Best thing you read in 2012?

[Daniel]

Well, another year has come and gone, and it's that time where everybody tends to reflect on the year that was. Keeping with the tradition of last year's "best of" thread in this group, let's hear your best reads from 2012. Were there any books that stood head and shoulders above the rest? Don't worry about whether the book was published in 2012. Heck, don't even worry about publication in the 21st Century. If a book affected you in some profound way, this would be the place to recommend it to others. What were your best reads from last year?

[Joe]

My top five (in this moment's order).

1. A Prayer for Owen Meany
2. Infinite Jest
3. The Sense of an Ending
4. The Art of Fielding
5. The Lonely Polygamist

[Chris]

My top 5 would be:
1. The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
2. High Rise - JG Ballard
3. The 5 People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
4.The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
5. Psycho - Robert Bloch

[Janet C-B]

Hi Daniel, I am new here. A few of my favorite books read in 2012 are:

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

11/22/63

Wonder R.J. Palacio

Girl in Translation Jean Kwok

Moloka'i

Three Bags Full

Janet

[Mikela]

Not in any particular order, but these great books I read in 2012:
1) Hunger
2) Midnight's Children
3) The War of the End of the World
4) The Crow Road
5) The World According to Garp
6) Atonement
7) The Razor's Edge, and
8) The Sea, the Sea

[Daniel]

Janet: I wouldn't normally jump in on this discussion, but welcome to our group and thanks so much for sharing your great reads!

[Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large)]

I've been lurking for a while, but a recap of last year's favorites may be as good a place as any to start contributing, so, in no particular order:

Fiction:
Troubles (J.G. Farrell)
And the Land Lay Still (James Robertson)
When We Were Orphans (Kazuo Ishiguro)
London (Edward Rutherfurd)
The House of Silk (Anthony Horowitz)
C.J. Sansom's "Shardlake" series

Nonfiction:
Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany (Hans J. Massaquoi)
Freiheit. Ein Plädoyer (Joachim Gauck)
The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Robert K. Massie)
The Pale Abyssinian (Miles Bredin)

[Deborah]

I'm having trouble with this question! I know there isn't a penalty for not being right, but still!
There were books I thought were brilliant and books that were just so much fun.

The Sisters Brothers
Death WishingI won this actually and was thrilled that I enjoyed it so much.
The Heroes This was the most fun I had with a book last year! It wasn't trying to be anything more than a great fantasy book and it was one of the best fantasies I read not just this year but ever. This was too much fun. (If you don't mind your fun with grit and blood.)
Unaccustomed EarthJust beautiful.

The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War

Beloved A re-read

The Master And Margarita With apologies to Jason who is allowed to hate it as much as he wants. But I included the cover because I think the translation is crucial. I listened to it from audible and Julian Rhind - Tutt made this fun and the translation made it feel modern and accessible.

[Ann Ross]

[Savanna]

I think the best thing I read this year was Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, which I discovered through this group so thanks! ;)

[Thing Two]

Five? You can limit your favorites to only five?!?!

Wow.

In (reverse) order of publication:

1. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson (2011)
2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (2010)
3. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (2010)
4. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)
5. Nine Horses by Billy Collins (2002)
6. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

[Deborah]

Savanna wrote: "I think the best thing I read this year was Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, which I discovered through this group so thanks! ;)"

That has stuck with me in the months since we read it. In fact it came up at dinner a few weeks ago.

[Savanna]

Deborah wrote: "That has stuck with me in the months since we read it. In fact it came up at dinner a few weeks ago."

Nice! I've been recommending it a lot.

Thing Two reminds me that 1Q84 was also one of my best reads of 2012, as well as Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, and Sputnik Sweetheart also by Murakami, bringing me up to five.

[Kirsten]

A few of my favorite books from last year are:

- Anything by John Green (Young Adult author)...Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, An Abundance of Katherines, etc...
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - details galore
- Any of Gillian Flynn's books...Sharp Objects, Gone Girl & Dark Places - loved the main female characters in each book
- We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver - loved her writing style
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick - based off a true story
The Room by Emma Donahue - especially loved the 2nd half of book

I could probably find more, but these are the ones that come to mind.

Kirsten Sanchez

[Sophia]

On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
The Feast Of The Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion by William Faulkner
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos by Anne Carson
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Disaster Was My God: A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud by Bruce Duffy
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey

[James E.]

I'd have to say "A fraction of the whole" by Aussie writer Steve Toltz was my favorite among a year of many great reads.

[Glorianne]

Books I read and loved this year:
The Casual Vacancy
Heft
Gone Girl
And When She Was Good

And, I haven't finished it yet but I already know The Fault in Our Stars will place high on the list.

[Terry]

Joe, Infinite Jest and A Prayer for Owen Meany are two of my favourite books.

