Year-End Lists

Publishers Weekly: 10 Best Books of 2012

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2011]

1. Building Stories
   Chris Ware
2. Bring Up the Bodies
   Hilary Mantel
3. The Round House
   Louise Erdrich
4. Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain
   Lucia Perillo
5. The Devil in Silver
   Victor LaValle
6. Detroit City Is the Place to Be

   The Afterlife of an American Metropolis
   Mark Binelli
7. All We Know

   Three Lives
   Lisa Cohen
8. People Who Eat Darkness

   The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo
   Richard Lloyd Parry
9. The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600–1675
   Bernard Bailyn
10. Iron Curtain

    The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945–1956
    Anne Applebaum

Kathryn Schulz: Top 10 Books of 2012, as published by New York Magazine

1. Dear Life
   Alice Munro
2. Behind the Beautiful Forevers

   Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
   Katherine Boo
3. Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story
   Jim Holt
4. Zona

   A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room
   Geoff Dyer
5. Telegraph Avenue
   Michael Chabon
6. Mortality
   Christopher Hitchens
7. Object Lessons

   The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story
   Lorin Stein, Sadie Stein
8. When I Was a Child, I Read Books

   Essays
   Marilynne Robinson
9. Into the Silence

   The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
   Wade Davis
10. House of Stone

    A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
    Anthony Shadid

The New York Times: 10 Best Books of 2012

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 100 Notable Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 100 Notable Books of 2011 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

Fiction

• Bring Up the Bodies
  Hilary Mantel
• Building Stories
  Chris Ware
• A Hologram for the King
  Dave Eggers
• NW
  Zadie Smith
• The Yellow Birds
  Kevin Powers

Nonfiction

• Behind the Beautiful Forevers

  Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
  Katherine Boo
• Far From the Tree

  Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
  Andrew Solomon
• The Passage of Power

  The Years of Lyndon Johnson
  Robert A. Caro
• The Patriarch

  The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy
  David Nasaw
• Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story
  Jim Holt

The Washington Post: The 10 Best Books of 2012

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2022 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2021 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 10 Best Books of 2020 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2020 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2020 • Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • The 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The Ten Best Books of 2014 • Top 10 Books of 2013]

Nonfiction

• Behind the Beautiful Forevers

  Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
  Katherine Boo
• House of Stone

  A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
  Anthony Shadid
• Iron Curtain

  The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945–1956
  Anne Applebaum
• Marigold

  The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam
  James Hershberg
• Why Nations Fail

  The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
  Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

Fiction

• Arcadia
  Lauren Groff
• Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
  Ben Fountain
• Bring Up the Bodies
  Hilary Mantel
• Broken Harbor
  Tana French
• Canada
  Richard Ford

The Booker Prize: Best Fiction of 2012

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2011]

Winner

• Bring Up the Bodies
  Hilary Mantel

Shortlist

• Swimming Home
  Deborah Levy
• The Lighthouse
  Alison Moore
• Umbrella
  Will Self
• The Garden of Evening Mists
  Tan Twang Eng
• Narcopolis
  Jeet Thayil

Longlist

• Skios
  Michael Frayn
• Philida
  André Brink
• The Teleportation Accident
  Ned Beauman
• The Yips
  Nicola Barker
• Communion Town
  Sam Thompson
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
  Rachel Joyce

Women's Prize for Fiction: 2012

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2011]

Winner

• The Song of Achilles
  Madeline Miller

Shortlist

• State of Wonder
  Ann Patchett
• Foreign Bodies
  Cynthia Ozick
• Half-Blood Blues
  Esi Edugyan
• Painter of Silence
  Georgina Harding
• The Forgotten Waltz
  Anne Enright

Longlist

• The Submission
  Amy Waldman
• Tides of War
  Stella Tillyard
• The Pink Hotel
  Anna Stothard
• There but for the
  Ali Smith
• The Night Circus
  Erin Morgenstern
• The Blue Book
  A.L. Kennedy
• The Translation of the Bones
  Francesca Kay
• Gillespie and I
  Jane Harris
• Island of Wings
  Karin Altenberg
• On the Floor
  Aifric Campbell
• The Flying Man
  Roopa Farooki
• Lord of Misrule
  Jaimy Gordon
• The Sealed Letter
  Emma Donoghue
• The Grief of Others
  Leah Hager Cohen

