Happy 2012, people. Here’s my annual list of all the books I read in the past year. I’m exhausted just looking at it. My original goal was to read 150 books, which wasn’t all that outlandish considering I was supposed to read 70 books in between January and March alone for my exams, but alas, after March I got lazy or distracted by Doctor Who or work or something (but probably Doctor Who) and only made it to 125. I also seem to have misplaced five books from this list, and again, too lazy to compare lists and try to find the missing five. If you want the full 125, click here, otherwise there’s a respectable 120 down below.

I’ve also pulled out my ten favorite books of the year and lazily linked to reviews I’d already written about them (if you think you’re sensing a pattern, you would be correct). (Speaking of lazy, I’m going to bed immediately after posting this, and I’m going to curl up with a fluffy blanket and 11/22/63, the first new book of 2012. And then I’m going to fall asleep. It’s going to be SO GOOD.)

125 in 2011

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1. Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko*✓
2. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne*✓
3. A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid*✓
4. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin*✓
5. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston ✓
6-7. The Walking Dead Vols. 2-3, Robert Kirkman
8. Marvel 1602, Neil Gaiman
9. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe ✓
10. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood*✓
11. The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston*✓
12. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Mary Rowlandson*✓
13. The Awakening, Kate Chopin*✓
14. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton*✓
15. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson*✓
16-18. Fables, Vols. 3-5, Bill Willingham

19-21. The Unwritten, Vols. 1-3, Mike Carey and Peter Gross

From Amazon.com: “Tom Taylor’s life was screwed from go. His father created the Tommy Taylor fantasy series, boy-wizard novels with popularity on par with Harry Potter. The problem is Dad modeled the fictional epic so closely to Tom’s real life that fans are constantly comparing him to his counterpart, turning him into the lamest variety of Z-level celebrity. In the final novel, it’s even implied that the fictional Tommy will crossover into the real world, giving delusional fans more excuses to harass Tom. When an enormous scandal reveals that Tom might really be a boy-wizard made flesh, Tom comes into contact with a very mysterious, very deadly group that’s secretly kept tabs on him all his life. Now, to protect his own life and discover the truth behind his origins, Tom will travel the world, eventually finding himself at locations all featured on a very special map — one kept by the deadly group that charts places throughout world history where fictions have impacted and tangibly shaped reality, those stories ranging from famous literary works to folktales to pop culture. And in the process of figuring out what it all means, Tom will find himself having to figure out a huge conspiracy mystery that spans the entirety of the history of fiction.”

What I said: “I wasn’t sure how I felt about this series after Vol. 1, partly because sometimes it takes time to feel comfortable in complex fictional worlds, but mostly because I wasn’t sure where this was going. After Vol. 2, however, even if I don’t know specifics, I have a definite feel for this world and the things Carey and Gross are trying to say. That feeling is ‘awesome.’. . . I can’t really sum up the plot of this series very well without giving anything away, so I won’t even try. Half the fun is experiencing the ride yourself. Seriously. Go out and buy [it] right now. It’s the whole package: fun and intellectually engaging. The Unwrittenis basically like the entire reason God invented post-modernism.

22. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner*✓
23. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov ✓
24. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and Other Puritan Sermons, Jonathan Edwards*✓
25. Pamela, Samuel Richardson ✓
26. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain*✓
27. Leaves of Grass (1855), Walt Whitman ✓
28. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson ✓
29. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
30. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin*✓
31. Kim, Rudyard Kipling ✓
32. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett ✓
33. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe ✓
34. Matched, Ally Condie
35. Evelina, Fanny Burney ✓
36. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne ✓
37. Daytripper, Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá
38. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville ✓
39. Middlemarch, George Eliot ✓
40. Volpone, Ben Jonson ✓
41. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare*✓
42. The Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare*✓
43. The Complete Sonnets, William Shakespeare*✓
44. Othello, William Shakespeare*✓
45. Henry IV, Part I, William Shakespeare*✓
46. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare*✓
47. The Tempest, William Shakespeare*✓
48. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe*✓
49. Edward II, Christopher Marlowe*✓
50. Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works, Philip Sidney*✓
51. Everyman, Anonymous*✓
52. Abraham and Isaac: The Brome Play, Anonymous ✓
53. Noah, Anonymous ✓
54. Paradise Lost, John Milton*✓
55. The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss*

56. The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss

From Amazon.com: “The Wise Man’s Fear continues the mesmerizing slow reveal of the story of Kvothe the Bloodless, an orphaned actor who became a fearsome hero before banishing himself to a tiny town in the middle of Newarre. The readers of Patrick Rothfuss’s outstanding first book, The Name of the Wind, which has gathered both a cult following and a wide readership in the four years since it came out, will remember that Kvothe promised to tell his tale of wonder and woe to Chronicler, the king’s scribe, in three days. The Wise Man’s Fear makes up day two, and uncovers enough to satisfy readers and make them desperate for the full tale, from Kvothe’s rapidly escalating feud with Ambrose to the shockingly brutal events that mark his transformation into a true warrior, and to his encounters with Felurian and the Adem. Rothfuss remains a remarkably adept and inventive storyteller, and Kvothe’s is a riveting tale about a boy who becomes a man who becomes a hero and a killer, spinning his own mythology out of the ether until he traps himself within it. Drop everything and read these books.”

