I recommend these as good examples of books to learn from --
 
Nonfiction:
Shocktrauma by Jon Franklin & Alan Doelp
The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (Pulitzer Prize winner)
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (National Book Award winner)
 
Fiction:
The Summons by John Grisham (#1 bestselling fiction 2002)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling (#1 bestselling fiction series)
Deception Point by Dan Brown (noncontroversial bestseller, same structure as his others)
 
These books are clear, understandable, and readable.  A writer can analyze them without difficulty.  Thousands of other books would work just as well, so if you have a favorite, use it.  Here's a trick used to begin virtually all of these books:
            The Summons starts with receipt of a letter.  That the letter is important is clear from the beginning.  BUT, Grisham keeps us reading for FIVE PAGES before that letter is opened.  That's what happens through the entire book.  You have a letter delivered, you the reader wants to know what's in that letter, but the letter is not immediately opened.  The entire novel is basically a series of wanting to know what's in the next letter, letter being a metaphor for each dramatic question raised in the mind of the reader.  Along the way there are emotional satisfactions.
 
            After preliminaries establishing that Harry Potter is Cinderella, Harry Potter receives a letter.  It is EIGHTEEN PAGES before that letter is opened.  J.K. Rowling keeps us reading for eighteen pages, then the rest of that book, then six more books, always keeping the reader's attention focused on wanting to know what happens next.  There is always a series of letters to be opened.  
            Near the beginning of his novels Dan Brown always has a phone call or a text message, something that demands the reader wonder what the message is or means. 
We want that letter to be opened.
            In nonfiction, Tom Wolfe begins The Right Stuff with a phone call.  Someone is dead.  We read until we find out who, why, and the consequences. 
            Shocktrauma begins with an alarm call, what would now be a 911 call. 
We ride along with the medics on the call.

            Robert Caro begins his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson with an anecdote.  A financially poor Lyndon Johnson during the 1930s Depression refuses a gift of a million dollars.  Why?  Why would a poor man in the Depression refuse a million dollars?  That true anecdote piques the reader's curiosity and drives the reader to read thousands of pages in three volumes and at least one more.

            A very useful thing for a writer of story narratives (as opposed to writers who are strictly providing information, which is wanted most often in most daily life) to remember is to keep your reader's attention on wanting to know what is going to happen next, or promising an answer to a question raised.  Phone calls, mail, messages, anecdotes, and knocks at the door: these are very common ways to begin telling a story.  The readers want to know what is in the letter that the Dursleys are trying to keep from Harry Potter, so the readers keep turning the pages until Rowling tells them.

            Good writing is not just telling what happened, it involves how the story is told.  Without the first hook that brought readers to invest time and attention in reading and turning eighteen pages to find out what was in that letter, Harry Potter may not have been as successful.  Writing is a craft.  Its conventions and techniques can be learned like the conventions and techniques of carpentry, driving a car, or playing golf can be learned.  If you don't know how to write stories you can learn, and if you do know it won't hurt to learn more.