Last year, my five favourites were probably:

1. A Suitable Boy by Viram Seth
2. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
3. Close Range by Annie Proulx
4. Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx
5. The Golem by Gustav Meyrink

That's Novels. If I was including non-fiction and other stuff, David Simon's 'Homicide' and Alan Watts' 'The Way of Zen' would be up there.

[Zadignose]

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

[Kirsten]

Books I re-read this year and enjoyed the 2nd time around:
Catcher in the Rye
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

[Lily]

I've been thinking about the question for this thread since it was posted at the turn of the new year. Ironically, I finally decided that in 2012 three books that I only partially read had as much or more impact for me than the books I had completed:

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (1997)

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar (1963)

The Recognitions by William Gaddis (1955)

All now join that lovely list I call "to-be-returned-to." Could not fully savor on a first pass.

[Mattia]

Ok I'm late :P but I just joined and I wanted to share my favorites here ^^!

1) David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
2) Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
3) Dave Eggers - An Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
4) Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad
5) Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

The first three, by the way, probably are my favorite books at the moment (Infinite Jest sure is THE one). I mean, of all times. 2012 has really been an awesome year for my readings, and has changed a lot the way I read and approach books.

Here's the video with my top 10 and comments on each book :):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5y-j...

Zadignose wrote: "The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino"
Awesome! It's always nice to see that Italy's best authors are read outside our borders too :) and Calvino may well be our contemporary (post-1950) best writer ;)!

[Sophia]

Wow! Thank you.

[Terry]

Bookchemist, that's interesting... I bought Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow at the same time, and while the former is a very strong contender for my favourite book ever, I failed to get into the latter at all. I slogged for around 100-150 pages and just found the work too hard for the rewards. Any advice on how to 'get' it, or on whether there's a point at which it gets easier?

Calvino... I love Calvino. I've only read the two obvious ones, really, though... If on a Winter's Night a Traveller and Invisible Cities. Oh, and Cosmicomics, but that wasn't quite as good. Would you recommend The Baron in the Trees next, or something else?

[Mattia]

Terry wrote: "I failed to get into the latter at all. I slogged for around 100-150 pages and just found the work too hard for the rewards. Any advice on how to 'get' it, or on whether there's a point at which it gets easier?"

I'm afraid there aren't many ways to make an experience like Gravity's Rainbow anything less than painful ^^! Actually the book has some very enjoyable, extremely easy, terribly funny moments, but they're scattered throughout the whole thing and hardly last more than 15, 20 pages each time. Actually, toward the end (let's say, in the last 150 pages, not considering the very last 20) it gets ridiculously absurd, at an almost-Finnegans Wake level.
The only suggestion I can give you, which my American Lit professor gave me and which I think works with basically every Pynchon book, is: don't stop. When you're reading, don't stop to re-read a passage if you didn't get it - you're not suppose to get it. If you start to try and make sense of everything in a Pynchon book, you go nuts.
Personally it took me no less than 20 days to read Gravity's, and I stopped a couple of times to read something lighter in between. It's a devastating book, both for its style and its content (it includes some of the most disturbing scenes I've ever read); but I can tell you that, if you manage to go all the way through it and to reach the last paragraph, the very last line, it will totally be worth the effort. As hideous as it is, it's an incredibly deep, dark, powerful and clever (and depressing) novel.
Good luck - and let me know if you're going to give it a second try :)!

Terry wrote: "Calvino... I love Calvino. I've only read the two obvious ones, really, though... If on a Winter's Night a Traveller and Invisible Cities. Oh, and Cosmicomics, but that wasn't quite as good. Would you recommend The Baron in the Trees next, or something else? "
You've read three of his best books ;) (though I agree, the Cosmicomics is far from being flawless).
The Baron in the Trees is an awsome experience but is part of what many consider to be his masterpiece, the Our Ancestors Trilogy, which is made of three books - The Cloven Viscount, The Baron itself and The Nonexistent Knight; I'd totally suggest you read it, but maybe you should begin with the Cloven Viscount :)!
Or you could choose Marcovaldo or the Seasons in the City, which is my favorite among his books, is incredibly funny and incredibly touching, but is also deeply rooted in mid-century-Italy's urban landscape - I like it because it reminds me of the stories my parents tell me about their youth :) if you're interested in that particular social/cultural landscape, that's a must-read ;)

[Terry]

Thanks, that's really useful. I may have another goat some point... it's sitting on my shelf looking smug at having beaten me right now. My impression from reviews was that it was on a similar level to IJ i terms of difficulty, but I found IJ only difficult every now and again, and mostly joyful.

Now that you mention it, I have read The Nonexistent Knight. I didn't enjoy it too much, but maybe that's partly because it's a third book. I also wondered if it might have been the translator. I think it was William Weaver who translated IC and IOAWNAT, and it was someone different for my copy of TNK. The prose seemed far less engaging.

