Best Books You Read in 2012

[Peter]

what are the best books you read in 2012? they don't have to be published in 2012, you just need to have read them in 2012

mine are:



by Jim Butcher

by Kurt Vonnegut

by Brian K. Vaughan

[Guillermo]

I'll go with:

A Storm of Swords by GRR Martin

Consider Phlebas by Ian M Banks

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

[[deleted user]]

Ryiria Revelations by Michael J. Sullivan. He reminded me fantasy can still be fairly lighthearted and interesting.

[Beezlebug (Rob)]

For me its Wool Omnibus, The Passage, The Twelve, The Postmortal and Caliban's War.

[Kevin]

[Paul]

mine are
King of Thorns
Red Country
Germline
Blood Song
Percepliquis
Shadowdance trilogy

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

Usually I do a 10 best and worst books for the year, but when I tried to put that together I was having trouble limiting myself, so I came up with the following list(s).

More than you asked for, I know. ;)

***

2012 Lists

'This is Why We Read'
Johnny and the Dead
Book of Lost Things
Deathless
American Vampire #2
Wind Through the Keyhole



'Thanks for the Memories' (i.e. Beloved Series that Ended Well)
Enola Holmes - Gypsy Good-bye
Ranger's Apprentice - King's of Clonmel & Halt's Peril (8 & 9)
Parasol Protectorate - Timeless



'Yay! New Series to Love!
Tiffany Aching (Discworld)
Mary Russell
Veneficas Americana
Vampirates
The Earl and the Fairy



'Close But Only Half a Cigar' (Honorable Mention - New Series)
Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place



***

'WTF is this Shit?'
Death of the Necromancer
Divergent
Sword-Edged Blonde



'I Had Such Hopes, But You Let Me Down'
Secret History of Moscow
Man Who Loved Books Too Much
Shadow of the Wind
Infernal Devices
Little, Big



'What's All the Fuss?'
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Warm Bodies
Ready Player One
Geekomancy
Changes (Dresden)

[Trike]

I hardly read a thing this year, but I did have a few 4-star books, and these were my favorites:

HOTWIRE: Requiem for the Dead

Kill Decision

Man-Kzin Wars XIII

Sidekicks

[QueenAmidala28]

,

[Craig]

nine keys of magic, and the jake west trilogy top of my pile. but have to say i have read only 1 pooper, book all the rest have been good

[Shomeret]

The best science fiction I read this year is
by Laurence Gonzales

The best fantasy I read this year is by Alex Bledsoe

[Stan]

Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson

Hands down.

[[deleted user]]

My top 5 reads of 2012:
The Last Witchfinder: A Novel
Railsea
Light (re-read)
Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

[Angelof]

I really got serious with reading fantasy books this year but my best reads so far are:

1. The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan

2. Daughter of the Empire - Raymond Feist/Janny Wurst

3. Elantris - Brandon Sanderson

[Tara]

These are my favorites reads for 2012:

The Black Prism
the Mistborn series
Elantris

[Penny]

All things Brandon Sanderson! Mistborn: The Final Empire,The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages, The Way of Kings and Elantris.

Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon by Raymond E. Feist.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

[Ninab (Honesty is the Best Policy)]

Crazy good.

[carol.]

Thanks to GR and friends on here, I've read a lot of great books this year.
Standouts would be:
Fantasy: The Killing Moon
Young adult: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making tied with
Daughter of Smoke & Bone
Apocalypse:The Reapers Are the Angels
Mystery:When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
Sci-fi: Doorways in the Sand

[DavidO]

- sort of Alice in Wonderland meets fairy tale

Impossible to describe, but amazing

- Ignoring all the sex parts, anyway

- cute

- Perry Mason quite different from the TV show

- The ultimate book on politics

- The ultimate book on dating?

[Igor]

Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings as no.1 and not just for 2012, like all the time best regarding epic fantasy. Close second would be Mistborn and then, of course, Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen (reading fifth at the moment).

[Boštjan]

Tigana

[Natalia]

These were the best this year and I think will become all-time-favourites anyway:

Michael J.Sullivan - Riyria Revelations


and Mark Lawrence - King of Thorns

[Ctgt]

My favorite fantasy read of the year was Tigana.

Followed by The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb especially the second book Royal Assassin.


The Deed of Paksenarrion


Wool Omnibus

Mistborn

[Karen]

I'll slide in under the wire with a book I just finished and immediately started rereading again: The Art Forger.

[Michelle]

So many! Shadowmarch by Tad Williams, Hero for Wondla, the final volume of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flammel, The Wild Road, The Chrimson Crown, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leviathan (& book 2, Behemoth), Feast for Crows, The Monstrumologist, Redwall...I'm forgetting so many without looking back at my read list! lol ;)

[Michelle]

And The Looking Glass Wars! :-P

[Rod]

Here are my top picks for best reads of 2012:

[Karen]

Just realized I didn't pay attention to which group I was on -- The Art Forger isn't SFF. Sorry!

