According to my Goodreads account, I read 78 books last year and these were my top 10 (not in order, it was hard enough to choose 10 without ranking them!). These are books I read for the first time last year, not necessarily ones that were released last year, although some were. I was late to the party in some regards, but first in line with others!
1. My Hundred Lovers by Susan Johnson
A passionate, sumptuous and beautifully written book. It was one of those books you just want to savour, that you don’t want to end. I love writing like this. It's like meeting someone you want to stay up all night listening to.
The central character's hundred lovers are not just of the human kind, but all manner of things that she has experienced a sensual relationship or an emotional, intimate connection with. Croissants, the feel of her mother's red fingernails gently scratching her back as a child, cities she has lived in, a beloved dress worn until it was unwearable (which I can definitely relate to), even the breeze from the trees even gets a mention. And while it’s a very sensual book, it doesn’t pull any punches. We follow the narrator through fifty years of reflection and Johnson weaves many threads on this flawed but nonetheless rich tapestry of a character. I really liked the mixture of third and first person narration too.
Graceful and tender, My Hundred Lovers is a captivating read. Thoroughly recommended!
The central character's hundred lovers are not just of the human kind, but all manner of things that she has experienced a sensual relationship or an emotional, intimate connection with. Croissants, the feel of her mother's red fingernails gently scratching her back as a child, cities she has lived in, a beloved dress worn until it was unwearable (which I can definitely relate to), even the breeze from the trees even gets a mention. And while it’s a very sensual book, it doesn’t pull any punches. We follow the narrator through fifty years of reflection and Johnson weaves many threads on this flawed but nonetheless rich tapestry of a character. I really liked the mixture of third and first person narration too.
"She was with Celestine one late spring day when she met the man she knew she would marry.The knowledge came to her body first, a sensation that felt like intuition, a knowingness, a feeling of great calm and certainty.At the same time she experienced a rush, a tilt of the earth, much like the feeling that followed the first drag of a cigarette when she had not smoked for a long time..... she looked at her future husband, and her future husband looked back, and everything they needed to know about each other passed between them."
Graceful and tender, My Hundred Lovers is a captivating read. Thoroughly recommended!
2. Land's Edge: A Coastal Memoir by Tim Winton
I am in awe of Tim Winton's mastery of the writing craft but I must admit I've not always found his books page turners. But this one, a slim volume of memoir, was so beautifully written and so potent and evocative, I found myself savouring it slowly, reading a chapter before bed each night which would then lull me into sleep punctuated with dreams of my childhood home by the beach.
Even though the landscapes of Western Australia (which he writes about) and the Tasmania where I grew up are vastly different, the way he writes about the beach, the bush, life on the land, growing up in that environment where the landscape becomes a part of your skin and eyes, was so familiar. Every word said "home" to me. Sparse, poetic and exquisite.
3. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Chicago, 1920. Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love....until she meets Ernest Hemingway. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris where they become embroiled in a lively group of literary expats including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are not really prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find his voice. Hadley, meanwhile, struggles with her own sense of self as her life with Ernest in Paris grows more costly and demanding. Despite their extraordinary bond, Hadley and Ernest eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unravelling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.
I absolutely adore historical fiction that takes real people and events as its premise. While I love biographies, I also love the kind of storytelling you get in a book like this, that doesn't purport to be telling the absolute truth, just a version of it. There were parts of this book that made me laugh or wince with recognition, others that were so sumptuous I read them again, and one moment that was so heart-stoppingly awful I thought I could hear the echo of my own gasp on the deserted Cornwall beach where I was reading.
Highly recommended if you love historical fiction, if you've ever been in love, been betrayed, or been to Paris.
4. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”
This book should be compulsory reading. It is a masterpiece. Excellent, kind and wise advice that, despite the name of the author's alter ego, is not sugar-coated and leaves the reader feeling very empowered. I have very little to say on it that I feel would do it justice. Just read it. You'll be glad you did.
5. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
I discovered Lisa Genova last year and have now read all her novels. This one was the first and it is a stunning book.
Raw, intimate and insightful, in Still Alice you get inside the mind and experience of a woman in the prime of her life diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. Genova is a skilled writer and the character of Alice is such an accomplishment. As a reader you watch her decline, and you feel her terror and confusion. Absorbing and quite unforgettable.