[Zadignose]

As for me, I read If on a Winters Night a Traveller first among Calvino's books, and it was the most startling literary discovery for me in a long time. (Around that time I also read another great Italian book in English translation, The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati). After reading Invisible Cities, and then a break to read other things, I picked up The Baron In The Trees. The three of his books I've read have been notably different from each other AND notably similar to one another, and therefore have all surprised me.

The Baron, though in some ways a simple tale simply told, is the kind of peculiar book that makes me think "I can't believe anyone would write such a book, nor that anyone would publish it... and thank God they did!"

Now I'm off reading another staggering and brilliant oddity, "Witch Grass" (Le Chiendent) by Raymond Queneau, who had some association with Calvino through OULIPO. Along the way, because of Calvino's book Why Read the Classics, I paused to read Xenophon's Anabasis, which I almost certainly wouldn't have read otherwise... It was quite worthwhile.

So, following the trail from one book to another leads to some interesting places.

[Terry]

Interesting... I'm just reading Queneau's Exercises in style. Maybe I too will follow that link?

Oh, it occurs to me that I've also read 'The Castle of Star-Crossed Destinies', which got me interested (because of the thematic and cultural link) in another book that's high on my to-read list, 'The Decameron'. So yes, following the links can be very rewarding.

[Zadignose]

Oh yeah, good, but definitely try Witch Grass or Zazie in the Metro after finishing Exercises. I know Exercises in Style has gotten its share of attention, and it does reveal a lot about what Queneau was up to linguistically, but it also really is a series of execises, and as such it wasn't as rewarding to me as one of his fully developed novels.

I loved Zazie, and some of his fans are not satisfied that Queneau is best known for this, his most popularly embraced semi-slapstick farce, but you can't hold success against him! But now that I'm reading Witch Grass, I'm starting to realize that he had already achieved perhaps greater things, so I'm coming to understand why some might regret that a masterpiece may be obscured by his one big hit.

While I'm rambling, or perhaps arguing with myself, it seems analogous to complaining that Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Cresida is overshadowed by his Canterbury Tales, that he wasn't the writer of only one good book. Yeah, true, but you can't regret either one, and if the author HAD only written one book, either one would be sufficient as a major contribution to literature. Meanwhile, neither is read nearly as much as it should be (some lit. students will disagree).

So flip a coin and read one, and if you like it, read the other one.... eventually.

[Lily]

Boccaccio's The Decameron need not be read of a single piece. If one gets tired of its medievalness (to coin a word), one lay it aside and return to its delights months, even years, later -- without having to re-read or re-start. It usually surprises me how often I know its stories from some other context.

I like some of Calvino's non-fiction and essays as well as his perhaps more famous work, e.g., Six Memos For The Next Millennium. The Road to San Giovanni contains one of my favorite essays. Difficult Loves forever impacted some of my thinking about love, not something I would say except about a very few books, although DL was not a book that I would put on a list of reads that I particularly "liked." Calvino has the ability to disturb as well as to enlighten and delight.

[Mattia]

Terry wrote: "My impression from reviews was that it was on a similar level to IJ i terms of difficulty, but I found IJ only difficult every now and again, and mostly joyful."

In my humble opinion, there's a *universe* between Gravity's and Jest - speaking about enjoyability. I in fact consider (of course I'm not the first nor the only one to do it ^^) IJ at the same time as an answer (almost a sequel, at a merely literary level) to Gravity's and as the first step toward a different literary genre, later to be developed in the '00s

Terry wrote: "another book that's high on my to-read list, 'The Decameron'"
No need for me to say it, but that of course is a masterpiece ;). Some of the short stories (let's call 'em so) are less effective and brilliant than others, but as a whole is a treasure chest of variety and inventiveness. Some stories are incredibly ingenious and many can be hilarious even today. In Italy we read it (not the whole thing of course!, just the most famous pieces - and I totally agree with Lily's suggestion by the way) from elementary school onward :)

[Diane]

Best books I've read this past year (in no particular order):

Bring up the Bodies
The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Cloud Atlas
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Round House
Building Stories
The Orphan Master's Son
HHhH
The City and the City
The Yiddish Detective's Union
Exit Music

[Franky]

The best books I read last year:

The Night of the Hunter
The Grapes of Wrath
Drood (sorry, guilty pleasure)
Double Indemnity
2001: A Space Odyssey

[[deleted user]]

Bookchemist: I respect your choices but I was underwhelmed by A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Why did you like it so much?

[Mattia]

I am extremely fascinated by literary maximalism, it seems to me to be the most sincere and honest (and thus effective) way to open one's self to a reader. All the useless details Eggers throws in, all the pages he spends talking about himself, that may well be annoying but it can also be incredibly funny (I perceived it as so in that book) and eventually connects you with the author at a wonderful level, thus completing what is (imho) the highest task of literature, which is to create a discussion (possibly a living one) between human beings.
Infinite Jest does the very same thing.
Flying a bit lower, I loved all the narrative techniques employed in the Heartbreaking Work and I laughed so much throughout the whole reading.

