Shooflypie

I started 2012 with a goal to read 52 books in the year and I managed to meet that goal. I was probably a teenager the last time I read that much in a year, to be honest. It felt good to reach my goal and I really enjoyed the reading year. I read 35 books that came out this year, which is a pretty good total. I even read 9 books that weren't fiction, which is more than I've read in a year ever. Regardless of genre or publication date, here are the books I liked the most... 1. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - A dark page-turner built on twist after twist that's wired into how the book is structured and the alternating viewpoints of a couple with a strained marriage. Disturbing and brilliant. 2. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson - A virtuoso novel set in North Korea about living under the rule of Kim Jong Il and the lengths people will go to in order to stay alive. Complex and crackling with creative energy. 3. Billy Lynn's Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain - ...

Time for another patented (not really) catch-up post... OLD FAVORITES While I'm always excited when one of my favorite creators puts out something new, I do admit to an undercurrent of trepidation. Why? I wonder what I will think of them if the new isn't as good as the old that I love. Like I said, it's only an undercurrent and I mostly can't wait to digest the new. Here are some recent examples... Crackpot Palace by Jeffrey Ford - This is Ford's fourth story collection and I had only read three of the stories prior to its release (all from anthologies; no stories here were published in F&SF, which is where I first discovered his work), so I was ready to dive in. I was not disappointed. There's love and optimism in the face of a repetitive day in "Polka Dots and Moobeams"; the knotty issue of faith in "Relic"; the classic fantasy gone awry of "The Coral Heart"; the brilliant strangeness of "The Double of My Double Is...

Michael Chabon did it. He did it in 2000, at Christmas and during the week after. He did it with his fantastic novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay . I was never the same afterwards. I've always been a reader and from a very early age. I devoured books. I reread favorites like The Hobbit ; in fact, I read an illustrated version of that novel so much in elementary school that my copy fell apart. I read series; at one point, I had read all 60 or so Hardy Boys books that had been published by 1980 or 1981. I was a library volunteer in middle school and checked out as many books as I could. When I was in college in the early 90s, I would take a weekend to plow through a book, ignoring my homework. By the time the late 90s rolled around, I wasn't reading as much as I had. I was spending much of my free reading time devouring comics, another lifelong passion. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay changed all that. I don't remember when I first heard a...