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The Name of the Wind, and The Wise Man's Fear -- great fantasy books by Patrick Rothfuss.

Fiction? Hmmm... I'd say:

11/22/63 - Stephen King

77 Shadow Street - Dean Koontz

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss

Zero History - William Gibson

Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson

The Name Of The Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss

De ontdekking van de hemel (The Discovery of Heaven), by Harry Mulisch

1984, by George Orwell

Night Angel trilogy, by Brent Weeks

Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, by Robin Hobb

Gentlemen Bastards series (first two books), by Scott Lynch

Das Parfum (Perfume), by Patrick Süskind

Some may have been from end 2010

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is another great read. It's the first in a 3 part series (came out in 2007):

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Name-of-the-Wind/Patric...

The next one, The Wise Man's Fear is coming out in March, but neither Amazon or BN have the ebook version listed yet.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Wise-Mans-Fear/Patrick-...

The Name of the Wind really is good. The second book of the series (The Wise Man's Fear) is also excellent.

Actually, just reading through the list, I was a little disappointed. Yes, there are some great classics, but Timeline" by Michael Crichton as the "time travel" sci-fi novel of reference. No, just no.

For time travel based sci-fi, Timescape by Gregory Benford is my pick of the lot. Bedford is actually an astrophysicist, so his version of time travel actually make sense. Plus, the characters in the books are scientists. It's a very thought provoking book. He has a second book along those lines, Cosm, which I loved as well, for it's portrayal of the lives of scientists.

I bought a John Locke book once just because of the 99 cent price. John Locke is the pseudonym of the author behind most of the 99 cent Kindle top 20 bestsellers, and probably one of the few that makes 6 figure sales this way.

I read the entire novel hoping that the ending would make up for everything, and in the end I just felt like that was a massive waste of my time and 99 cents. It was a mystery/thriller that ended up being so bad that I was laughing the whole time at the absurdity of everything going on. It was rather well edited, unlike most of the indie and 99 cent crowd, which was all it has going for it. And this book and many others have nearly the same rating by just as many customers as a traditionally published 1000 page behemoth like The Wise Man's Fear, which was (to me) worth every penny of the $15 ebook price and many, many hours spent reading.

I love seeing markets being revolutionized and people self-publishing easily, but the state of 99 cent ebooks today feels to me as bad as an iOS App Store with all 99 cent fart apps as bestsellers would feel. There isn't much quality or thought put into most of these, and the Angry Birds and Tiny Wings of the ebook world are few and far in between. I can only wait and hope to see improvement, instead of seeing more drivel being spewed out by the current set of bestselling 99 cent authors all celebrating their six figure sales of their godawful books.

Hmm... there have been a few, and I'd have to look through my "read books stack" to remind myself exactly which ones fell into 2011 and not prior years... but offhand, I'd mention:

Fiction:

Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson

Zero History - William Gibson

11/22/63 - Stephen King

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss

Non-fiction:

Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick

The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene

The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin

Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Built To Last - Jim Collins

Business Model Generation - Alexander Osterwalder

Started, but unfinished, may yet make the list:

Simulacra and Simulation - Jean Baudrillard

Reamde - Neal Stephenson

The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene