I'm cheating a little on the date, but The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin stands out. It was translated into english late last year, and received the Hugo thi

I'm cheating a little on the date, but The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin stands out. It was translated into english late last year, and received the Hugo this year for best story. It's wonderful sci-fi written on a grand scale, and made all the more interesting and refreshing to me by coming from outside the Western perspective. It's one of a trilogy: The Dark Forest english translation is out, and Death's End is coming beginning of next year. Also enjoyed Seveneves by Stephenson, and H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. The former is likely known to the HN crowd; the latter draws comparisons to T.H. White's classic The Goshawk. Among non-fiction books, I enjoyed The Little Prover by Friedman and Eastlund. It was exactly what I expected, a gentle introduction into inductive proofs in the idiom established by The Little Schemer.