year.
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