2012.Book61 - The Alchemist (Coelho)

Pretty good

2012.Book60 - Of Blood and Honey (Leicht)

Very intense supernatural thriller. The problems of Northern Ireland in the 70s, coupled with being a werewolf.

2012.Book59 - Crazy Love (Chan)

Really weak.

2012.Book58 - Lies of Locke Lamora (Lynch)

Excellent sort-of fantasy.

2012.Book57 - Highly Inappropriate (Coupland)

Pretty funny.

2012.Book56 - Close Enough (Paul)

Quite weak. He's better at despair and misery than attempting hope.

2012.Book55 - Resurrection from the Underground (Girard)

Excellent literary/philosophical. Desacralizing the father.

2012.Book54 - From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (Faust)

Excellent superhero (parody?) self-help.

2012.Book53 - Just Ride (Petersen)

Very good bike book.

2012.Book52 - Zero History (Gibson)

Pretty good fashion espionage. It's a sub-plot to a larger book. Not sure if it's great or kind of a farce.

2012.Book51 - Demythologizing Heidegger (Caputo)

Very good philosophy. It's easier to be sympathetic to deconstructions when you read (their version) of Heidegger.

2012.Book50 - How to Read Kierkegaard (Caputo)

Pretty good intro.

2012.Book49 - What's So Funny? (Westlake)

Pretty good mystery. Not actually funny.

2012.Book48 - The Secret Race (Hamilton)

Really good story of professional cycling and doping

2012.Book47 - Darkness Visible (Styron)

Very interesting first-person account of depression.

2012.Book46 - Last Argument of Kings (Abercrombie)

Unrelentingly bleak war fantasy.

2012.Book45 - Before They Are Hanged (Abercrombie)

Good noir fantasy.

2012.Book44 - The Enlightened Cyclist (Weiss)

Pretty good bike culture fun. Ride with good will.

2012.Book43 - Redshirts (Scalzi)

Very good SF, not exactly satire. The codas make it.

2012.Book42 - Taft (Patchett)

Pretty good novel. Patchett's other stuff is set in weird situations, but this one's pretty normal.

2012.Book41 - Codex (Grossman)

Pretty good strange adventure.

2012.Book40 - Against the World, Against Life (Houellebecq)

Interesting essay on Lovecraft

2012.Book39 - The Map and the Territory (Houellebecq)

Excellent novel. Houellebecq is amazing.

2012.Book38 - The Great Derangement (Taibbi)

Excellent political/sociological reporting. Amazing.

2012.Book37 - The Quantum Thief (Rajaniemi)

Very good fairly hard SF.

2012.Book36 - The Magician King (Grossman)

More excellent fantasy. Even better than the first.

2012.Book35 - The Magicians (Grossman)

Excellent fantasy. Highly recommended.

2012.Book34 - Red Plenty (Spufford)

Pretty good semi-fictional economic history.

2012.Book33 - The Oligarchs (Hoffmann)

Interesting history of the people who took over when economic restrictions were lifted in the former Soviet Union. Hoffmann goes out of his way to demonize those who came before and after the oligarchs, who can only look good in comparison, if that.

2012.Book32 - Empire of the Mind (Axworthy)

Pretty interesting history of Iran/Persia. An amazing, war-torn part of the world. Who knew Khan and Tamburlaine were such genocidaires?

2012.Book31 - Who Killed Canadian History (Granatstein)

Pretty good lament for history education in Canada.

2012.Book30 - Chavs (Jones)

Excellent economic sociology about the oppression and demonization of the working class in Britain.

2012.Book29 - In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (Mate)

Excellent.

2012.Book28 - Tough Shit (Smith)

Pretty bad auto-bio. Sometimes entertaining, not funny, ultimately self-indulgent.

2012.Book27 - The Hunger Games (Collins)

Pretty good YA fic.

2012.Book26 - Small Favor (Butcher)

Very good Dresden. Reading the series backwards isn't a great idea, though.

2012.Book25 - Unseen Academicals (Pratchett)

Very good discworld.

2012.Book24 - Insurrection (Rollins)

Excellent pyro.

2012.Book23 - Broken Words (Dudley)

Pretty good political/religious analysis. But why try so hard to play that game?

2012.Book22 - Embassytown (Mievielle)

OK SF. Mieville has pretty good ideas, but not characters. His older stuff was more spectacular (The Scar), so it wasn't as noticeable.

2012.Book21 - Religion Explained (Boyer)

Excellent anthropology/sociology

2012.Book20 - Are We Still Rolling (Brown)

Fairly interesting account of a recording engineer's professional life. Turned me onto Little Feat, so worthwhile.

2012.Book19 - The Wise Man's Fear (Rothfuss)

More excellent epic fantasy.

2012.Book18 - Every Twelve Second (Pachirat)

Very good academic non-fiction.

2012.Book17 - Staring at the Sun (Yalom)

Excellent psychology. Affirming life through considering death.

2012.Book16 - Makers (Doctorow)

Pretty good near-future business fiction.

2012.Book15 - Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (Hakakian)

Very good non-fiction. Hooray for the German justice system.

2012.Book14 - The Name of the Wind (Rothfuss)

Excellent straight-up fantasy.

2012.Book13 - True Grit (Portis)

Excellent comic? western.

2012.Book12 - Diary of a Player (Paisley)

A happy memoir. The feeling of being set on a good path by people who love you and achieving success, recognition, and acceptance. That's a good feeling.

2012.Book11 - All is Grace (Manning)

A very sad memoir. A life of pain and disappointment. At least from the inside.

2012.Book10 - The Denial of Death (Becker)

Very good. First part was very affecting (human condition). He ends up with a pretty negative story (we must embrace a useful illusion) that I don't want to accept.

2012.Book9 - Among Others (Walton)

Very good SFF? An ending almost as spectacular as Walton's "Tooth and Claw"

2012.Book8 - Persuasion (Austen)

Very good character study. Typical Austen payoff.

2012.Book7 - The Influencing Machine (Gladstone)

Pretty good graphic non-fiction about media.

2012.Book6 - We Meant Well (Van Buren)

Excellent non-fiction about post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

2012.Book5 - The Sisters Brothers (DeWitt)

Good western. Not particularly literary, but marketed that way, I guess, to escape genre.

2012.Book4 - Traffic (Vanderbilt)

Pretty good non-fiction summary of traffic studies. Not super-interesting, but OK.

2012.Book3 - Ghost Story (Butcher)

Good Dresden.

2012.Book2 - Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe)

Good. Emotional classic.

2012.Book1 I Am a Strange Loop (Hofstadter)

Very good pop-sci. Another good explanation of Godel, too. Though I don't really accept that there's any kind of Godelian level mixing going on in conscious beings. But he has hit on the real "inability" of consciousness, like Bakker's "Consciousness is not an achievement."