My recommendations from books I read in the last year or so (yes, these are all VERY STRONG recommends curated from ~100 books in the last year) -
Science fiction-
Derek Kunsken's The Quantum Magician (I would describe it as a cross between Oceans Eleven with some not-too-Hard Science Fiction. Apparently will be a series, but is perfectly fine as a standalone novel).
Cixin Lu's very popular Three Body Problem series (Mixes cleverly politics, sociology, psychology and science fiction)
James A Corey's The Expanse Series (which has been made into the best sci fi tv series ever!)
Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief series (Hard science fiction. WARNING - A lot of the early stuff is intentionally mystifying with endless terminology that’s only slowly explained since the main character himself has lost his memories. Put piecing it all together is part of the charm.)
Fantasy-
James Islington's Shadow of What was Lost series (a deep series which makes you think - deep magic, politics, religion all intertwined)
Will Wight's Cradle series (has my vote for one of the best fantasy series ever written)
Brandon Sanderson Legion series (Brandon Sanderson. Nuff said. Creative as always)
Manga -
Yukito Kishiro's Alita, Battle Angel series (the manga on what the movie was based)
Non-Fiction-
Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (and how we are not as rational as we believe we are, and how passion works in tandem with rationality in decision making and is actually required for good decisionmaking)
Rothery's Geology - A Complete Introduction (as per title)
Joseph Krauskopf's A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play, available to read online for free, including a fabulous supplementary of Talmud Parallels to the NT (a Rabbi in 1901 explains why he is not a Christian)
Audiobooks -
Bob Brier's The History of Ancient Egypt (as per title - 25 hrs of the best audiobook lectures. Incredible)
Academic biblical studies-
Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible and The Exodus (best academic biblical introductory books into the Documentary Hypothesis and Qenite/Midian hypothesis)
Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed (how archaelogy relates to the bible)
E.P. Sander's Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63BCE-66CE (most detailed book of what Judaism is and their beliefs, and one can see from this balanced [Christian] scholar how Christianity has colored our perspectives of what Jews and Pharisees were really like)
Avigdor Shinan's From gods to God (how Israel transitioned from polytheism to monotheism)
Mark S Smith's The Early History of God (early history of Israel, Canaanites, and YHWH)
James D Tabor's Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (as per title)
Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (engrossing - will make you view the gospel of Mark with new eyes)
Jacob L Wright's King David and His Reign Revisited (enhanced ibook - most readable book ever on King David)
Jacob Dunn's thesis on the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis (free pdf download - warning - highly technical but also extremely well referenced)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01H1CYBS6?ref_=dbs_m_mng_wam_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks Here is the link for unsouled go spam it lol
Xianxia has a lot of tropes that will at first feel a little confusing to a new reader, so first read this FAQ and then I would personally recommend A Will Eternal. It's by the same author as I Shall Seal the Heavens, but funnier. The author took note that everyone liked the funny trickster bits of ISSTH more than the rest of the novel and leaned into it in this one and, personally, I liked it a lot more than ISSTH.
You could also dip your toes into the genre with western takes. Try Cradle and Beware the Chicken.