My List: Best Books Read in 2012

I read 42 books during 2012, for a total of 5,852 pages of print and just slightly more than 137 hours of unabridged audiobooks.

Most best books of 2012 lists include only books issued this year. But my list includes anything I read during the year, regardless of when it was published. The oldest book was John C. MacDonald’s The Deep Blue Good-by from 1964. My list also includes both fiction and nonfiction.

Listed alphabetically by author:

Top Ten

Didion, Joan. Blue Nights

Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl

French, Tana. The Likeness

Gottschall, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Koppel, Lily. The Red Leather Diary

Lippman, Laura. I’d Know You Anywhere

McDermid, Val. The Mermaids Singing

Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas

Sankovitch, Nina. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading

Towles, Amor. Rules of Civility

Honorable Mention

Armstrong, Karen. The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

Genova, Lisa. Left Neglected

Gornick, Vivian. Fierce Attachments: A Memoir

Rose, Phyllis. Parallel Lives:  Five Victorian Marriages

Levinson, Leila. Gated Grief: The Daughter of a GI Concentration Camp Liberator Discovers a Legacy of Trauma

New Year Reading Resolution

As this list demonstrates, I don’t review many of the books I read, even my favorite ones. So my one resolution for this year I to write about more of the books I read so that a year from now I’ll be able to provide links for most of the entries on my best books list.

And here are a couple of other lists of book-related resolutions:

Scroll to Top

Discover more from Notes in the Margin

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading