Arguably they're all real, or more of them, or less of them. But anyway: adult books that aren't romance novels, and not including Heyer. (Although I think she's real, she had so many this year that she gets her own list.)

• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
  • breathtakingly amazing
• The Awkward Age, Henry James
  • flawed but still mind-porn
• The Bostonians, Henry James
  • intense and gripping
• The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
  • interesting
• Orlando, Virginia Woolf
  • brilliant, insane, amazing
• The Europeans, Henry James
  • charming and more complete-feeling than some James novels
• some of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin
  • A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords
    • all of them are crazily engrossing and gripping and fun
• The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Dostoevsky was a genius. I had to clutch at the book at times it was so good. (Some chapters dragged, but that's just how he is for me.)
• some of the Vorkosigan series, Lois McMaster Bujold
  • Shards of Honor, Barrayar, The Warrior's Apprentice, Borders of Infinity, The Vor Game
    • They get a lot better for me when Miles shows up. He is not only funny and wonderful, he really makes the plot go nuts and all over the place and sometimes I wouldn't like that but with Miles I can trust him to wrap everything up neatly.
• To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
  • fantastically funny and inventive
• Ada, or Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov
  • This book was like relearning what words can do. When the writing is this beautiful, can anything be wrong? I loved Lolita, but I loved Ada ten times more.