A book report

For whatever reason, I read more books in 2012 than usual. Was it because I A) finally let some of my magazine subscriptions lapse, B) gave up on staying current with my magazine pile, C) had some reading-related goals on my 101 list or D) just remembered how much I like books?

I don't know. But I do know that 2012 was a year full of remembering how many magnificent books there are being written today and how many magnificent books I haven't even discovered yet. I loved using this blog as a resource for gathering book recommendations from you all, so I thought I'd share this year's book list.

I share this list not to overshare (if you are thinking "Who cares what books she read?!") but because I would love if my friends all compiled a similar list, because I love perusing lists to get ideas for future reading. I suppose if this idea could ever get off the ground that I have to start by sharing my own list, right?

Here we go (with no italicized titles, just for easier reading in list form):

The Descendants (Kaui Hart Hemmings)
What is the What (Dave Eggers)
Friday Night Lights (H.G. Bissinger)
Gossip Girl (Cecily von Ziegesar)
This Beautiful Life (Helen Schulman)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (Bill Bryson)
The Art of Fielding (Chad Harbach)
The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides)
How I Live Now (Meg Rosoff)
Salvage the Bones (Jessmyn Ward)
The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Gold (Chris Cleave)
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts (Simon Garfield)
The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)
Running the Rift (Naomi Benaron)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)
Through No Fault of My Own: A Girl’s Diary of Life on Summit Avenue in the Jazz Age (Coco Irvine, edited by Peg Meier)
The Latehomecomers (Kao Kalia Yang)
The Newlyweds (Nell Freudenberger)
In the Garden of Beasts (Erik Larson)
Gone Girl (Amy Gillian)
Swamplandia! (Karen Russell)
The Tiger’s Wife ( Téa Obreht)
Wild (Cheryl Strayed)
Blue Nights (Joan Didion)
The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (David Wroblewski)
1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Aimee Bender)
The Master Butchers’ Singing Club (Louise Erdrich)
The End of Your Life Book Club (Will Schwalbe)

And my very favorites, the ones that have stayed with me for a long time and will continue to stay with me? My top five: Running the Rift, The Latehomecomers, The End of Your Life Book Club, The Book Thief, and What is the What. Oh, man, now I want to stay up all night re-reading them all at once.

Please, you must share! What are your top five books of 2012 - or if you can pick just one, your favorite?