The Best Of What I've Read This Year

It seems everywhere I look, I'm finding year-end lists of the best books different people have read this year.  I'll admit, I might have forgotten that I read some of these this year if I did not keep a list of books read in the back of a notebook (a practice I began this year on a suggestion from Joseph Epstein, who though he did not quite make the list, wrote a thoroughly enjoyable book of essays, In a Cardboard Belt!).
Non-fiction -
Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn- I read a single volume abridged version of the intimidating three volume work.  Beyond the amazing circumstances in which it was written (recounted here), it really is a remarkable book.  It's is hard to boil down all that happens in the book into one paragraph, but I really couldn't give it a much higher recommendation.
Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher- I really haven't read any other books on economics, so I really can't compare this to anything.  The book is subtitled "economics as if people mattered" and gave me a lot to think about.  This may be an uninformed assertion (but isn't that what the internet is for after all?), but I would be willing to bet not many other books on economics cite papal bulls in their texts. 
Shelby Foote's Civil War: A Narrative- Only read the first volume so far, but it is a very readable history.  Foote was actually a novelist originally (and a lifelong friend of Walker Percy) and this shows in his writing.  It probably deserves a wider readership than it has received, being too long - at three hefty, 500+ page volumes - for the casual reader and lacking the endless footnotes preferred by professional historians.  This video of Foote from Ken Burns' Civil War documentary most likely will do more to recommend it to you than I can.
The Dyer's Hand by W.H. Auden- I really, really like this book.  I would really, really like to recommend it to you. But, I doubt you would be interested.  It's big, very "literary" for lack of a better term- lots of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Don Giovanni (by way of Kierkegaard), and unavailable at most book stores.  If you have the temperment for it and can find it at a library (I checked it out from LSU's), I would suggest you leave your computer now and go get it.
Signposts in a Strange Land by Walker Percy- a volume of essays.  You need to read The Moviegoer or this.  I'm a big fan of the rest of his work, but these two seem to be good introductions to me.
Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright- I'm not sure if this is a word, but I would describe this book as "epiphanous" for me.  Really opened my eyes to a lot of things, as I've mentioned before on this blog (unfortunately it also kind of ruined bluegrass for me, except maybe for this song, "My Bones Gonna Rise Again".  In other, but not totally unrelated news, I really like this poem by Hopkins

Novels-
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole- Wonderful, very funny novel set in New Orleans.  Apparently it's funny even if you aren't from around New Orleans, because it is pretty well known nationally.  Benny Grunch's "12 Yats of Christmas", probably is not.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome- Another very funny novel, but one that was written in the nineteenth century.  If you have ever read and enjoyed one of Chesterton's novels, you will probably like this too.  It was one of two novels this year that I purposely slowed my reading of to enjoy longer (Hannah Coulter being the other). There are many wonderful lines I could choose from as way of recommendation but in the spirit of the author, I'll simply cut and paste this one, "I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller- just your typical science fiction novel following an order of Catholic monks over a few thousands of years after a nuclear holocaust.  I actually talked about this book way back in the infancy of this blog- August.  You can find that here.
The Power and the Glory by Grahame Greene- when I first read this, I thought it may have been the best novel I'd ever read.  I still really like it, but it hasn't stuck with me the way, say, Brothers Karamazov has.
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. Just a beautiful novel and really a joy to read.  Very similar in outlook to the economic principles set out by Schumacher- agrarianism, small scale for local markets, appropriate technology, ect., but to call it simply a dramatization of those ideas would be a disservice to what a good novel it really is.
Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone- written by a lasped Catholic turned Communist, and then subsequently turned lasped Communist (because Communism is a sort of religion, with its own eschatology that puts hope in the proletariat) about a Communist in Mussolini's Italy who to must disquise himself as a priest after returning from exile.  He eventually rewrote large portions of the work after becoming disenchanted with communism.  According to The Life You Save Might Be Your Own (a book on Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and of course Flannery O'Connor, that while enjoyable and informative wasn't really excellent and didn't make the list), it was one of Dorothy Day's favorites, which was a good enough recommendation for me.