Finally, the award for That makes no sense goes to Mr Landen Has No Brain by Stephen Walker. This book is utter nonsense.
You know when you start a new job, and you’re being taken round to meet all the employees, and one of them says something like “I’m crazy, me. Oooh, I’m wacky. Totally mental.” and you can only look at them in pity? This book is that person. It aims for surreal, baffling and non-sequiteurious. Hits sloppy on the head.
If you want to find out more about this book, try Google. But really, you’re not missing much.

The award for It’s not just for kids goes to the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman.
As far as debuts go, this is astounding. It’s consistent, it never slows down, it’s well thought through, it’s a disciplined creation. It has a strong message, but not so strong that the plot is relegated to the status of a vehicle for carrying it. It goes to all sorts of fabulous places, and the images that are produced in your mind are crisp and full of detail.
Though it seems barmy to compare this book to either The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy or The Lord Of The Rings, many of the above compliments can be applied to all three (okay, calling the HHGG a disciplined creation is clearly utter bollocks, I admit). As a result, it probably deserves a place on your bookshelf between them.
Official Philip Pullman site

The award for The guys who defined the genre and I have only just bothered to read them will be split between William Gibson and Arthur C Clarke.
William Gibson defined “cyberpunk”, and I think the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix) probably have a lot to thank him for.
Arthur C Clarke is one of the major influences on making science fiction into the genre that we read today, coupled with the fact that he pretty much came up with the idea of using satellites for radio communications. You can see why I have a lot of respect for the fella.
Wikipedia: William Gibson · Arthur C Clarke

The award for Overrated? You betcha! goes to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
So it wasn’t the worst book of the year, but it was pretty poor. It was mediocre in terms of excitement. It was mediocre in terms of plot. The characters were mediocre. The startling plot twists made me yawn. If a bunch of excitable Christians had decided to ignore it instead of throwing an eppy and giving it all the free publicity that it could ever want, it would have gone completely under the radar and sold about eight copies.

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The award for Classic novel which I should have really read a long time ago goes to Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
The first two characters are introduced separately and thoroughly. This is very important to me. If a book starts by introducing a dozen different individuals and organisations by name without any explanation of who they are, I will fail to differentiate between them throughout the entire book. This spoils my enjoyment, understandably. In Lord Of The Flies, we get good introductions for the first two (and most important) characters, but then it falls apart a bit, as all the other characters pile in. As a result, most of them ended up being represented in my head as faceless filler material. Given the content of the book, this may be intentional.
There’s a lot that could be said about this book, but it’s been said already. Unfortunately most of it has been said by schoolkids, who often get pushed into reading this by their English teachers. Look elsewhere on the Internet if you are interested in cheap laughs.
Useful information

The award for New discovery which I have overindulged in and now regret it goes to Robert Rankin. Karen picked up the first novel in the Brentford Trilogy from the library back in June. I read it in about four days, and enjoyed in greatly. During the remainder of the year I read books two and three of the trilogy (which is actually roughly seven books long now – an idea ripped off from Douglas Adams if ever I saw one) and three other Robert Rankin novels (Waiting For Godalming, The Witches Of Chiswick and The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies Of The Apocalypse).

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ONE
This was the best of the 67 books I read this year. It had characters so well drawn that you can hear their voices, and a story so absorbing that it was impossible to close this book while changing trains.

Harriet spends the summer learning to hold her breath and trying to solve her brother’s murder, whilst growing up quickly in a dysfunctional Deep Southern family.

How I wish there were more books by Donna Tartt.

TWO
A birthday present from Spengy, who described it as A greek tragedy in a modern american setting. Callie’s grandparents break an ancient taboo, and Callie doesn’t suffer the consequences until puberty, when her freakish nature emerges.
THREE
The beautiful, dark, gripping story of a group of students whose relationships interweave and grow as they build up to and fall away from a murder.
FOUR
The back of this surprise Booker prizewinner describes it as “a laugh on every page.” While it seethes with satire, though, this novel is anything but funny. Vernon is blamed for a high-school shooting, and starts to believe his own press. Even the neatly tied-up ending doesn’t disappoint.
FIVE
I loved this trilogy, and cried at the end, as did Pete. I love the dedicated craftsmanship of the invented worlds, and the sly religious imagery. Can’t wait for the film.
SIX
There’s a certain amount of autobiography, and a great deal of story-telling by vignette, in Amy Tan’s books. I wouldn’t recommend reading them one after the other, but they stand eloquently alone as historical tales of China, modern tales of immigration, and timeless tales of mother-daughter relationships.
Also recommended: The Joy Luck Club
SEVEN
This story is told by a murdered girl, as she watches her family, her friends, and her killer, from heaven. The author deals boldly with the unpleasantness of the murder and its aftermath, drawing the family and its disintegration very neatly. I would say that the book starts almost too well, and the last handful of pages let it down badly; the story of the mother is never properly told. Still worth reading for the cute premise and the blatant tugging of heartstrings throughout.
In fact, this book is so good, that my mum gave me it for my birthday and then again for christmas.
EIGHT
Zoe Heller’s novels feel very British to me, with their uncompromisingly bleak setting and their largely unlikeable cast. The narrators of both stories commentate on other people’s lives, but are not without blame in the messes that their subjects make. The grim approach is balanced by the light, easy language that makes both books surprisingly quick to read.
Also recommended: Everything You Know
NINE
Pix loaned me this book in the wake of the Belle de Jour uproar, to make the point that they would track her down in the end, just like they did to Nicki Gemmell. Rather like the freedom we all used to get from blogging, before anyone knew who we were, this is a novel about snatching freedom through anonymity, and letting it slip through our fingers.
TEN
I only gave nine novels 5/5 this year, so tenth place is shared jointly by the best of the new-to-me authors that I read this year:
Bill Bryson
Notes From A Small Island
I was determined not to like this, but couldn’t help myself. It really was very funny, and it’s always nice to read about places I know.
Phil Hogan
Hitting the Groove
The Freedom Thing
I enjoy Phil Hogan’s Observer column, and was pleased to find that he could sustain that incisive scene-by-scene storytelling for the length of a novel. Or even two. Tony Parson’s Man & Boy is cliched, repetitive, and shallow, compared with Hogan’s versions of roughly the same story.
Iris Murdoch
The Black Prince
The Message to the Planet
Neither Nick nor I had read anything by Iris Murdoch before she died this year, so we immediately set about rectifying that. I find her work quite dense, but worth persisting just for those strings of adjectives. Both the books I tried featured an unreliable narrator and a large cast of slightly odd, fairly unpleasant people. They were most enjoyable.
Herman Melville
Moby Dick
Intended to be this year’s Ulysses, in that it was a BIG book that I’ve always meant to read. I was astonished at how much I enjoyed it. So, not Ulysses at all. Oh, and it’s about a whale.
Clare Morrall
Astonishing Splashes of Colour
This book had me in tears almost all the way through. I couldn’t not include it in my year’s recommendations. You may want to avoid it if you’ve ever lost a baby.
Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Somewhat surreal, this reminded me in some ways of one of the Michael Marshall Smith books that I was forced to read last year. Some of the dream sequences bored me, but the long stories told by characters other than the narrator were good. One of those books that I liked in spite of itself.