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We asked you to tell us the best book you read in 2005 and you complied in spades! Thanks to all of you who voted, and congratulations to this year's winners of the Golden Galoshes: The Kite Runner (Fiction) and The Year of Magical Thinking (Nonfiction).
If, however, we were to present an Author of the Year Award, the honor would surely go to Neil Gaiman, whose Anansi Boys placed second in Fiction, and whose novels American Gods and Good Omens also made the top fifty. The only other authors to appear more than once on the list are Terry Pratchett (for Thud! and Good Omens) and Gregory Maguire (for Wicked and Son of a Witch). (In addition, American Gods and Anansi Boys also made the employees' list.)
Congratulations to all our winners! And if there's a title on this list you haven't read, may we humbly suggest you get cracking. You're missing out on some great reading!
 While we were asking you to cast your Puddly votes, we also asked our fellow Powell's employees to name the best book they read last year. As a bonus, our fifty favorites are listed here.   Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami  America (the Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction by Jon Stewart 
1.The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
2.Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman
3.Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
by J. K. Rowling
4.Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
5.Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
6.Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
7.Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
8.The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova
9.Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson
10.The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
11.The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown "[A] dazzling performance...a delightful display of erudition....Brown delivers a crackling, intricate mystery, complete with breathtaking escapes and several stunning surprises. It's challenging, exciting, and a whole lot more." Jim Fusilli, Boston Globe 12.American Gods
by Neil Gaiman "[A]mbitious, gloriously funny, and oddly heartwarming....A magical mystery tour through the mythologies of all cultures, a unique and moving love story — and another winner for the phenomenally gifted, consummately reader-friendly Gaiman." Kirkus Reviews 13.Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer "[B]eautifully designed second from the gifted young author....[A] riveting narrative....[A] brilliant fiction works thrilling variations on, and consolations for, its plangent message: that 'in the end, everyone loses everyone.' Yes, but look what Foer has found." Kirkus Reviews 14.Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell "The various pieces of David Mitchell's mysterious puzzle combine to form a haunting image that stays with the reader long after the book has been closed." Washington Post 15.A Million Little Pieces
by James Frey "One of the most compelling books of the year... Incredibly bold... Somehow accomplishes what three decades' worth of cheesy public service announcements and after-school specials have failed to do: depict hard-core drug addiction as the self-inflicted apocalypse that it is." New York Post 16.Saturday
by Ian McEwan "Mr. McEwan has not only produced one of the most powerful pieces of post-9/11 fiction yet published, but also fulfilled that very primal mission of the novel: to show how we — a privileged few of us, anyway — live today." Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 17.Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides "Middlesex isn't just a respectable sophomore effort; it's a towering achievement, and it can now be stated unequivocally that Eugenides' initial triumph wasn't a one-off or a fluke. He has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being." Jeff Turrentine, Los Angeles Times 18.Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro "In this luminous offering, [Ishiguro] nimbly navigates the landscape of emotion — the inevitable link between present and past and the fine line between compassion and cruelty, pleasure and pain." Booklist 19.On Beauty
by Zadie Smith "[A] boisterous, funny, poignant, and erudite novel that should firmly establish Smith as a literary force of nature." Booklist 20.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon "This original and affecting novel is a triumph of empathy; whether describing Christopher's favorite dream...or his vision of the universe collapsing in a thunder of stars, the author makes his hero's severely limited world a thrilling place to be." New Yorker 21.Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner "It might appear presumptuous of Steven Levitt to see himself as an all-purpose intellectual detective, fit to take on whatever puzzle of human behavior grabs his fancy. But on the evidence of Freakonomics, the presumption is earned." Jim Holt, New York York Times 22.Case Histories
by Kate Atkinson "[A] compelling narrative drive....Playful humor, an impressive technique, and an offbeat detective with a penchant for weeping are the most obvious pleasures of a page-turner that succeeds in being both brainy and thoroughly entertaining." Booklist (Starred Review) 23.The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss "Even in moments of startling peculiarity, [Krauss] touches the most common elements of the heart....In the final pages, the fractured stories of The History of Love fall together like a desperate embrace." Washington Post 24.Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell "An entertaining psychology book....Blink is not a glib handbook of how to think, or a guide of what to think. But it will make you think about how you think, when you think in a blink." Seattle Times 25.Life of Pi
by Yann Martel "If Canadian writer Yann Martel were a preacher, he'd be charismatic, funny and convert all the non-believers. He baits his readers with serious themes and trawls them through a sea of questions and confusion, but he makes one laugh so much, and at times feel so awed and chilled, that even thrashing around in bewilderment or disagreement one can't help but be captured by his prose." The Nation 26.Thud!
