The winners of the Goodreads Choice Awards have just been announced, and the results are a little surprising. As Shelf Life points out, the Goodreads Choice Awards are the closest thing the literary world has to the People’s Choice Awards, with 1,156,852 votes cast by readers for their favorite books in 20 categories, including Fiction, Memoir, Poetry and YA. So we could expect that the winners would skew commercial — no snooty critic here to put in her two cents. That said, we were still rather amazed that J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy was voted as the best work of fiction of the year. Surely, the name recognition isn’t enough — nothing against Rowling, but there were so many better books in 2012. That said, other picks — like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl for Best Mystery, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars for Best Young Adult, and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild for Best Memoir — we’re totally on board with. See the complete list of winners after the jump, and let us know what you think in the comments. … Read More