I love books that do not read necessarily from beginning to end or from just one character's point of view. Can you recommend any book like that? I like most genres, except horror.

My examples:

Suite Francaise - Different chapters about different character in different locations of what they are going through at the same time

My Sister's Keeper - Every chapter by a different character

The Time Traveler's Wife - Different character's view based on their age at the time

Water for Elephants - Bounces back and forth from past memory to present time

The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve.  (Help, someone correct me if I have the title wrong) The book is written from current time period and back up until the characters were younger.  I can't say more than this without giving it away.  I thought it was a really good book. 

I recently read Testimony, Anita Shreve's newest book. Each chapter is told by a different character.

I'm thinking Sea Glass by Anita Shreve was also back & forth between times.

The Boleyn Inheiritance - it was told by 3 different points of view

"An Instance of the Fingerpost" by Ian Pears.     http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0425167720/stopyourekilling

Same event told by 4 different characters.

The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

Marathon Man by William Goldman.

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann.

These all go back and forth between different character's points of view.  And all are great reads!

THE POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver. 

I read it about eight years ago and still have it. On my Re-read Someday List.

As I Lay Dying is the most famous example I can think of.  (William Faulkner)

I just read Pressure Drop by Peter Abrahams.  It does move from point A to point B in roughly chronological order, third person omnicient.  However, in the first half of the book it seems like 3 or 4 completely different stories, and the way he weaves them all into each other to come together at the end if pretty seamless.  He also follows different people's thoughts within the same chapter, and somehow manages it to make it work so that you never wonder who the heck he's talking about now.  Great stuff. 

World War Z, every chapter is a differnet character's story.

THe Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

It is a story told through letters and journals with the narrator a girl (who you never learn her name) following the lives of her parents and grandgfather through letters/journals written in their early twenties while searching for the real Dracula, Vlad the impailer. Her grandfather (Prof Rossi) goes missing when he was her fathers mentor in grad school. The father joins with Rossi's daughter (later to be the narators mother) to search for him. THis leads them to follow the trail of Vlad. They jump around between the daughter (1970's), her father (1950's) and her grandfather (1930's).

It became one of my favorite books, I have read it twice and listened to it on tape during a long car ride. Even though it is about the search for Dracula it is a mystery not a horror book.

As far as Anita Shreve goes:

Fortune's Rocks

Sea Glass

and The Pilot's Wife

...are all stories told in different eras, but all revolve around the same house on the east coast.  You don't have to read them in order to understand them, but the order listed in chronological :)

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, it's one of my favorite reads.  Written from different character's perspectives in each chapter.

Island of Lost Girls by Jennifer Mcmahon.  It goes back and forth between past and present.

Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult.  It is told by five different characters, beginning from present day to the past.  Took me a while to figure out what was going on but was pretty good after that.

I'm currently reading The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner which tells a story from three viewpoints as delineated by different fonts.  And it's an excellent story, too!  Each of the three characters has an issue, as does the father of two of them. 

Thanks for all the great choices. I've read a few of those suggested but the others sound goods too.  I've asked Santa for a few.  Keep your picks coming!!!!!!!