by Terry Pratchett "The asides and the general goofiness and the imagination run amok are the point, every time and this time, too....All in all the only thing to be said about a Discworld novel is: Read it. You'll like it." Washington Post 27.The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd "Sue Monk Kidd's eccentric, inventive, and ultimately forgiving novel is reminscent of the work of Reynolds Price in its ability to create a truly original Southern voice." Anita Shreve 28.The Tender Bar
by J. R. Moehringer "Funny, honest, and insightful, The Tender Bar finds universal themes in an unusual upbringing and declares a real love of barroom life without romanticizing it too much." Booklist (Starred Review) 29.Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson "Another successful exploration of American history....Larson skillfully balances the grisly details with the far-reaching implications of the World's Fair." USA Today 30.Broken for You
by Stephanie Kallos "A seventy-six-year-old woman who's just learned that she has a brain tumor takes in a thirty-four-year-old woman who's just been dumped by her boyfriend. Can this be funny? Yes. Painfully funny, beautifully written, and completely original. I love this novel." Lolly Winston, author of Good Grief 31.Wicked
by Gregory Maguire "Maguire has taken this figure of childhood fantasy and given her a sensual and powerful nature that will stir adult hearts with fear and longing all over again. It's a brilliant trick — and a remarkable treat." Times-Picayune 32.Team of Rivals
by Doris Kearns Goodwin "In nearly 800 pages...Goodwin vividly evokes Lincoln's struggles to avoid war, his resolve to fight hard once war became inevitable, and his unflagging effort to hold fast the fragile union." St. Petersburg Times 33.The Highest Tide
by Jim Lynch "Jim Lynch has written a breathtakingly beautiful first novel. At its core is a fabulous metaphor, rising from the ocean to wrap around his painful story with all the brilliance and mystery of life. That is a big statement. Lynch can carry its weight and then some." Martha McPhee, author of Gorgeous Lies 34.The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri "[Q]uietly dazzling....[A] wonderfully intimate and knowing family portrait...a debut novel that is as assured and eloquent as the work of a longtime master of the craft." Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 35.Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell "Vowell could make a trip to the DMV interesting....Part travelogue, part history text and part memoir, Assassination Vacation is more fun than it has any right to be — a bizarre road trip into some of the most searing moments of the nation's past with one of our most amusing storytellers at the wheel." Stephen Kiehl, Baltimore Sun 36.Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond "In a world that celebrates live journalism, we are increasingly in need of big-picture authors like Jared Diamond....In his extraordinarily panoramic Collapse, he moves his wide lens to yet another telling phenomenon: failed nations, of both the distant and the recent past." Robert D. Kaplan, Washington Post 37.Eldest
by Christopher Paolini "Once again, the expected fantasy elements are well in place, and the characters and their relationships continue to develop nicely. The ending promises an even more cataclysmic battle ahead." Booklist 38.The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls "Jeannette Walls has carved a story with precision and grace out of one of the most chaotic, heartbreaking childhoods ever to be set down on the page. This deeply affecting memoir is a triumph in every possible way, and it does what all good books should: it affirms our faith in the human spirit." Dani Shapiro, author of Family History 39.Good Omens
by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett "What's so funny about Armageddon? More than you'd think...Good Omens has arrived just in time!" Detroit Free Press 40.The Plot against America
by Philip Roth "[Philip is] the ideal narrator for this sinuous and brilliant book, with its extreme sweetness (new in Roth), its black pain, and its low, ceaseless cackle." New Yorker 41.Until I Find You
by John Irving "With Jack Burns, Irving has created his most complex protagonist....And in the long, winding, complex and moody narrative that is Until I Find You, Irving has fashioned a real heart-stopper of a story — and one of his finest novels to date." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 42.Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
by Christopher Moore "[A]s in Moore's other books, the jokes, ranging from the sublime to the sophisticated to the utterly sophomoric, make the book. What Lamb lacks in theological sophistication it more than compensates with mirth....simply impossible not to laugh." John Green, Booklist 43.Son of a Witch
by Gregory Maguire "[A] tale that adroitly mixes drama, humor, and political satire into a well-knit examination of good and evil — and leaves several doors open for future journeys over the rainbow into this cleverly constructed dystopia." Library Journal 44.A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson "Bryson...achieve[s] exactly what he'd set out to do, and, moreover, [he does] it in stylish, efficient, colloquial and stunningly accurate prose.... 45.Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
by Ann Patchett "To say that Truth and Beauty is a memoir about [a] friendship, while true, doesn't begin to do justice to the extraordinary bond the two writers shared or Patchett's refined reflection upon it." Sarah Gianelli, The Oregonian 46.The March
by E. L. Doctorow "[N]ever before has [Doctorow] so fully occupied the past, or so gorgeously evoked its generation of the forces that seeded our times....Doctorow's masterpiece uncovers the roots of today's racial and political conundrums..." Booklist (Starred Review) 47.My Sister's Keeper
by Jodi Picoult "Picoult's timely and compelling novel will appeal to anyone who has thought about the morality of medical decision making and any parent who must balance the needs of different children. Highly recommended." Library Journal 48.The Way the Crow Flies
by Ann-Marie MacDonald "[P]erhaps MacDonald's most impressive accomplishment is her uncanny ability... to vividly re-create the wonder, humor, and fears of childhood." Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist 49.Small Island
by Andrea Levy "Small Island is a great read, delivering the sort of pleasure which has been the stock-in-trade of a long line of English novelists. It's honest, skilful, thoughtful and important. This is Andrea Levy's big book." The Guardian 50.A Breath of Snow and Ashes
by Diana Gabaldon "Triumphant....Her use of historical detail and truly adult love story confirm Gabaldon as a superior writer." Publishers Weekly
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