It’s that time of year again for the 2012 best books columns. I have a love/hate relationship with best of columns. They are a wonderful source for finding books that I might have overlooked. However, they are also so genre specific, that I often read the best of columns without seeing a single book I’d be interested in. But I do love writing these columns to make sure that books which I loved this year are given one last push to recommend for people.
So, with that intro out of the way. here are my candidates for the 2012 best books (with an added bonus for a 2011 book that I read in 2012). It wasn’t a great year for books and several of the ones I picked probably wouldn’t have made the top books for other years.
The standout this year is obvious Alif the Unseen. This is why I read books. To read something so magical and exciting and interesting. G. Willow Wilson is a name to keep your eyes on for the future. Following close behind were the Matthew Hughes books. They were weird and wonderful twists on superhero adventures and one of the few superhero books that didn’t fall into the superhero cliches at one point or another. Here is the top 5(6).
- Alif the Unseen – G. Willow Wilson – my review
- Costume Not Included – Matthew Hughes – my review
- Sequel to Damned Busters which was released in 2011- my review
- Existence – David Brin – my review
- Cleveland – Harvey Pekar- my review
- The Mirage – Matt Ruff- my review
And a just missed book is REAMDE by Neal Stephenson (my review), which I enjoyed, but was a step down from his usual wonderful writing.
My 2012 best books had two fantasy books, which were both set in the Middle East, a pair of superhero books, a hard science fiction book of ideas and a realistic, historical comic. I’m excited about the diversity of books, but I do wish that there were more quality books that came out this year. Especially in the science fiction books. Fantasy seems to have eclipsed science fiction is both quality as well as originality. I’m bored with the steampunk and zombies (and monsters in general) and superheroes. Lets have some exciting futuristic adventures and books that show wonderous futures, not just one horror or another.
Have a great new year and hopefully we’ll have some more great reads next year.
This post is part of the thread: BestOf – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.
I too have a love/hate relationship with these kinds of posts. I love them, because I love seeing what everyone else enjoyed over the course of the year, and I hate them because I inevitably come across books I’m not familiar with that sound brilliant. And that sound you hear? It’s my “books I want to read” list exploding.
Of yours, I’ve only read Existence and Reamde. That’s four more books added to my list. . . .
You have to read Alif the Unseen. It’s a legitimately great book.