Books of the Year 2012

Despite or maybe because of our boys, I got a lot of reading done in 2012. With over 50 books read during the past twelve months (and counting), it has been another exceptionally strong period for quality reads. In addition to indulging in my favoured genre of fiction, 2012 has also been marked by a growing number of excursions into non-fiction, with everything from Taoism to Capitalism.

On the fiction side, there was a clear winner in Adam Ross’ Mr Peanut. Do not be put off by the title; for me, it was undoubtedly one of the most original pieces of literature I had come across for some time, a cross perhaps between David Mitchell and Haruki Murakami, although better antecedents are maybe found in the paintings of Escher and the films of Hitchcock, both referenced frequently in the text. Ross’ talent is prodigious and I want to see more from him, although if there were a criticism, then would be that the work is just too clever. I wanted closure, but there was none. Elsewhere in the fiction, a number of established writers (Tremain, Boyd, Barry) remain consistently good. I loved Exposure; Talitha Stevenson is the best potential successor to Iris Murdoch I have seen thus far; and, I was delighted that Jeffrey Eugindes’ The Marriage Plot proved as enjoyable as his last work (Middlesex), although very different. It was a delight to revisit Angela Carter (one of the authors I covered in my MA) and the re-reading of her Wise Children was prompted by this year’s leading non-fiction work, a poignant memoir of the author, written by her literary executor. Like JG Ballard, Carter remains a literary iconoclast, still far from ‘accepted’ by the mainstream literary establishment. Patrick Hamilton also falls into this category and his Twenty-Thousand Stars Under The Sky (think Hangover Square, but darker) constitutes this year’s oldest work of fiction (written in 1935), indicative perhaps of how much very good writing there is around today. Without further ado, here are this year’s lists –

Top fiction (in order) -

Top non-fiction (in order) -