For the past three years, readers of this website have kindly sent in their choices of books they’ve particularly enjoyed over the previous 12 months. I’ve then compiled the list and posted it at the end of December in 2009, 2010, and 2011. The result has been a list of widely varying fiction and nonfiction books that has been a useful reference for many of us.
As I ask for favorite reads this year, here are a few guidelines that may help in drawing your list and in making my compilation easy:
- When I ask for your “Favorite Reads of 2012,” I’m seeking fiction and nonfiction books that stood out for you above all you’ve read in the past year. What have been the most enjoyable, the most important, the most thought provoking, the best written, the ones you may go back and read again and/or the ones you have suggested others read?
- You are welcome to send just one title or up to a half dozen or so.
- List the title, the author, and indicate whether it is fiction (F) or nonfiction (NF).
- If you are willing, please write a sentence or two about why each particular book made it to your list for this year. If you prefer not to add this, no problem, but I’ve found readers enjoy the comments.
- Don’t be concerned about whether others will have the same book(s) on their lists. If we get a number of similar titles, that’s just an indication of the power of a particular book/author.
- Your books do not have to be ones that were written and/or published in 2012, just ones that you read over the past year.
- If you want to include the ‘favorites’ of your young children/grandchildren, great grandchildren (i.e., the books the young’uns continually ask you to read), please do that too.
- Send me your list in an email (Samesty84@gmail.com) by Dec. 20 so I will be able to post the entire list at the end of the year.
I am hoping that those of you who have participated in the creation of this list in prior years will take the time to do so again this year.
And I hope if you haven’t contributed in the past, you will do so this year.
I often hear that one of the more valuable parts of MillersTime has been this annual compilation. A number of folks, myself included, use the list to consider titles and authors for books to read in the coming months.
Finally, I dislike haranguing to get readers to send in their favorite reads (tho I will do so if necessary). If you’d like to be spared such nagging, I promise not to include you in the ‘reminders’ I send out (once you have submitted your list, of course).
Thanking you in advance,
Richard A. Miller, aka Rick, etc.
(PS – If you aren’t quite sure which books you read in 2011 vs 2012, you can check this link to last year’s list.)
Randy Candea said:
Broken For You (F), Stephanie Kallos. A wonderful tale of two women revealing the risks and rewards of human connection.
Cutting For Stone (f) by Abraham Verghesse. A multigenerational tale of love, betrayal, medicine and faith.
First You Have To Row A Little Boat (NF), Richard Bode. Teaches some fundamental principles of life.
An Unfinished Life (NF), Robert Dallek. Perhaps the best and most complete biography of JFK.
Nixon and Kissinger (NF), Robert Dallek. Uses a wealthof recently declassified archives to brilliantly analyze thier dealings as power brokers in Vietnam, the opening to China, detente with Russia, the Yom Kipper War and Nixon’s eventual resignation over Watergate.
Richard Margolies said:
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, Eric Foner. Won the Pulitzer Prize. One of our greatest historians shows how Lincoln’s capacity to listen to people who had views different than his own, and to grow his own understanding was at the heart of his capacity to lead, along with his unusual strategic intelligence.