Throughout the overwhelming majority of the year, I wasn't in a position where I had a lot of "sit down with a good book and a good drink" reading time, but I've gotten some in during the winters at each end. I think best overall was one of the ones I read way early in the year, Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche. I had been saving The Pale King by David Foster Wallace for an "in case of emergency break glass" book because I couldn't bear to finish all his writing and I just had to break the glass recently. I've been enjoying that thoroughly and should finish before the year is up; it may win out.

I know this probably paints a bad picture of my reading habits because of the present public perception of those (previously publicly praiseworthy) authors, so I feel the urge to get in front of that and (1) insist I have eclectic tastes and this year had a small sample size, (2) insist those books (well, many parts of those books) really ARE excellent, and (3) provide one more suggestion even though this is already a wordy comment: why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby. Someone shared a link to the web version on HN earlier this year, maybe it was even in a deep, 1-upvoted comment, I don't recall - but that was what occupied the whole next part of my day, and I quite liked it (having already known Ruby from some ancient rusty Rails experience).