What I said: “Feeling too emotionally roller-coasted to write a review. Will have to come back later . . . much later. This isn’t an unqualified five star review. I have so much things to say . . . I’m just not technically sure of what those things are at the moment. For now, just go read this guy’s review. Done? What he said.”

57. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer*✓
58. Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory ✓
59. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens*✓
60. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte*✓
61. The Poems of Alexander Pope, Alexander Pope*✓
62. The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan
63. Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
64. Waterland, Graham Swift*✓
65. Naked Heat, Richard Castle
66. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens*
67. A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin*
68. Child 44, Tom Rob Smith
69. Last Argument of Kings, Joe Abercrombie

70. Bossypants, Tina Fey

From Amazon.com: “Before Liz Lemon, before ‘Weekend Update,’ before ‘Sarah Palin,’ Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true. At last, Tina Fey’s story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon — from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence. Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we’ve all suspected: you’re no one until someone calls you bossy.”

What I said: “I have never felt more solidarity with another human being than I did with Tina Fey while reading the chapter entitled ‘All Girls Must Be Everything.’ As a person of distinctly Mediterranean heritage myself, what I’m saying is I can relate. There’s also stuff in here about show-business, motherhood, traveling on the interstate, fannypacks, fathers, men being dicks and peeing in jars, the drudgery of having an awful job, and farting. So: something for everyone.”

71. The Science of Kissing, Sheril Kirshenbaum
72. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
73. In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson
74. A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin*
75. The Throne of Fire, Rick Riordan
76. The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
77. The Machine of Death, ed. Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, & David Malki !
78. The Unwritten, Vol. 4, Mike Carey
79. The Thank You Economy, Gary Vanderchuk
80. Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde
81. Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
82. Tiger’s Curse, Colleen Hough
83. Midnight Sun, Stephenie Meyer

84. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

From Amazon.com: “Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions . . . Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave . . . Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells . . . Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.”

What I said: “Oh, man. There is just so much in the world that I have no idea about. Maybe more detailed thoughts about this later, but probably not. I just finished, and my head is swimming. For now this is what I have to say: Well-written, staggeringly well-researched, staggeringly and painfully personal. The story of what Henrietta Lacks’s genetic legacy has done to her family is the main focus of the book, but how Skloot uses that story to illuminate criminally neglected areas of history, law, medicine, economics, and education intersecting with race and class issues, is just riveting. Go out and get this one right now.”

85. Delirium, Lauren Oliver
86. A Storm of Swords, George R.R. Martin*

87. Old Man’s War, John Scalzi

From Amazon.com: “John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce–and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine–and what he will become is far stranger.”

What I said: “It’s been a long time since I’ve read a good sci-fi novel, and this one sure did hit the spot. In fact, it was so delicious I gobbled it up in one sitting, and I wouldn’t say no to seconds. Probably going to go get the sequels tomorrow. Man, there’s nothing in the world like good sci-fi. In fact, I wish I’d never read it, because then I’d get to read it again for the first time. Great concept, great execution. Extremely solid first novel. I’ve been reading Scalzi’s blog for years, but I’ve never read any of his fiction. Why didn’t somebody slap me upside my head? I now want to read everything he’s ever written. This is my kind of shit.”

88. The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi
89. The Last Colony, John Scalzi

90. Sisterhood Everlasting, Ann Brashares

From Amazon.com: “Return to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants . . . ten years later. From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Brashares comes the welcome return of the characters whose friendship became a touchstone for a generation. Now Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget have grown up, starting their lives on their own. And though the jeans they shared are long gone, the sisterhood is everlasting. Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn’t take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can’t seem to shed her old restlessness. Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion that they all breathlessly await. And indeed, it will change their lives forever—but in ways that none of them could ever have expected. As moving and life-changing as an encounter with long-lost best friends, Sisterhood Everlasting is a powerful story about growing up, losing your way, and finding the courage to create a new one.”

What I said: “Until about the last forty pages, I thought I knew what I was going to write in this review. I was going to say that Brashares is incredibly good with the inner lives of her characters. I was going to say that she brings people to life in magical, absurdly readable, and moving ways. I was going to say that despite this, reading this book is like expecting to jump into pool and float back to the surface, but instead you start drowning, sucking up little bits of air at a time, just trying to survive. I was going to say that as readable as it was, it was just too much for me to handle, and that these girls always seem like they need to learn the same lessons over and over again, and the lesson never sticks. But then I got to the end, and I started crying, and I couldn’t stop. To be honest about it, I’m still crying right now. (They’re the good kind of tears, by the way, the bittersweet ones. Ann Brashares is not Nicholas Sparks or Jodi Picoult, both of whom I always feel manipulated by, like with them tears are the goal, and not just a product of something great that they’ve created. Sparks and Picoult want me to feel luxuriously sad about my life, Brashares just wants to tell me something true. Does that make any sense?) This book just got to me. It got to me on an emotional level that a book hasn’t in a really long time, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t feel like critically evaluating this book for its failings. I only feel like feeling. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

