I don't know that Pattern Recognition is necessarily the best Gibson book to start with, even though I liked it so much. What about The Difference Engine? That was my favorite work by him (although in that case, it wasn't him alone) before Pattern Recognition. Or what about the first bridge book, Virtual Light?
I really like Dogfight, a short story of his, but I don't know how to tell you to read that alone, out of context. He's worth reading, he's just not my favorite of the genre.