What were your favorite books this year?

I always get my best book recommendations from you all in December! So, what were your favorites this year (so far)?

O so many good ones and a few great ones! (the great ones have asterisks)

No particular order:

Cutting for Stone *
Lonesome Dove *
Remarkable Creatures
Wolf Hall *
The Siege *
The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam
The Voyage of the Narwhal
Shantaram
Cloud Atlas *
Packing for Mars
Island Beneath the Sea *
Home *
White Teeth
The Patron Saint of Liars
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Let the Great World Spin
Montana 1948
So Brave, Young and Handsome
Peace Like a River
The Good Earth

These are just the cream of the crop; there were other good ones too. May 2011 be as good a reading year!

My favorite reads this year:

Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
The Road to Andorra by Shirley Deane
Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
I Am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby
A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos

I've put together my "best of my 1010" listing my favorite book (as I look back now) from each challenge.

Cozy Mysteries
--A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch
Books and Reading
--My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
Baseball Books
--The Game from Where I Stand by Doug Glanville
Chicago Books
--The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
American Presidents
--American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
Disaster Books
--Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Explosion 1917 by Laura M. MacDonald
Nonfiction
--Give a Little: How Your Small Donations Can Transform Our World by Wendy Smith
Food Mysteries
--State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy
Days and Nights
--Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger
God and Religion
--Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith by Suzanne Strempek Shea
Bonus Category: Next in the Series
--Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

I'm not quite done with my challenge yet, but I'll summarize my favorites right now by category. I didn't check the ratings on all of them, but I did go and look when there were multiple books that I remember really, really liking. There are some categories that were much stronger than others so I'll name "honorable mentions" for those.

FOOD NETWORK
--The Teaberry Strangler by Laura Childs
ONE MORE STITCH
--The Quilter's Apprentice by Jennifer Chiaverini
MELTING POT
--Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson
----Honorable mentions to: The Bread of Angels by Stephanie Soldana and Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.
NEW ENGLAND LEAF TOUR
--Site Unseen by Dana Cameron
CARIBBEAN CRUISE
--Sky Juice and Flying Fish by Jessica B. Harris
THE SOUND OF MUSIC
--Paganini's Ghost by Paul Adam
----Honorable mentions to: The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax and Divine Inspiration by Jane Langton
WEATHER CHANNEL
--Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
ALL THINGS SOUTHERN
--The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
IT'S THE HOLIDAY SEASON
--Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie
WHODUNIT
--Blue Heaven by C.J. Box
----Honorable mentions to: Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie and The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

My favorite book of the year has been (hands down - no contest): Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. There were other strong books in that category, but they couldn't compare with Penny's work.

Edited to correct a typo

At last count, I had 17 favorites for 2010. I have no idea which categories these books wound up in, mainly because I shuffle things around so much. But here are my top five to date:

Build my Gallows High
Grapes of Wrath
Queenpin
The Help
When Will There Be Good News?

Also: I have to mention authors that I couldn't get enough of this year and read off-challenge when I couldn't fit them into my categories:

Deborah Crombie
Lisa Gardner
Karin Slaughter
Susan Hill
Laura Lippman
Megan Abott

Not a lot of fine literature here but these are my favorites because I enjoyed time spent with them and they stuck with me.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard
Walden by Henry D. Thoreau
Undone by Karin Slaughter
Broken by Karin Slaughter
Everwild by Neal Shusterman
Dark Passage by David Goodis
The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte by Laura Joh Rowland
Heat Wave by Richard Castle
Queenpin by Megan Abbott
Dracula the Undead by Dacre Stoker
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters and Jane Austen
Android Karenina by Ben H. Winters and Leo Tolstoy
Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter by A.E. Moorat
The Girl Who Played With Fire by larssons::Stieg Larsson
Jumper by Steven Gould
Replay by Ken Grimwood

Don't forget to visit the Best of the Year threads and mention your faves there too!