6. The Buddha, Geoff and Me: A Modern Story by Edward Canfor-Dumas
If you're interested in Buddhism, this book totally de-mystifies it and is a wonderful illustration of how the core Buddhist principles and beliefs operate in daily Western life. But it would be a mistake to say this book is just about Buddhism the religion - it's about empowering people to change their attitudes and make their lives work better, not just for themselves but for those around them as well.
It's a compelling and quite addictive read, one of those books you'll want all your friends to read so you can talk to them about it!
And yes, it is a novel. In the vein of The Spare Room though, where the author and central character's names are the same so perhaps we just draw our own conclusions ;)
A great book, highly recommended.
7. Inherited by Amanda Curtin
I read about this on Angela Meyer’s excellent Literary Minded and was so enthralled by Meyer’s review I put it on my wishlist for my birthday parcel from Australia as I couldn’t get it here in the UK.
Inherited is a collection of short stories that unfurls like a roll of silk. The stories centre around themes of belonging, desire, grief and gratitude; and around seemingly ordinary objects and characters - the handle of a frying pan, a woman who collects corks, a house that's been in a family four generations - but the execution is anything but. The writing is haunting and beautiful. The minute I finished it I wanted to read it again.
Like with My One Hundred Lovers mentioned earlier, it was one of those books I just wanted to savour every single word of, the writing was just so sumptuous. I love it when writing feels like that. It’s such a treat, better than chocolate any day.
8. The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield
Tom bought this for me last Easter and I read it three times in one week. I think it's the best book on writing and creativity that I've ever read.
It's essentially how to break through your blocks and get on with it, how to move from being an amateur about your art to taking it and yourself seriously as a "pro". It teaches you how "Resistance" works and how it tricks you into thinking you must have X, Y and Z in order before you can be an artist. Rubbish, says Pressfield. You've just got to get on with it, which isn't as easy as it sounds. But you'll feel like a warrior and ready for battle after reading this book!
I love it when you read books that are the equivalent of bomb blasts in the thick, impenetrable stone walls of your brain. They break through all the solid, unyielding and ultimately unhelpful thoughts and behaviours you have and get you to move forward. The War of Art was the book that did that for me in 2012.
I think it’s essential reading for any artist, but the principles apply to anyone who has a goal and just can’t figure out why they can’t get motivated to do it. Weight loss, running a race, making any big change in your life that might get you closer to your true self and the life you truly want to live….the answer is overcoming Resistance. Highly, highly recommended.
I think it’s essential reading for any artist, but the principles apply to anyone who has a goal and just can’t figure out why they can’t get motivated to do it. Weight loss, running a race, making any big change in your life that might get you closer to your true self and the life you truly want to live….the answer is overcoming Resistance. Highly, highly recommended.
9. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
I am a bit ashamed that I originally wrote this book off as a bit of a hyped-up To Kill A Mockingbird esque story. It was fabulous. The hype and acclaim is most justly deserved. It is beautifully written, the characters realistically and sympathetically drawn - even the nastier ones, even though you are horrified by their words and behaviour you can see them as a product of their time and society. After thinking it would be a very predictable story, it wasn't at all.
The Help was recommended to me by my friend Sarah on the back of last year’s great reads post and it was just phenomenal. It is very tempting to write off any hyped-up book as “it can’t be as good as people think if everyone is reading it” but this one really was.
10. The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde was also recommended to me after the favourite books of 2011 post - but instead of picking up the Thursday Next series, I found Nursery Crime. Not expecting it to be my kind of thing at all, it was more addictive than thai chilli rice crackers!
It's just such a clever concept - to write a modern day story with elements of fairy tale and nursery rhyme in it. Turning Humpty Dumpty into a bit of a crook who liked the ladies, Jack Spratt trying to convict the three little pigs over murder of Mr Wolff....it's so very, very clever. I loved it.
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So there you have it, my favourite books of 2012! My taste remains as eclectic as ever.
Of course, there were so many other books I last year that could have easily made this list, but we would have been here all day.....in addition to the above I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend: All That I Am by Anna Funder, With My Body by Nikki Gemmell, Lovesong by Alex Miller, Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung, Animal People by Charlotte Wood and The White Shadow by Andrea Eames.
Front runners for favourite reads of 2013 so far are Cargo by Jessica Au and The Light Between Oceans by M.L Stedman. This year is set to be another book-filled year, just the way I like it!
What were your favourite books of 2012? What have you enjoyed reading of late? I always love your recommendations so please share :)