[Terry]

About a third of the way through a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, I was convinced it would be one of my favourite ever books. I loved the early parts about caring for his mother. but I've the two of them struck out alone, I started to find that it dragged, for me, although there were still flashes of brilliance.

[Matthew]

I read so many great books last year, but a few that stood out are:

The Night Circus

The Art of Fielding

The Snow Child

[Lily]

Matthew wrote: "I read so many great books last year, but a few that stood out are:

The Night Circus

The Art of Fielding

The Snow Child"

Matthew, if you would/could, share a few words on why The Night Circus stood out for you?

I liked the story very much and felt it almost as a symbol of what it might be possible to create in this virtual world in which so many of us spend considerable amounts of time. But, somehow, the story did not allow me to include it among my "great books." I am wondering if I misjudged.

[Mauk]

Alan Bennett: The Uncommon Reader
Ali Shaw: The Girl with Glass Feet
Alan Macfarlane: Japan Through the Looking Glass
Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger

:)

[Jenny]

Better late then never:
the books that I was most impressed by last year were:
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Catch-22 (I wonder: is there anyone who didn't hate it for the first 10 to 50 pages?! Falling in love with the book for rest of it seems almost like a reward for being stubborn enough to keep reading anyhow)
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Der nächtliche Lehrer (not translated to English unfortunately)
Wide Sargasso Sea
Neid by Elfriede Jelinek (not translated either)
and Richard Siken's Crush (poetry)
Also, eventhough Vanishing Point didn't convince me fully, the author still left quite an impression with me, so I will probably keep an eye out for another book by him for 2013.

[Terry]

Catch-22 had me from the first paragraph.

[Terry]

Ooh, 'A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines' looks really good -- added to my to-read. Also will make a great present for a Maths student I know...

[Terry]

I've been to Bletchley Park -- an outstanding place, and it gave me an amazing insight into Turing. The statue is beautiful.

It was truly terrible what happened to him. I have been gladdened to hear that he and others found guilty of the same 'crimes' are to be pardoned.

One of my favourite books ever is 'Godel, Escher, Bach' by Douglas Hofstadter, which as well as shedding massive amounts of light onto Godel (especially for a non-mathemetcian like me), has quite a bit to say about Turing, and seems similar to the above book in the sense that it draws parallels between great lives and works (those of the men in the title). If you haven't read it, you might enjoy it, although it's a major undertaking.

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis is also an interesting book that looks into the lives of famous mathematicians and touches on Godel as the man who brought an end to the dreams of Hilbert and Russell.

[Terry]

If you enjoy fractals and Fibonacci as well as the other things you've mentioned, you should love GEB... it is a work like no other, a text that is so rich in meaning and insight that it's astounding. It's well worth the work involved but it's something that is worth fixing a good time to at least make a good start with it -- a holiday or some less busy time, maybe.

AMDOTM is hard to get hold of -- Amazon UK only has used reseller copies; I've ordered one.

[Lily]

Julia wrote: "p. 245 "I thought about all the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped."..."

What a quotation to encounter on the day after we have paused to remember 9/11!

[Julia]

I know, Lily--the book is one of my favorites, and as Oskar comes to terms with losing his father in one of the Towers, we're asked to come to terms with our own fears.

The flip book of the Falling Man at the end of the novel, plus all the unusual pictures and illustrations, make this book one of my top 10.

[Lily]

Julia wrote: "I know, Lily--the book is one of my favorites, and as Oskar comes to terms with losing his father in one of the Towers, we're asked to come to terms with our own fears...."

OOps! I had never looked at the subject matter for Foer's book, or if I had, I'd forgotten. Now I may want to read it. (I did read DeLillo's Falling Man , but it was not as moving as the stories I heard and knew first hand. Our community alone lost seventeen people, many from Cantor Fitzgerald that day, without considering the towns nearby; our son had been working in the adjacent Financial Tower that summer; and we had lost father/husband a couple of weeks before, so those are days that carry heavy memories, but not as unfortunate as for so many. There are still times when we must just sit and listen to tales too painful to have been told before or that need the healing of retelling.)

[Julia]

You're so right, Lily, about being willing to listen to tales of grief as part of the healing process. My son and family live in Manhattan; he's a principal of a school where many students lost someone on 9/11.

Your community certainly suffered losses--17 people. This book really helped me deal with not just the losses of 9/11 but our general grief at the death of loved ones.

I fell in love with Oskar and Foer's book on the first page--and I have to say that the boy in the film did the part justice.

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

I blogged about this back in December, and the book I have #1 of my top ten for 2012 is a sweet little first novel about a New York librarian, Glaciers.