Ursula Klawitter / Corbis
First, much thanks to all who sent in your favorite reads, those who have done so in the past — and continued to do so — and the dozen or so new contributors too.
Please forgive my endless reminders, tho the results, I believe, may have been worth the nagging. (Late additions will be posted as they arrive, without any snarky comments from the editor.)
I often heard three comments from readers:
- “Nothing really great this year…”
- “I can’t really remember (all of) what I’ve read…but here are a few…”
- *As I get older, I find I’m reading more nonfiction…”
Nevertheless, seventy of you contributed this year, listing 250 different books, split virtually evenly between fiction and nonfiction. The female-male division was 54%-46% (F/M), about what it has been in the past. About 20% of you were in what I would loosely call the ‘younger’ category, under approximately 39 years of age (my definition of ‘younger’ continues to expand).
I’ve made several adjustments in my posting of the results of what you’ve sent:
- I’ve listed contributors alphabetically to make it easier for you to find specific individuals to see what they have enjoyed.
- I have put stars (****) in front of all books that have been listed more than once. The number of stars refers to the number of times the book appears as a favorite (and NOT how highly individuals rated a book).
- On a separate link, you can see in one place all the books that were listed more than once this year.
- For those of you who may want to see the lists from previous years, simply click on which year you want to review – 2009, 2010, 2011.
For a quick overview, titles that appeared five or more times were:
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers (NF) by Katherine Boo – 7
- The Passage of Power (NF) by Robert Caro -6
- This Is How You Lose Her (F) by Junot Diaz – 6
- The Hare with Amber Eyes (NF) by Edmund de Waal – 5
- Gone Girl (F) by Gillian Flynn – 5
- Cutting for Stone (F) by Abraham Verghese – 5
But as is often said, “the devil is in the details.” I suspect one of the strengths of this (and previous) year’s list has more to do with what contributors said about why they enjoyed certain books rather than the number of times a book was listed.
When I printed out the lengthy list you are about to see, I found 20 different titles I immediately marked for my ‘to read’ list for the coming year and another 29 that also interested me. Many of these were only mentioned once or twice.
Just a reminder that this list is not meant to be the best books published in 2012, but rather what the title of this posting states – ‘The Books Most Enjoyed by MillersTime Readers in 2012.’
And, of course, I take responsibility for any inaccuracies or mistakes in the posting of the titles, authors, comments, etc. as MillersTime readers rarely make grammatical or other mistakes in their submissions. Please feel free to let me know about any of my errors as I can correct them quickly and easily.
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