The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2011, alphabetical by title

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 100 Notable Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 10 Best Books of 2012 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

Fiction

• The Angel Esmeralda

  Nine Stories
  Don DeLillo
• The Art of Fielding
  Chad Harbach
• The Barbarian Nurseries
  Héctor Tobar
• Big Questions. Or, Asomatognosia

  Whose Hand Is It Anyway?
  Anders Brekhus Nilsen
• The Buddha in the Attic
  Julie Otsuka
• Canti
  Giacomo Leopardi
• The Cat’s Table
  Michael Ondaatje
• Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
  William Kennedy
• Come on All You Ghosts
  Matthew Zapruder
• 11/22/63
  Stephen King
• The Free World
  David Bezmozgis
• Ghost Lights
  Lydia Millet
• The Grief of Others
  Leah Hager Cohen
• Gryphon

  New and Selected Stories
  Charles Baxter
• House of Holes

  A Book of Raunch
  Nicholson Baker
• The Last Werewolf
  Glen Duncan
• The Leftovers
  Tom Perrotta
• Life on Mars
  Tracy K. Smith
• The London Train
  Tessa Hadley
• Long, Last, Happy

  New and Selected Stories
  Barry Hannah
• Lost Memory of Skin
  Russell Banks
• The Marriage Plot
  Jeffrey Eugenides
• A Moment in the Sun
  John Sayles
• Mr. Fox
  Helen Oyeyemi
• My New American Life
  Francine Prose
• 1Q84
  Haruki Murakami
• Open City
  Teju Cole
• The Pale King

  An Unfinished Novel
  David Foster Wallace
• Parallel Stories
  Peter Nadas, translated by Imre Goldstein
• Say Her Name
  Francisco Goldman
• Scenes from Village Life
  Amos Oz, translated by Nocholas de Lange
• The Sense of an Ending
  Julian Barnes
• Seven Years
  Peter Stamm
• Shards
  Ismet Prcic
• Space, in Chains
  Laura Kasischke
• Stone Arabia
  Dana Spiotta
• The Stranger’s Child
  Alan Hollinghurst
• The Submission
  Amy Waldman
• Swamplandia!
  Karen Russell
• Taller When Prone

  Poems
  Les Murray
• Ten Thousand Saints
  Eleanor Henderson
• This Beautiful Life
  Helen Schulman
• The Tiger’s Wife
  Téa Obreht
• The Tragedy of Arthur
  Arthur Phillips
• Train Dreams
  Denis Johnson

Nonfiction

• And So It Goes. Kurt Vonnegut

  A Life
  Charles J. Shields
• Arguably

  Essays
  Christopher Hitchens
• The Art of Cruelty

  A Reckoning
  Maggie Nelson
• Assassins of the Turquoise Palace
  Roya Hakakian
• The Beginning of Infinity

  Explanations that Transform the World
  David Deutsch
• Believing is Seeing

  Observations on the Mysteries of Photography
  Errol Morris
• The Better Angels of Our Nature

  Why Violence Has Declined
  Steven Pinker
• Blood, Bones and Butter

  The Inadvertent Education of  a Reluctant Chef
  Gabrielle Hamilton
• Blue Nights
  Joan Didion
• The Boy in the Moon

  A Father’s Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son
  Ian Brown
• Caravaggio

  A Life Sacred and Profane
  Andrew Graham-Dixon
• Catherine the Great

  Portrait of a Woman
  Robert K. Massie
• Clarence Darrow

  Attorney for the Damned
  John A. Farrell
• Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
  Alexandra Fuller
• Destiny of the Republic

  A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President
  Candice Millard
• The Ecstasy of Influence

  Nonfictions, Etc.
  Jonathan Lethem
• 1861

  The Civil War Awakening
  Adam Goodheart
• Examined Lives

  From Socrates to Nietzsche
  James Miller
• 1493

  Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
  Charles C. Mann
• George F. Kennan

