So, now that 2011 has been wrapped up neatly and we’ve journeyed a few days into 2012 without any Mayan prognosticated disasters or the foreseeable extinction of the written word, I’d love to know what people read and enjoyed in 2011 (it wouldn’t necessarily have to be published in 2011).

This year, I went back and explored Elmore Leonard’s ‘Pronto‘, which featured the character Raylan Givens, who went on to be the basis for the popular FX show ‘Justified.’ I also enjoyed Ernest Cline’s ‘Ready Player One‘, progressed deeper into the fantasy world Patrick Rothfuss created and cultivated, and admittedly was kind of on the ropes about Lev Grossman’s ‘The Magicians‘ and Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Snowman‘, despite both being well written tales.

Along with ‘Devil in the White City‘, ‘The Graveyard Book‘ and ‘The Book Thief‘, I finally got around to ‘A Storm of Swords‘ in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series and of course was not surprised to find it brutal, but really good. If you thought that George R.R. Martin didn’t mind offing characters in the first two books, this one will put that to shame. Good lord. This is one fantasy world I would not want to live in. It’s like Deadwood minus the cowboys and syphilis.

So, that’s a sample of what I checked out in 2011. There are still a lot of 2011 books that I’d love to get around to this year. Tina Fey’s ‘Bossypants‘, Haruki Murakami’s ‘1Q84‘ and Karen Russell’s ‘Swamplandia‘ are at the top of my goodreads list and I know there are some others that I am forgetting. Either way, what did people enjoy reading in 2011? What are you looking forward to in 2012? Thoughts?