Read, read, read - read everything you can get your hands on because you can't be a good writer unless you're a good reader first.

And to help you out with that, of the 164 books I've read in 2011, here are the ones I've enjoyed most:

Best Adult Fiction

The Girl I Used to Be, David Cristofano
Still Alice, Lisa Genova
The Privileges, Jonathan Dee
The Old Romantic, Louise Dean (best in category)
Gone, Mo Hayder
The Poison Tree, Erin Kelly
You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon
The Complaints, Ian Rankin
Alice I Have Been, Melanie Benjamin
The Adults, Alison Espach
Voyeur, Daniel Judson
The Weird Sisters, Eleanor Brown
Vaclav and Lena, Haley Tanner
Playdate, Thelma Adams
Night Swim, Jessica Keener
Cold Rain, Craig Smith
The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt
The Ninth Wife, Amy Stolls
The Tragedy of Arthur, Arthur Phillips
Stone Arabia, Dana Spiotta
The Kitchen Daughter, Jael McHenry
Me Again, Keith Cronin
The Things That Kept Us Here, Carla Buckley
The Other Life, Ellen Meister
Names My Sisters Call Me, Megan Crane
Love in Translation, Wendy Nelson Tokunaga
When God Was a Rabbit, Sarah Winman
The End of Everything, Megan Abbott
Daughters of the Revolution, Carolyn Cooke
The Borrower, Rebecca Makkai
Headstone, Ken Bruen
The Cut, George Pelecanos
The End of the Wasp Season, Denise Mina
Hideout, Kathleen George
If Jack's in Love, Stephen Wetta
Sister, Rosamund Lupton
The Snowman, Jo Nesbo
The Winters in Bloom, Lisa Tucker
V is for Vengeance, Sue Grafton
The Taste of Salt, Martha Southgate
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, Caroline Preston

Best Young Adult Fiction

The Dark Devine, Bree Despain
The Replacement, Brenna Yovanoff
The Unwritten Rule, Elizabeth Scott
Matched, Ally Condie
Across the Universe, Beth Revis
Brutal, Michael Harmon
Please Ignore Vera Dietz, A.S. King
Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver
Some Girls Are, Courtney Summers
Will Grayson Will Grayson, John Green and David Levithan
The Chosen One, Carol Lynch Williams
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
Cryer's Cross, Lisa McMann
Okay for Now, Gary D. Schmidt
Divergent, Veronica Roth (best in category)
The Watch that Ends the Night, Allan Wolf

Best E-Books

What Came After, Sam Winston
Falling Under, Danielle Younge-Ullman
Face the Winter Naked, Bonnie Turner
The Sunset Pact, Andrea Schicke Hirsch