Most definitely not the number of books I read this year. Photo by author.
I’m reviewing my reading list from 2012 and it’s fairly pathetic. I don’t think there’s ever been a year where I’ve exclaimed, “Gee, I wish I had read fewer books this year.” Even if I had read 100 books, I would wish to have read 200. I’m not going to reveal the number of books I read in 2012 because I’m embarrassed. What I will leave you with is my top 5, in no particular order.
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
- A heartbreaking memoir that highlights the love and family bonds the prevail admidst Haiti’s political turmoil.
It Takes You Over by Nick Healy
- A fantastic debut collection of short stories that dig deep beyond the surface “ordinariness” of Midwesterners.
A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths by Tony Fletcher
- A exhaustive examination of one of the most important bands to come out of England in the 1980s.
Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
- Graphic memoirist Bechdel delivers with another thought-provoking, dense, multi-layered story that probes the relationship between mother and daughter.
The Night of the Gun by David Carr
- An unflinching look at the depths of drug addiction, told by a former Minnesotan who now works for the New York Times.
What are your five favorite books of the year?
If You Have Five Seconds to Spare 
I went through a pretty deep obsession with Marilyn Monroe this year. I must have read 30 books about her.
It took Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” to get me out of Marilyn’s tragic life and back into the obsession with writing my own story.
Wow, 30 books on Marilyn! I’d love to know what you gleaned from that. It’s probably worth an essay 🙂
Yes. I’ll write an essay about it. Or there will be SPIDERS!!!!
I’m always years behind what’s currently being read and talked about–and I take very poor notes, and have a terrible memory. So, honestly, I couldn’t say…
Also, this year, I read quite a bit of fluff, because I needed to stay “cheery.” As important as I believe it is to be aware, sometimes I get downright weary of examination of self and society, and just need a break from it.
Off the top of my head, these were memorable because they delighted me:
“1000 Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi” because I loved finding that I’m not the only one who follows my heart with such crazy abandon;
“Tender at the Bone” and “Comfort Me with Apples” and “Garlic and Sapphires” by Ruth Reichl–because reading them in sequence is a fascinating study in identity/truth in memoir (all literature, even autobiography, is fiction, in that it is “constructed”) and because the last one, written when she was older, is unexpectedly lighter than the first two and you simply have to wonder why/how she did that.
“Speak Memory” by Vladimar Nabokov because it’s so good that I’ve read it every year for 4 years running (the language! the astute insight!) and
“Passage to India” by E.M. Forster because despite its sad themes, the language is so delightfully beautiful and resonant that I loved, loved, loved it again when I read it for a book group.
I’m currently reading about Venice, so I’m curious about the “1000 Days in Venice”! I also have “Speak, Memory” on my bookshelf–a cheap find at the local used bookstore. I just have not gotten around to reading it, though I know I should.
1000 days is only peripherally “about” Venice (but it definitely takes you there); it’s more about the inexplicable faith that some of us have, that love is worth following to the ends of the earth —
I think “Speak, Memory” is a better read, after the reader is far enough in years away from his/her own poignant loss to find pleasure in the memory of it (otherwise, I would think Nabokov’s peculiar way of combining tenderness and irony make very little sense, and might even be annoying.
This is the first year I’m embarrassed, too. Very sad.
Hopefully 2013 will be better for both of us in this regard!