Oly Reads discussion

Tis the season for 'best of' lists, and going through the books i've read this year, here's my Top Ten (in alphabetic order by title.) They captured my imagination, I referenced them in conversations, and they stayed with me well after finishing.

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Girlchild - Tupelo Hassman
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
The Fault in our Stars - John Green
The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the media - Brooke Gladstone
The Orchardist - Amanda Coplin
The Social Animal: the hidden sources of love, character, and achievment - David Brooks
The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst
The Swerve: how the world became modern - Stephen Greenblatt

So, Oly Reads... What are your top ten books read in 2012?

Thanks for starting this thread, Sarah. I also loved The Snow Child and The Fault in our Stars. Here's my top ten, in random order. According to the Goodreads stats, I've read 111 books this year!

Heft by Liz Moore
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Building Stories by Chris Ware
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
It Chooses You by Miranda July
Broken Harbor by Tana French
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I think this top ten is based mostly on what has stuck with me the most, as well as the books where I had the best reading experience - absorbing, well-written, or riveting.

I love this. I read all the "best of" lists but I never make my own. I'm cheating a little by including series, but oh well.

Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
Harry Potter #1-7 by JK Rowling
Graceling Realm #1-3 by Kristin Cashore
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
Airless Spaces by Shulamith Firestone
Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir by Cyndi Lauper
The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

Honorable Mention which I loved a lot but not more than the 10 books listed above: Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology by Lawrence Weschler

Oo fun. I'm reading a few books right now that might make it onto my favorites list, so I'm gonna hold off 'til I finish at least the two I'm reading now. These are awesome lists, guys!

Yay! This is my list in random order:


Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Stay Close by Harlan Coben
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The Bungalow by Sarah Jio
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Spilled Blood by Brian Freeman

There are so many that I really enjoyed this year. My tracker says that I'm at 164! Woo-hoo!

I'm especially curious about titles that are making more than one person's list. :)

My list:

The Greatest Show on Earth: the evidence for evolution - Richard Dawkins
Griffin & Sabine - Nick Bantock
Room - Emma Donoghue
Lorna Doone - R.D. Blackmore
The Paradox of Choice: why more is less - Barry Schwartz
Robot Dreams - Sara Varon
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams
Unstuff your Life! - Andrew J. Mellen
Whistling Vivaldi: and other clues to how stereotypes affect us - Claude M. Steele
Wonder - R.J. Palacio

Levi wrote: "Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is by far the best book I read all year. Ready Player One It takes place in a digital dystopian world in which one video-game genius has to take down the institutio..."

Levi, I really enjoyed that book as well. It would have been on my top 20 :)

Hello fellow Olympia readers,

It was a nice surprise today to see NY Times reviewer Janet Maslin picked my latest novel, Truth Like the Sun, as one of her top 10 favorites of 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/boo...

My two favorites of the 2012 novels I've read so far would be two National Book Award finalists:
Roundhouse by Louise Erdrich and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

OK, I think I'm finally ready to do a list of the top ten books I read this year :) I am also going to go with no particular order.

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman
Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman
Mister Death's Blue Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn
Who Could That Be At This Hour? by Lemony Snicket
Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke
Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

I think if I had to choose, my favorite of the ten would be Seraphina. Or Why We Broke Up.