One of my FAVORITE subjects so thanks for the starting the thread. I am also bad with titles so I started writing them down (just season and year, title and author plus a little check if I would recommend it) ...that was back in 1999. My mother keeps track of her day time book club reads and their list goes back 25 years. Can you believe that!
Recent favs already mentioned include The Book of Negroes (settings include Africa, US, Canada,and England 3 are places I've lived), The Help, Snowflower and the Secret Fan, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.
The Steig Larson series can help pass the time as each of the 3 I've read so far are over 800 pages! Stressful, violent but also a page turner if you can get past the first 80 or so pages of the first book.
I'm currently reading Sarum (a 10,000 year history of England) by Edward Rutherford; excellent but it is very long and dense. I love English and French history, esp 15-17th century, and I just started the Happiness Project yesterday.
On a separate note, I have been reading a lot of statistics and research papers regarding employment, unemployment and underemployment of Canada's immigrants. Depressing stuff!