Your Favorite Books of 2012
Decatur Metro | December 24, 2012
While site traffic won’t be quite as lively today, this is a good topic leading into a holiday. What were your favorite books of 2012?
And by “books”, I mean “a long written or printed literary composition”, not necessarily “a set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory.”
Latest from Decaturish
Gone Girl
“A set of ritten sheets of skin” So…the Necronomicon? Clatu Verata Nictu!
You did a terrible job spelling written. Do better next time.
Fight miracles by Barbara king solver and Ru, can’t remember the author.
The Black House by Peter May
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.
Where’d You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple.
Love Goes To Buildings On Fire by Will Hermes.
Some of my favorite books that were published in 2012 (a list of favorite books *read* in 2012 might be slightly different):
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (sadly, I read this after she was here for DBF)
Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky
A Grown Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson
Crazy Enough by Storm Large
The Night Circus. -Erin Morgenstern. I want to run away and join it.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Every Day by David Levithan
This Dark Endeavor & Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Reinventing Fire by Amory Lovins
“Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter is my favorite novel published in 2012.
Still looking for a great work of non-fiction from this year…
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Great plot with a wonderful overlay of ’80s nostalgia.
Canada by Richard Ford. This is a book whose characters have stayed with me for a long time.
wild by cheryl strayed <—could NOT put this down…for real
also tiny beautiful things by cheryl strayed
I read plenty in 2012 but not sure which books were published in 2012. Did read “Help. Thanks. Wow.” by Anne Lamott. Enjoyed it but it was a long, witty essay, not really a book. Not that I know how to define a book anymore.
Also, “How to Be Black” by Barunde Thurston. (sp.?) I only read books published in the current year if they showed up at the Decatur Book Festival. I’m giving “How to Be Black” and “Things White People Like” as a set to my libertarian/anarchist younger brother. He’s hard to buy for. I’m also giving him candles in the shape of sushi.
Robert A. Caro’s “The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson” – the fourth volume of Caro’s five-volume biography of LBJ.
20 years ago, when I first began reading Caro’s multi-volume biography of Johnson, if you had said I would be awaiting each installment the way I awaited new James Bond novels back in junior high, I would have called you crazy. But this is a spellbinding work that reads like novels.
I can’t wait for the fifth and final volume. When you know how it turns out and still are riveted to every paragraph, you know your reading a damned fine writer!
The Art of Fielding
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Gone Girl was the best book I read that was published in 2012, followed by The Stranger in the Room. The Night Circus is next to read on my list.
I’m usually a couple of years behind in reading, so I would have to say that the best book I read in 2012 was The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, published at the end of 2011.
The Fault in the Stars by John Green has a little bit of everything in it.
Glow by Jessica Tuccelli is an interesting read.
My Top 5 Reads of 2012 –
1. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
2. Losing Moses on the Freeway by Chris Hedges
3. Open by Andre Agassi
4. Satan is Real by Charlie Louvin
5. 500 Days by Kurt Eichenwald
In no particular order:
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewit
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Open by Andre Agassi
11/22/63 by Stephen King
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III
The Green Mile by Stephen King