Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi
This is the most enjoyable book I read last year, and I believe it won the 2009 Hugo. After you're done reading you have a few fridge moments ("wait... that probably couldn't work") but while you're reading it it's pure enjoyment and it's really easy to overlook those for the sake of the story. Set in a post oil-crash world, focusing on working class characters trying to make a living while still doing something bigger with their lives. Great action, great plotting, really interesting characters, and a really unique society (from an American point of view anyway).
I have never read very much Science Fiction, unlike some of the people here on Less Wrong, and I think I would like to. At least, the few books I have read I enjoyed. I've read a couple of books from Asimov's Foundation Series, two Michael Crichton books, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, and an anthology of SciFi short stories (no really famous authors) that my dad owned.
That list looks very short. I just finished reading a fiction book, and am looking to start another. Recommendations? What are the two or three books I simply must read?