My favorite novel this year was, I think
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It's an awesome mix of Sci-Fi, philosophy, religion, tech, humor, etc. From the description on amazon.com:
In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous…you’ll recognize it immediately
I went on to read
Quicksilver, which is the first volume of The Boroque Cycle. It's very interesting, especially if you like math/physics (or history), but it's also pretty slow going. It took me a while to finish, and I started Volume II (
The Confusion), but I got distracted from it. (For a while, my reading switched from fiction to text books.) I also heard
The Necronomicon is good; I picked it up but haven't yet read it.