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: