Books of 2012

[brigdh]

As always, here is the list of what I read in 2012. And, for once, I managed not to have a computer crash or corrupt a file, and so it's actually a complete list.

There's 121 books on this list, which I think is pretty typical of the amount I usually read in a year. Of those, 38 are by or edited by PoC, and 61 are by or edited by women. I had a goal of reading 50 books about South Asia (mostly India, though there's one or two about Sri Lanka or Pakistan in here), which I managed to complete on literally the last day of the year. Numbered books on the list below indicate my South Asian project.

For next year, I'm going to try and read another 50 books on South Asia. I'm also going to try and post more reviews, particularly to 50books_poc. Though that community seems to have mostly died, which is sad. As always, feel free to ask me about any title! I love talking about books.

January
A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire - Amy Butler Greenfield
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
A Cook’s Tour - Anthony Bourdain
The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie - Wendy McClure
1. Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors - Lizzie Collingham
Nature Girl - Carl Hiaasen
2. Myths and Legends of India - J.M. Macfie
3. Chowringhee - Sankar

February
4. Someone Else’s Garden - Dipika Rai
5. No Onions Nor Garlic - Srividya Natarajan
6. Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love, and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India - Parmesh Shahani
7. The Last Song of Dusk - Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention - Stanislas Dehaene
Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Undead - Bruce A. McClelland

March
Dragonsong - Anne McCaffrey
8. Piggies on the Railway - Smita Jain
9. The Indians: Portrait of a People - Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar
Dragonsinger - Anne McCaffrey
MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend - Rachel Bertsche
The Sirens Sang of Murder - Sarah Caudwell
Dragondrums - Anne McCaffrey
10. Best Indian Short Stories, Vol. 1 - Ed. Khushwant Singh
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software - Steven Johnson
11. Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices - Chitrita Banerji
Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism - David Nickle

April
12. Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity - Sam Miller
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
13. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Katherine Boo
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
Skin Tight - Carl Hiaasen
14. A Disobedient Girl - Ru Freeman
Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
15. India: An Introduction - Khushwant Singh

May
16. A Tale of Two Revolts: India's Mutiny & the American Civil War - Rajmohan Gandhi
The Sibyl in Her Grave - Sarah Caudwell
The Husband Test - Betina Krahn
Watermark - Vanitha Sankaran
17. Litanies of the Dutch Battery - N. S. Madhavan, trans. by Rajesh Raja Mohan
Barrel Fever - David Sedaris
18. English, August - Upamanyu Chatterjee
19. Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will Be India’s - Pavan K. Varma
Snuff - Terry Pratchett
Beauty Queens - Libba Bray
20. A Free Man - Aman Sethi

June
Soulless - Gail Carriger
21. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
Changeless - Gail Carriger
Blameless - Gail Carriger
Heartless - Gail Carriger
Timeless - Gail Carriger
Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion - Janet Reitman
City of Sin: London and Its Vices - Catharine Arnold
22. In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India - Edward Luce

July
Banner of the Damned - Sherwood Smith
23. The Last Burden - Upamanyu Chatterjee
Chang and Eng - Darin Strauss
24. Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America - Dilip D’Souza
Bleak House - Charles Dickens

August
Antarctica - Kim Stanley Robinson
25. The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken - Tarquin Hall
Shine - Lauren Myracle
The Aviary Gate - Katie Hickman
Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation - Olivia Judson
Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood Feeding Creatures - Bill Schutt
Sick Puppy - Carl Hiaasen
26. Folktales from India: A Selection of Oral Tales from Twenty-Two Languages - A.K. Ramanujan
27. The Habit of Love - Namita Gokhale
Rasputin’s Bastards - David Nickle
Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused - Mike Dash
28. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti - Mohammed Hanif
Sacred Hearts - Sarah Dunant
29. Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Villages - P. Sainath

September
Breath and Bone - Carol Berg
30. A Proper Education for Girls - Elaine diRollo
31. In Light of India - Octavio Paz
32. Sahibs Who Loved India - Ed, Khushwant Singh
Guards, Guards! - Terry Pratchett
Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
The Blood of Flowers - Anita Amirrezvani
Breed - Chase Novak
33. An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World - Pankaj Mishra
34. The Impressionist - Hari Kunzro
Dragonquest - Anne McCaffrey
35. Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River - Alice Albinia
36. Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars - Sonia Faleiro

October
The White Dragon - Anne McCaffrey
The Spirit Lens - Carol Berg
37. The Immortals of Meluha - Amish
The Soul Mirror - Carol Berg
38. Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age - Susan Bayly
39. In Hanuman’s Hands - Cheeni Rao
The Daemon Prism - Carol Berg
The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World - A.J. Jacobs
Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection - A.J. Jacobs

November
40. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
41. India: An Archaeological History: Palaeolithic Beginnings to Early Historic Foundations 2nd Ed - Dilip K. Chakrabarti
42. Miss Timmins’ School for Girls - Nayana Currimbhoy
How to be a Woman - Caitlin Moran
43. The Idea of India - Sunil Khilnani
44. The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilzation - Ed. Nayanjot Lahiri
Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
The Virgin Cure - Ami McKay
Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement - Kathryn Joyce
45. The Unknown Errors of Our Lives - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Stormy Weather - Carl Hiaasen
In the Company of the Courtesan - Sarah Dunant
My Life as an Experiment: One Man’s Humble Quest to Improve Himself - A.J. Jacobs
46. India: A Mosaic - Eds. Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein

December
Moon Over Soho - Ben Aaronovitch
The Midwife of Venice - Roberta Rich
47. From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia - Pankaj Mishra
48. Joseph Anton - Salman Rushdie
Eat My Globe: One Year in Search of the Most Delicious Food in the World - Simon Majumdar
49. The Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Tourist Season - Carl Hiaasen
The Winter Palace - Eva Stachniak
The Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial that Ushered in the Twentieth Century - Harold Schechter
Red Country - Joe Abercrombie
America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t - Stephen Colbert
50. The Twentieth Wife - Indu Sundaresan


5 Worst Books of the Year, in order of terribleness:
5. The Immortals of Meluha, Amish. This one almost shouldn't be on this list, because it fell firmly in the category of "so bad it's good". A hilariously inaccurate and cliched combination of mythology, the Harappan culture (the archaeology which I study), and action-adventure, this is just the first of a trilogy. I hear they are also possibly turning it into a movie, and I CANNOT WAIT.
4. The Last Burden, Upamanyu Chatterjee. This book is all the worst traits of the 'literary fiction' genre: a plot in which nothing happens, no likeable characters, boring angst, and mostly concerned with the drama within a middle-class family. Plus lots of jumping around in time, which meant it took me forever to figure out what was happening, even when the answer was nothing. It took me forever to finish this book, because it was just so boring and motivation-less.
3. The Midwife of Venice, Roberta Rich. UGH this was so terrible. I love historical fiction, and "Jewish midwife in Renaissance Italy" should have been a guaranteed hit for me, but no. Not when every character is wholly good or wholly bad, all characterizations are flimsy, plot "twists" are unbelievable and way too convenient for the main characters, and even the setting isn't used well. I know nothing about the author, so I could be wrong, but the whole thing also had a feel of "look at the customs of the strange Jewish people! I have done my research so well!"
2. Piggies on the Railway, Smita Jain. An almost laughably bad example of the worst traits of chick lit. We have a main character who is supposedly a private detective but who acts like an idiot, is only concerned with finding rich guys to sleep with, constantly puts down other women for their looks, has a running commentary on her own diet/weight, and name-drops expensive brands. This is also the first in a series, but I won't be reading the rest.
1. The Aviary Gate, Katie Hickman. SO TERRIBLE. Did you know graduate students could just randomly disappear to Turkey for months without telling their advisors? And that if such students should sleep with their professors, the problem with that is the professor is a leather-jacket-wearing hunk who can't commit? But don't worry! Everything will resolve itself when the student sleeps with a hunky Turkish guy who her Turkish landlady introduces her to! Sexy eating of baklava will play an important part in their courtship. There's also a whole secondary plot about an English woman in a harem in 1600s Istanbul, but I hated the characters in that plot slightly less, so I'll forgive it.


5 Best Books of the Year, in order of awesomeness:
5. Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, David Nickle. This novel is so smart. Set in the rural upper Midwest in the 1890s, it managed to combine so many disparate streams, and yet work them perfectly together: eugenics, disease, racism, utopic communities, and medicine. This is a horror novel, and the monsters were the perfect combination of mysterious and creepy. I really, really liked this.
4. Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, Kathryn Joyce. I'm not sure 'liked' is the right word for my feelings about this book, as it mostly made me want to scream and/or cry. But I definitely want to make everyone I know read it. It is terrifying yet true, which makes it much worse than Eutopia.
3. Soulless, (and sequels) Gail Carriger. This is one of those rare series where each book is better than the one before it. The first is a fairly forgettable Regency romance/urban fantasy, but each succeeding book builds on the world and the characters to go deeper and more interesting places. Werewolves and vampires in steampunk London, with really interesting world-building! Also, god, Biffy's story. I could read so much fanfiction about him.
2. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie. So, I had somehow never read any Rushdie until this year. I had this impression that he was very serious and deep and hard to get through, sort of like Tolstoy or Dickens, and so I'd been putting it off. I'm so glad and surprised to find that is not the case! He's funny and mixes mythology and children's stories and advertising jingles, rhymes and alliteration, comedy and drama, and has such beautiful language. I can't wait to read more. (Although Joseph Anton could seriously have been about 200 pages shorter.)
1. English, August, Upamanyu Chatterjee. How are you on both my best and worst lists, Chatterjee? Never mind, this book is so good I will still love you even if everything else you write is terrible. This novel is the perfect depiction of being young and being stuck in a small town and not sure what to do with yourself. He captures the heat and the boredom and the restlessness and the distance from everything of being in small town in North India in the summer. My utter love for this novel may be influenced by having read it while in rural Haryana in April, but I still think it's wonderful and that more people should know it.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

How did you enjoy your Pern re-read?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

A lot! I enjoyed the Harper Hall trilogy the most, though. I think I will never lose my desire to have a fire-lizard of my own. Master Robinton is such an idealized, wish-fulfillment type of character, and I love him regardless.

I had remembered Dragonflight and Dragonquest to be much more about Lessa than about F'lar, so I was surprised to see that they were fairly equal in terms of "screentime". It's probably just that I find Lessa's story to be much more interesting, and F'lar's story to be more typical ("son of big man must prove himself worthy heir" is not really my favorite plot). I did really like the Old Timers plot, though. And I found White Dragon to be pretty boring, though I remembered loving it as a child. I had trouble finishing it, actually. Also, Jaxom's relationships with women were much more sketchy than I had recalled.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I had very similar feelings all round upon re-reading.

I liked Jaxom a lot more when I was eleven, though I recall being dubious about the "Oh, oops, I think I might have raped you" thing even then. I think Ruth carried that book.

[call-me-ishmael.livejournal.com]

Your list is always incredibly impressive to me. (I suspect mine would be a lot longer if I stopped reading quite so many things online, haha) It inevitably adds to my reading list because all your "best of" always sound so interesting.

I'm curious, how'd you like the Hunger Games trilogy? (YA are such quick reads, it's nice.)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I have been meaning to re-read both The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children, as I read them both in high school and haven't yet revisited them. I do love his way with language. So much.

How was Chang and Eng?

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I really liked Rushdie's short stories in East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

[intothespin.livejournal.com]

How was the Aman Sethi? I've been eyeing it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, it's a combination of being able to read during my daily commute (since I take the subway, I don't have to drive or pay attention) and using books to zone out when I've spent too much time around people. I can't really take credit for doing anything hard or impressive.

I liked the Hunger Games a lot! I read it when I was very sick with food poisoning, and it was a nice combination of being interesting enough to take my mind off the pain while not needing to think too hard. The first one was my favorite, though I liked the third a lot more than most people seemed to. I thought the second one was a combination of too similar to the first, while having an ending that came out of nowhere.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I am planning on reading Midnight's Children as soon as possible. I've already got my copy, I just need to finish a few other things I'm in the middle of first. I can't wait!

Surprisingly good! I'm not sure why I had low expectations; I had picked up my copy at a used bookstore for $1 years ago, and then just let it sit around on a shelf all that time. But I really enjoyed it; I found it to be very well-written and interesting. You should read it!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll have to check that out, thank you!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I liked it a lot! My main problem was actually that I wished it was longer, and could have explored the topic more.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I really loved it in the day.

Awesome! I'll have to keep an eye out.