My Favorite Books of 2012

This year I fought through a couple of real stinkers. Fortunately, this blind squirrel also found a few acorns of very enjoyable reading material for 2012. Here are my personal favorites, in no particular order.

• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I had many expectations, all of them wrong. Its prose was more modern, more witty, more airy than what my mind had conjured knowing the topic. Definitely will read this again.
• How to Read a Modern Painting by Jon Thompson. Chosen under duress for an airplane flight, this turned out to be wonderfully insightful and easily digestible, perfect for my interweb atrophied brain.
• World Without End by Ken Follett. Another very enjoyable tale of 14th century England in the tradition of Follett's Pillars of the Earth. Addition of the bubonic plague - good. All the shagging - not so much.
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Just excellent. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Honorable mention goes to The Autobiography of Ben Franklin and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I don't read much historical non-fiction but these two books reinforced the adage that the more things change the more they stay the same.

For those who are morbidly curious, the 32 books I finished during 2012 are listed here.