  An American Life
  John Lewis Gaddis
• Great Soul

  Mahatma GAndhi and His Struggle with India
  Joseph Lelyveld
• Harlem is Nowhere

  A Journey to the Mecca of Black America
  Sharifa Rhoes-Pitts
• Holy War

  How Vasco de Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
  Nigel Cliff
• In the Garden of Beasts

  Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
  Erik Larson
• Inferno

  The World at War, 1939-1945
  Max Hastings
• The Information

  A History, a Theory, a Flood
  James Gleick
• Inside Scientology

  The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion
  Janet Reitman
• Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
  David Bellos
• Jerusalem

  The Biography
  Simon Sebag Montefiore
• The Keats Brothers

  The Life of John and George
  Denis Gigante
• Knocking on Heaven’s Door

  how Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World
  Lisa Randall
• Malcolm X

  A Life of Reinvention
  Manning Marable
• The Memory Chalet
  Tony Judt
• Midnight Rising

  John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War
  Tony Horwitz
• Moby-Duck

  The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea & of the Beachcombers, Oceanograp hers, Environmentalists & Fools Including the Author Who Went in Search of Them
  Donovan Hohn
• My Song

  A Memoir
  Harry Belafonte with Michael Shnayerson
• The Net Delusion

  The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
  Evgeny Morozov
• One Day I Will Write About This Place
  Binyavanga Wainaina
• The Origins of Political Order

  From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
  Francis Fukuyama
• Pauline Kael

  A Life in the Dark
  Brian Kellow
• Pulphead
  John Jeremiah Sullivan
• The Quest

  Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World
  Daniel Yergin
• Rights Gone Wrong

  How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equity
  Richard Thompson Ford
• Rin Tin Tin

  The Life and the Legend
  Susan Orlean
• [sic]

  A Memoir
  Joshua Cody
• The Storm of War

  A New History of the Second World War
  Andrew Roberts
• The Swerve

  How the World Became Modern
  Stephen Greenblatt
• Thinking, Fast and Slow
  Daniel Kahneman
• To A Mountain in Tibet
  Colin Thubron
• To End All Wars

  A Story of Loyalty and Rebellionm 1914-1918
  Adam Hochschild
• A Train in Winter

  An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France
  Caroline Moorehead
• Van Gogh

  The Life
  Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
• Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What it Means to be Black Now
  Touré
• Why the West Rules — For Now

  The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
  Ian Morris
• A World on Fire

  Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War
  Amanda Foreman

Maureen Corrigan: 10 Best Novels of 2011 (as aired on NPR’s Fresh Air)

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015]

1. Swamplandia!
   Karen Russell
2. Open City
   Teju Cole
3. The Submission
   Amy Waldman
4. The Art of Fielding
   Chad Harbach
5. The Illumination
   Kevin Brockmeier
6. The Leftovers
   Tom Perrotta
7. The Marriage Plot
   Jeffrey Eugenides
8. State of Wonder
   Ann Patchett
9. Train Dreams
   Denis Johnson
10. The Pale King

    An Unfinished Novel
    David Foster Wallace

The Atlantic’s literary editor, Benjamin Schwarz, chooses the best five books of 2011:

[see also 2012]

1. The Hare with Amber Eyes

   A Family’s Century of Art and Loss
   Edmund de Waal
2. Letters to Monica
   Philip Larkin, edited by Anthony Thwaite
3. The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan
   Richard Nickel and Aaron Suskind, with John Vinci and Ward Miller
4. Saints and Sinners

   Stories
   Edna O’Brien
5. Emily, Alone
   Stewart O’Nan

Library Journal: Ten Best Books of 2011

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2012]

1. Alexander McQueen

   Savage Beauty
   Andrew Bolton & others (text), Sølve Sundsbø (photographs)
2. Midnight Rising

   John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War
   Tony Horwitz
3. Silver Sparrow
   Tayari Jones
4. 1Q84
   Haruki Murakami
5. The Tiger’s Wife
   Téa Obreht
6. The Buddha in the Attic
   Julie Otsuka
7. The Tragedy of Arthur
   Arthur Phillips
8. The Better Angels of Our Nature

   Why Violence Has Declined
   Steven Pinker
9. Tides of War
   Stella Tillyard
10. The Empty Family

    Stories
    Colm Tóibín