The 10/22 is my choice as well. It may not be the most accurate out of the box, but they are accurate enough for general plinking, hunting, etc. Put a VQ extractor in and they are extremely reliable. They are just great guns all the way around. If you want to ever make it more accurate or customize it in any way, you can.
The Marlin 60's another popular choice and are decent, but the experience I've had with them leaves me liking the 10/22 much better. Out of the box, they seem to be slightly more accurate on general. I'm talking 1-1.25" groups at 50 yards instead of 1.25"-1.5" groups from the 10/22's, so not a huge difference. They seem to have quite a bit more problems firing and ejecting properly when dirty which is a turn off for me. The next and biggest thing they have against them in my opinion is the scope rails built onto them. The grooved receiver on it uses the .22 style rings which have a tendency to slide on the rail. Especially on later Marlins that have shotty quality control as some of those didn't have the grooves cut straight. This is a pretty common issue if you search around online. If they would ditch this design and go with a drilled and tapped receiver so you could use the bases of your choice it would get a lot more recommendations from me.
The Marlin 795 is a cheaper magazine fed version of the Marlin 60 as well.
The other issue with Marlins is since Remington took them over, they are having a lot of quality control issues. That's just another reason to go with the Ruger over a Marlin.
Savage also has some great choices. IMO their 64 isn't quite up to par with the 10/22, but it's a good gun if you don't want to customize it and just want to shoot it.
If you want a bolt action instead of an autoloader, the Savage Mark II's are a great way to go imo. In fact, it's probably the way I'd go.
CZ also has some very nice bolt action .22's if you are looking to spend a little more.
There are lots of older guns from Remington, Marlin, Savage, etc that are excellent values.
Overall, there are soo many good .22's out there, it's hard to recommend just one. It really depends on what you want to do with it, but if you want a good do everything gun, the 10/22 is it.
As for which ones to stay away from, I don't know that I've really used any I'd say are horrible. IMO the Remington 597 is my least favorite of current production .22's I've used, but even it's still decent. It's just not up to par with the competition. As for the Mossberg Plinkster, I was going to buy one at Walmart one day, and the lady working there who surprisingly seems to really know her stuff and had been good to me in the past told me that she would be glad to sell me one, but that she was going to tell me about her experience selling them. She told me that every single one she had sold, the owners had come back with problems, and that she would recommend going with one of the other choices they had. This scared me off enough that I didn't buy one as this lady has never lied to me before.
However, I got online and while reading some bad things, I read a lot of good as well. Then a friend bought one, and his shoots very well. He has killed lots of squirrels with it. Is it the highest quality gun out there? No. It feels cheap, the trigger is horrible, but it shoots accurately and seems reliable. That said, I've not had enough experience with other ones to tell you if he just got a bad one and the lady at Walmart was right, or if she had just sold a few bad ones in a row and they generally were good.