[Peter]

Karen wrote: "Just realized I didn't pay attention to which group I was on -- The Art Forger isn't SFF. Sorry!"

so, if that is the best book you read this year, then it counts

[Sarah]

Just my two pennies:

[Mike]

My favorites this year were:

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson

[Silvio]

In fiction, Anathem by Neal Stephenson is one for my all-time top favorites list. Non-fiction's too hard to rank.

[Kim]

In no particular order these would have to be my favourite books of 2012. For most of these books I rushed out and picked up the sequels as well though there's a couple I still need to read.

Rivers of London plus both sequels.
Perdido Street Station
All You Need Is Kill
Old Man's War
The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies
Beat the Reaper
The Sword-Edged Blonde plus the rest of the Eddie LaCrosse books.

[Darci]

The shortlist of the ones that come most easily to mind:


most effective shift in tone:

well-loved old favorite:

the "one of us" award:

And in the category of "series I wish I'd found sooner":

[Lasse]

A Clash of Kings
The Twelve
Throne of Glass
One Foot in the Grave
The Crown of Embers
Daughter of Smoke & Bone

[[deleted user]]

I can't choose so I'm just gonna list these:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Across the Universe
Hourglass
The Maze Runner
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Mockingjay
The Wishing Spell
Pretty Little Liars
Flawless
Perfect
Unbelievable
Wicked
Killer
Wanted
Heartless
Twisted
Ruthless
Stunning
City of Bones
City of Ashes
City of Glass
Before I Fall
Divergent
Insurgent
The Casual Vacancy
Delirium
Pandemonium
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Legend

[Kim]

Trisha wrote: "Here are all the books I've read SO FAR:"

But are they the best books you've read in 2012? This isn't about all the books you read this year.

[Whitney]

Ill take a look and return graduating from college and then starting a new degree and two jobs has taken me away from my reading this year :(. didnt even come close to my goal or read alot of things I wanted to get too.

[Whitney]

.

for some reason I think I read clockwork prince but its not showing in my reads

[Jackie]

Cartamandua Legacy
The Castings Trilogy
Tigana
Partials
Inheritance

[Ric]

This is a nice idea. SFF for the year I personally rated 4 or 5 stars:
The Skinner - a Neal Asher book that really opened my mind to his writing
Virtually True - an indie book
Fate of Worlds: Return from the Ringworld - perhaps the last of this fabulous series?
Better Than Real: Sensual Solutions for the Discerning Client - not what one would expect from the title, hard to find
The Calorie Man - in the same world as Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl
Vortex
Manxome Foe - military Sf, don't know why I liked it but I did
Blindsight - excellent Peter Watts
Armor - a nice find from the 70s
Perdido Street Station - seemed like a while since I read this but it was only this year
Gridlinked - not the best Asher but a good start

This was a nice reminder of how many good books I had a chance to read this year. Thank you to all the writers who keep trying, and all those who make this all possible. I wish that there were more indie publishers and we had a better means of identifying really good indie and self-pub releases.

[Francesca]

The first ones that occurs to me are and

[[deleted user]]

Kim wrote: "Trisha wrote: "Here are all the books I've read SO FAR:"

But are they the best books you've read in 2012? This isn't about all the books you read this year."

That's the thing, its hard for me to choose because I loved them all.

[Kim]

Trisha wrote: "That's the thing, its hard for me to choose because I loved them all. "

Well that's ok then.

[Julia]

My favorites that I read this year are:

The Night Circus
Farthing
Dairy Queen
Breadcrumbs
Wonderstruck
Where Things Come Back
Partials
The Snow Child
The Healer's War
Anything But Typical
Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories
Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race
Waiting for Normal
Foiled
Akata Witch
Somewhere Beneath Those Waves
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein
My Wonderful World of SlapstickBuster Keaton Remembered
The Heidi Chronicles and Other PlaysBloodchild and Other StoriesElfhome
Wild Seed
A Fistful of Sky
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints
Okay for Now
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
The Diviners
The Walking Dead, Compendium 1

[Trike]

I think if we asked some of you to choose a single favorite book your heads would explode. :p

[Julia]

I think if we asked some of you to choose a single favorite book your heads would explode.

Indubitably.

My best of the bestest were:
; ; ; ; .

[Pixelina]

A few of my favorites were

[Evilynn]

My five star reads for 2012 was:
Kallocain - Karin Boye (I can't believe it took me this long to read this, it's a dystopian classic, and it's in my mother tongue and everything!)
Under Heaven - Guy Gavriel Kay
Silently and Very Fast - Catherynne M. Valente. Valente does an SF-ish novella, and it's still fantastic.

[Tacuazin]

My 2012 favourites were undoubtedly Collusion and Transformation, with special mention to The Emperor's Soul and Bitten.