. . . here’s what I’ve been reading this year.
1. Feed – Mira Grant
2. The Night Circus – Erin Morgernstern
3. Police Procedure & Investigation – Lee Lofland
4. Midnight Riot – Ben Aaronovitch
5. Hair Side, Flesh Side – Helen Marshall
6. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
7. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke
8. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
9. Batman: Battle for the Cowl – Tony Daniels
10. The Last Final Girl – Stephen Graham Jones
11. Batman: Year One – Frank Miller
12. After the Golden Age – Carrie Vaughn
13. Gun Machine – Warren Ellis
14. The Rook – Daniel O’Malley
15. Raylan – Elmore Leonard
16. Red Seas Under Red Skies – Scott Lynch
17. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making – Catherynne M. Valente
18. Redshirts – John Scalzi
19. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
20. The Last Policeman – Ben H. Winters
21. Libriomancer – Jim C. Hines
22. Red Country – Joe Abercrombie
23. Black Helicopters – Blythe Woolston
24. Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti – Genevieve Valentine
25. NOS4A2 – Joe Hill
26. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
27. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
28. The Yard – Alex Grecian
29. Rosemary & Rue – Seanan McGuire
30. Gulp – Mary Roach
31. Countdown City – Ben H. Winters
32. The Drowning Girl – Caitlin R. Kiernan
33. Batman: The Court of Owls, Vol. 1 – Scott Snyder
34. Empire State – Adam Christopher
35. Claire DeWitt & the City of the Dead – Sara Gran
36. Batman: RIP – Grant Morrison
37. Batman: Long Shadows – Judd Winnick
38. Etiquette & Espionage – Gail Carriager
39. Deadline – Mira Grant
40. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller
41. Doll Bones – Holly Black
42. Zoo City – Lauren Beukes
43. 1984 – George Orwell
44. The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There – Catherynne M. Valiant
45. Masked – edited Lou Anders
46. Whose Body – Dorothy Sayers
47. Batman: City of Owls – Scott Snyder
48. Othello – William Shakespeare
49. Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life – Bryan Lee O’Malley
50. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
I’ll probably continue reading the Scott Pilgrim books and maybe one more Batman comic, but I don’t think I’ll finish anything else before January. Superlatives should hopefully be up next week, along with a review for my last western of the year!
My Geek Blasphemy 
WOW!
Well, the Batman comics do make it seem like a longer list. 🙂
Which books would you recommend most from that list?
Kind of depends what you like to read. If memory serves, genre fiction isn’t usually your cup of tea, which is unfortunate in this case because it is primarily what I read. If you’re a Stephen King fan at all, I might recommend NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. It’s a good Christmas horror story, and he just has a ton of references and allusions to his father’s work that are enjoyable for King fans yet never get in the way of the story. If you like very literary horror, I’d recommend my friend’s collection of short stories Hair Side, Flesh Side. (Helen Marshall is her name.) And if you like mysteries at all, The Last Policeman was one of my favorite books of the year. It’s a noir story about a rookie cop trying to prove a suicide was a murderer. What makes it different is that society is basically crumbling because an asteroid is going to hit in about six months or a year and destroy pretty much all life on earth.
I’ll do a superlatives list this week or next, so if those don’t do much for you, you might see something else you like. 🙂
The Last Policeman sounds interesting. I’ve added it to my books-to-read list. Heart-Shaped Box and Horns were flawed and uneven, but I still enjoyed them enough to check out NOS4A2 at some point.
My reading list from this year was pathetic. I wasted three or four months slogging my way through Look Homeward, Angel. Lolita was the only book I read this year that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I really enjoyed Heart-Shaped Box, but I haven’t gotten around to Horns yet. I also have not read Look Homeward, Angel, but based on the title alone . . . I might pass.