Favorite Books of 2012
2012 was another year of little reading for me. I finished 37 books, with long periods of not reading anything at all.
The best book I read was James Gleick’s The Information, a history of information and our ways of conceptualizing it. Some of it was familiar to me, but much of it was new, and all of it fascinating. I highly recommend it.
Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives was at times frustrating and at times brilliant. Ultimately it wasn’t a masterpiece, but it kept me in its way of thinking more than any other book I read last year.
Alone in Berlin was the stylistic opposite of The Savage Detectives, very steady and methodical, but extremely effective at conveying the atmosphere of Nazi-era Berlin.
I had read Consider Phlebas before, and I enjoyed it thoroughly this time, although some of its flaws (sections that clearly could have been cut, for example) were more apparent to me this time through. Still amazing science fiction, and I think the prologue and first chapter are both masterful pieces of writing. I also read The Hydrogen Sonata and loved it—as I’ve loved basically every Culture novel.
I finally got around to reading The Blind Assassin, and enjoyed it, although I did ultimately find it unsatisfying: the underlying plot didn’t quite seem to hold the weight of the various narrative pieces.
The same could be said for 1Q84, which I also liked. I wonder, though, if any Murakami book I read is doomed to pale in comparison to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl was really good, with a near-future setting that’s all too plausible. I also really liked The Lathe of Heaven, which had some amazing writing in it and which raises very pertinent questions about the wisdom of striving to improve the world.
I was most disappointed by My Name is Red, which I found nearly unreadable for large stretches. There were some fabulous chapters, but most of the book just did not work for me. I was disappointed in a different way with The God of Small Things—I liked it a lot, but had heard so many good things about it that I expected it to be better than it was. It’s possible that my perspective on modern Indian literature has been permanently skewed by A Fine Balance, which towers above the other works I’ve read.
The books I read in 2012:
01 | About Time, Adam Frank | 70% | 07 Jan |
02 | The Adjustment, Scott Phillips | 65% | 07 Jan |
03 | The Information, James Gleick | 90% | 13 Feb |
04 | Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford | 75% | 26 Mar |
05 | Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan | 75% | 28 Mar |
06 | Heavy Time, C. J. Cherryh | 70% | 14 Apr |
07 | Hellburner, C. J. Cherryh | 70% | 20 Apr |
08 | A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan | 75% | 23 Apr |
09 | The Baseball Codes, Jason Turbow, Michael Duca | 80% | 26 Apr |
10 | The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood | 80% | 28 Apr |
11 | The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi | 80% | 03 May |
12 | The Hammer, K. J. Parker | 80% | 04 May |
13 | The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño | 85% | 05 May |
14 | My Name Is Red, Orhan Pamuk | 65% | 16 May |
15 | This Time Is Different, Carmen M. Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff | 60% | 06 Jun |
16 | God’s War, Kameron Hurley | 75% | 09 Jun |
17 | Alone in Berlin, Hans Fallada | 85% | 10 Jun |
18 | Transition, Iain Banks | 80% | 13 Jun |
19 | The Sea, John Banville | 80% | 17 Jun |
20 | The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy | 80% | 28 Jun |
21 | No Place to Hide, Robert O’Harrow | 70% | 07 Jul |
22 | The Haunted Mesa, Louis L’Amour | 55% | 10 Jul |
23 | Anarcho-Syndicalism, Rudolf Rocker | 75% | 16 Jul |
24 | The Damned Utd, David Peace | 75% | 17 Jul |
25 | The Silent Season of a Hero, Gay Talese | 75% | 28 Jul |
26 | 1Q84, Haruki Murakami | 80% | 22 Aug |
27 | Star Lord, Donald G. Phillips | 40% | 01 Sep |
28 | The Lathe Of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin | 80% | 07 Oct |
29 | The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks | 80% | 13 Oct |
30 | vN, Madeline Ashby | 75% | 06 Nov |
31 | Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks | 85% | 28 Nov |
32 | Red Country, Joe Abercrombie | 80% | 15 Dec |
33 | Sharps, K. J. Parker | 70% | 15 Dec |
34 | Company of Liars, Karen Maitland | 75% | 26 Dec |
35 | Ready Player One, Ernest Cline | 75% | 27 Dec |
36 | The Mote in God’s Eye, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle | 75% | 31 Dec |
37 | When Gravity Fails, George Alec Effinger | 75% | 31 Dec |
The rating reflects how much I enjoyed the book, and is not my take on how good the book is, subjectively or objectively.