Best Books – 2012
Best Books of 2012
Other Years: 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019
The following are the best books of 2012, as determined by book review trade magazines, national newspapers, and popular arts and culture publications. The Top 20 listed below was compiled by tallying the number of Best Books of the Year lists that included each book (we only counted lists of 30 or less titles in order to ensure selectivity). The parentheses following each book indicate the total number of lists on which the book was included.
Top 20
1. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (33)
2. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (24)
3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (21)
4. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (20)
5. This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz (17)
6. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume IV by Robert A. Caro (16)
6. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (16)
8. Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro (13)
9. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (12)
9. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum (12)
9. The Round House by Louise Erdrich (12)
12. Building Stories by Chris Ware (11)
12. NW by Zadie Smith (11)
12. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (11)
15. Canada by Richard Ford (10)
16. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (9)
16. House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid (9)
16. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple (8)
19. Arcadia by Lauren Groff (8)
19. Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon (8)
19. A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (8)
Other Books on five or more lists:
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens (7), The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (7), Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (7), Every Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max (7), Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie (6), Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen (6), Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon (6), Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel (5), At Last by Edward St. Aubyn (5), Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain (5), Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan (5), Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham (5), Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (5), Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room by Geoff Dyer (5)
