(You can click a little tab for "covers" to view by covers only... more fun, I think.)

I do keep lists, but they are on my facebook library thingie.
The books right off of the top of my head that struck me this year were "Neverland" by Joseph O'Neil and "Blindness" by Jose Saramago. Both tremendous books, but for entirely different reasons.

Some of my favourites this year:

Jonathan Coe's poignant novel The Rain Before it Falls and also his biography of the eccentic novelist B.S. Johnson (Like a Fiery Elephant). I read some of Johnson's novels too, with The Unfortunates being the best of them, to my mind.

Bolaño! This year I read Nazi Literature in the Americas and By Night in Chile. Next year, I will have a go at 2666.

2008 was the year I attempted to read (most of) The Collected Works of Samuel Bloody Beckett. The highlights for me were the deliberately tedious yet peversely enjoyable novel Watt, some of the early-ish radio plays, Happy Days and a couple of the later prose pieces, especially Company. On the other hand, you couldn't pay me enough to finish The Unnameable or How It Is.

Obscure non-fiction, but fascinating if you're me: Jurgis Baltrušaitis' book on Anamorphic Art and Mary Carruthers' The Craft of Thought.

A couple of unique, magnificently obsessive books: Christian Bök's Eunoia and Graham Rawle's singular collage-novel Woman's World.

More recently, I've started reading (and enjoying) poetry for the first time in many years.

I only started keeping track again a few months ago (on my facebook application).

So since about July or so I've read:

Fiction
Another Roadside Attraction - Tom Robbins
The Russian Debutantes Handbook - Gary Shteyngart
The Known World - Edward P. Jones
Not that You Asked - Steve Almond
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Thursday Next, First Among Sequels - Jasper Fforde
Lush Life - Richard Price
Blood Trail - Tanya Huff

NF
One Bullet Away - Nathaniel Fick
Generation Kill - Evan Wright
The Zen of Fish - Trevor Corson

Series
The Company novels - Kage Baker
The Taltos novels - Steven Brust
The Soldier Son trilogy - Robin Hobb
The Young Wizards novels - Diane Duane

This year's reading--

Harry Collins--Gravity's Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves
Pu Songling--Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
Chinua Achebe--Things Fall Apart
William Gibson--Spook Country
Philip Zimbardo--The Lucifer Effect
W. Somerset Maugham--The Painted Veil
Leonard B. Meyer--Emotion and Meaning in Music
Jerzy Kosinski--Being There
Mark Lilla--The Stillborn God
James Morrow--The Last Witchfinder
Hunter S. Thompson--Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Paul Davies--How to Build a Time Machine
Jason--I Killed Adolf Hitler
Harold Cruse--The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual
Paul Scott--The Raj Quartet
Amy Hempel--Collected Stories
H. G. Wells--The First Men in the Moon
Joan Didion--We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
Robert Littell--Legends
Rivka Galchen--Atmospheric Disturbances

And I just started the new Julie Rose translation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, which'll be my Christmas vacation reading.

In retrospect, the book I think I enjoyed most on that list was Gravity's Shadow, which is a study of the culture of physics conducted by a sociologist over thirty years or so--why certain scientists get papers published in major journals while others don't, how the reputation of a scientist is made or unmade, and so on. The physics in it is accessible to the interested layman, and it's the most riveting academic book I've read in a long time.

oops the Steve Almond book should be NF.

Hm. I should go back and update Shelfari.

I joined the Progressive Book Club to get an awesome collection of Bill Moyers' essays and speeches: "Moyers on Democracy"

I finally read HP7:Yes, It's Really The End. I wasn't as disappointed as I expected to be. It was mostly internally consistent, though high on the "gee that worked out nicely" factor.

I did a lot of rereading of stuff this year. I don't know if that counts.

As a Dutchman I feel compelled to point out that O'Neils book is called Netherland.

I don't keep track but I just finished Marley and Me. I read it this week, in one sitting, in a Mt. Sinai waiting room. I never thought I would read this book. I'm glad I did.

This month I also read Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler. I'm reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates and I love it so far. I want to read it before I see the movie. I have to see the movie because I love Kate Winslet.

It seems I always have a few non-fiction books going. At the moment: Passionate Marriage, Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough, and Nina Garcia's latest fashion book.

I am abysmal...
Books
Tortilla Flat
Ender's Game
Ender's Shadow
Something Rich and Strange

Manga
Emma (series)
Petshop of Horrors (series)
Yotsuba (vol. 1 and 2)

Currently Reading
Cannery Row
some book about suburbia being the scourge of society...

I honestly can't think of anything else! I do go for quality though. I discovered a deep love of Steinbeck last month.

and I just finished reading (an hour or so ago) My Dearest Friend - letters of Abigail and John Adams. That was a wonderful read, and (as contemplating the past always does) makes me wish we wrote letters now.

I used to keep track through Vox, but lost interest at some point. I have tons of books of my own, but most of my daily reading material is from the library. They don't keep track.

I'm currently reading One Drop; a biography by Anatole Broyard's daughter Bliss Broyard.

Late to the thread, but... I haven't kept a list so much - I kept a reading journal for a few years but let it lapse - but my favourites this year have been:

- Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty - just a fabulous novel, broke my heart and and forced me to appreciate what many of my older gay friends went through in the 80s, when many of their friends and lovers were dropping like flies
- Peter Carey: True History of the Kelly Gang, for subverting the myth of the evil bushranger and the essential Australian boogey-man, in such a perfect way
- Sarah Waters: Fingersmith and The Night Watch, brilliant both. I love everything she writes, though Affinity is still my favourite of hers
- Carl Hiaasen: Lucky You, Skinny Dip and a couple of earlier novels (Tourist Season and Double Whammy), for whom I have essexjan to thank (she mentioned him in a MeCha thread about crime fiction, and piqued my interest) - funny, smart and gorgeous to boot (according to his author photos!)
- Masuji Ibuse: Black Rain - again, broke my heart. Just a great novel, about the bombing of Hiroshima and its impact on ordinary people.

I've read a lot of murder mysteries this year (mainly PD James, Ruth Rendell and Sara Paretsky) and very little non-work-related non-fiction, except for The Devil in the White City, which I really enjoyed.