Books That Mattered in 2012 and Year in Review

Merry Christmas. Maybe you will use the time between now and New Years Day thinking about reading, listening, and viewing for 2013. Here are books, music, and movies I liked best in 2012 and recommend to you. Because I mostly read nonfiction and hardly any fiction, there is little in the fiction category this year, but what there is is very good.

I look forward to more reading, viewing, and listening in 2013. I have a new wish list attached to my library's library catalog as well as one for audiobooks on our downloadables catalog. I also have an old wish list database at Zoho. How will I ever find enough time?

Have a Happy New Year.



Recent Nonfiction 

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds by Julie Zickefoose

Burying the Typewriter: A Memoir by Carmen Bugan

Life Itself: A Memoir by Roger Ebert

Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster by Tim Crothers

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship by Julia Alvarez

The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Rolls' Best-Kept Secret by Kent Hartman


Recent Fiction 

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson


Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon


Great Older Books 

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon

Children's Books 

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales

Grandfather's Journey [and] Tree of Cranes by Allan Say

The Mighty Mars Rovers: The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity by Elizabeth Rusch

Minette's Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat  by Susanna Reich


Audiobooks 

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean

Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey


Films and Television 

Bill Cunningham New York, a film by Richard Press

Karen Cries on the Bus, a film by Gabriel Rojas Vera

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Season One

Skin, a film directed by Anthony Fabian

Terry Jones' Barbarians


 Music 

Ac•Rock at the Library

Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) by Joseph Haydn

Eaglebone Whistle

Million Dollar Quartet

Summer Side of Life by Gordon Lightfoot


Readers' Advisory 

On Writing Book Reviews for Booklist

Read On ... Audiobooks by Joyce Saricks