91. A Feast For Crows, George R.R. Martin*
92. The Map of Time, Felix J. Palma
93. A Dance With Dragons, George R.R. Martin

From Amazon.com: “In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance once again–beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has three times three thousand enemies, and many have set out to find her. Yet, as they gather, one young man embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind. To the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone–a structure only as strong as those guarding it. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, will face his greatest challenge yet. For he has powerful foes not only within the Watch but also beyond, in the land of the creatures of ice. And from all corners, bitter conflicts soon reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will fail, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will lead inevitably to the greatest dance of all. . . .”

What I said: “I loved seeing all my favorite characters again, but like in A Clash of Kings, this one felt more like it was putting pieces into place for the next two. As much as I loved seeing Dany and Jon and Tyrion again, the whole time I was reading, I kept waiting for things to happen, and I feel like they just didn’t. It was also jarring to essentially have one book’s storylines dragged across two giant books. I feel like Martin could have cut a lot of the fat off this one (although, again, I reserve the right to change my mind about this once I’ve read the next two; some of the “unnecessary” stuff might actually turn out to have been necessary). Mostly, though, I think I’m just impatient. I waited six years for this book, and now I have to wait who knows how long for the next two. Normally waiting is an excruciating pleasure, but this book just made me want more without actually sating anything. I have no idea what is going to happen next, and that is both exciting and annoying.”

94. Beauty Queens, Libba Bray
95. Packing for Mars, Mary Roach
96. Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie
97. Stories, ed. Neil Gaiman
98. The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton*
99. Divergent, Veronica Roth
100. Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
101. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe
102. The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan
103. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan*
104. The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan*
105. The Titan’s Curse, Rick Riordan*
106. The Battle of the Labyrinth, Rick Riordan*
107. The Last Olympian, Rick Riordan*
108. Incarceron, Catherine Fisher
109. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy Kaling

110. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor

From Amazon.com: “Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious ‘errands’; she speaks many languages–not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out. When one of the strangers–beautiful, haunted Akiva–fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?”

What I said: “In a genre that is absolutely saturated, Laini Taylor has managed to write something genuinely fresh (and something that threatens to transcend it’s YA trappings every time you turn the page). Taylor fills her book with lovely poetic images that somehow manage not to annoy me (a feat in itself). There’s no love triangle (which are always always always predictable and annoying). The characters are intriguing, even scary. And the world she’s created is impressively dense; it feels lived in and real, which is especially impressive considering half of her characters are ‘angels’ and ‘devils.’ The fact that I had to put those two words into quotation marks is yet another indication of the author’s ingenuity. You’ll have to read it to find out just exactly why. I’m not spoiling you in this review.”

111. The Constant Gardener, John Le Carre

From Amazon.com: “The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle–young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa’s killers as well. A master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, John le Carre portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. In The Constant Gardener he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy as Justin Quayle–amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat–discovers his own natural resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.”

What I said: “Holy cow and for the love of Batman was this a good book. I know that I’ve been subsisting mostly on YA dystopian romances and sci-fi/fantasy ‘escapist’ stuff for the past nine months or so, so you might not trust my judgement at this point, but you should really believe me when I say that this is a book you should read. You, lover of action adventures and thrillers. You, lover of tense but thorough case studies into corruption and intrigue. You, lover of words. You, lover of intricate explorations into the human heart. YOU, MOTHERFUCKER.”

112. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien*
113. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien*
114. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien*
115. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien*
116. Heat Rises, Richard Castle

117. The Help, Kathryn Stockett

From Amazon.com: “Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.”

What I said: “Hot damn, that was a good read.”

118. Stay, Allie Larkin
119. The Big Over Easy, Jasper Fforde
120. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists, Gideon Defoe

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Other books I would single out from the list include Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Divergent, The Map of Time, Packing for Mars, the Fables series (which only narrowly missed being included above), In the Garden of Beasts, Into Thin Air, Elantris, and Middlemarch (which I read the for the first time this year, and surprisingly very much enjoyed).

The worst books I read on that list? Pamela (oh, dear God, that was so awful) and Tiger’s Curse (siiiigh). And while they weren’t bad necessarily, I was disappointed in Stay, Matched, Beauty Queens, Delirium, The Science of Kissing, and Incarceron. You’ll notice that most of those are derivative YA dystopian fictions, so I suppose I deserve what’s coming to me. A special mention also goes out to Lolita for making me feel dirty in my soul, even though it is very well written.

Happy New year, all, and may your 2012′s be fruitful and full of good reading. And hopefully those damn Mayans were wrong and I’ll see you here, same time, same place, next year for 100 books in 2013.

*Re-read
✓ Masters Exam Booklist