Favorite Non-fiction:

The Book of William: How the First Folio Conquered the World
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Blink
Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
Albion's Seed
Genome
Broken Things to Mend

Fiction:

Death Comes for the Archbishop
The Wednesday Wars
To Draw Closer to God
Free Man of Color
The Doomsday Book
The Book of Lost Things
Dracula
Dorothea Lange - Mark Durden
Rapunzel's Revenge
World War Z
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Black Ships
Assassin's Apprentice
The Chosen
The Keys to the Demon Prison
Team of Rivals
False Colours
The Quiet Gentleman
All Quiet on the Western Front
Night - Elie Wiesel
She Walks These Hills

Kind of a long list, I know, but these were my 5 star reads that I would be happy to read again.

>4 lindapanzo: Oh, Sundays in America looks wonderful!

It was excellent. She went to a different church every Sunday for a year and reported on it.

I met her at a library talk a few years ago. She's also written a book about books that I enjoyed, too.

Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore by Suzanne Strempek Shea.

I just did by post nominating my best books by category, but I find when I think of my favorite books, I come up with quite a different list.

The Mountain by Karl Marlantes (this book tops both lists)
A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie
A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory
These Is My Words by Nancy Turner
Ride The Wind by Lucia St Clair Robson
Buffalo Soldiers by Tom Willard
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
Pride Runs Deep by R. Cameron Cooke
Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran
World War Z by Max Brooks
Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre

6 Build My Gallows High was a one of my many favourites last year :) such a great book.

It's tough since my top five would tend to be David Mitchell and noone else... still in the interest of variety here's my most memorable books. Damn it this was hard!

A Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell
Finch by Jeff VanderMeer
Big Machine by Victor LaVelle
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen stories by Edward Hollis

>12 clfisha: I'm planning to read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet in the next couple of months. I'm glad to hear it was one of your favorites.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was fantastic and certainly makes my top five for this year. Glad you liked If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, clfisha, since I was just given a very nice copy.

Best books of the year:

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Michell
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

This was a great reading year for me. I could more happily have put together a top 25.

Out of the 127 books I read this year I have 52 best of's it was a great year so I may have to start a thread of my own for my favorites!

My Top Ten fiction of 2010.

Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli
The River Why, David James Duncan
Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell
Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
Every Man Dies Alone, Hans Fallada
Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMutry
O'Connor: Collected Works, Flannery O'Connor

I'll do this based on my categories:

New New Things: The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

The World we Live In: Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty by Scott Kilman & Roger Thurow

The Great War: (so far) Back to the Front by Stephen O'Shea

Thrills and Chills Around the World: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson (though with several other close rivals...)

Who Were You?: William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man by Duncan Wu

I Can Believe You Haven't Read That! Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

En Francais... Les derniers jours de Stefan Zweig by Lauren Seksik

Dystopias: Can't decide between Fahrenheit 451 and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Novel History: The King's Touch by Jude Morgan (another tough call)

English Escapism: Shadows in the Street by Susan Hill

I'll put one from each category:

1. 1001 Books - Embers
2. Spain and the Spanish speaking world - The Old Man and the Sea
3. British Writers - The Girl on the Landing
4. Not in English - Terra Somambula
5. Travel - Sea of Poppies
6. Myths and Legends - The Lusiads
7. History - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
8. Film - The Shining
9. Olympic - The Eye of the Leopard
10. Asia - The Siege of Krishnapur
Bonus 1001 - 2666
Bonus Olympic - An ordinary Man

My favorite classic was Middlemarch, favorite nonfiction was The Red Queen, favorite brain candy was The Hunger Games, and favorite fiction (which was half sci-fi, half novel) was Spin.

Besides getting great recommendations, I like to see the trends of which books, old or new, make the LT rounds each year. I am surprised Half the Sky didn't turn up on more LTers nonfiction lists this year... I'm also surprised I haven't seen more books continue in popularity from last year's lists--maybe because each year brings too many good new books to try?