Final Round-Up for 2012
It’s Christmas, and it’s also the season when the books sections of our newspapers and magazines typically look back at the year that’s been and nominate their ‘best-ofs’. We’re no exception, and this month you’ll find Readings’ top 10s for fiction, non-fiction, crime, picture books, music, film and more.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the lists is their healthy diversity. In fiction, we have a debut novel set in Papua New Guinea from Drusilla Modjeska, two short-story collections from much-loved practitioners (Cate Kennedy and Junot Díaz), a remarkable hybrid work from Laurent Binet, and novels from two high-profile authors (Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith), whose turn to their respective home patches (Berkeley, California, and Kilburn, London respectively) for creative inspiration has really paid off.
In non-fiction, we have
by Katharine Boo, an essential biography of that troubled wunderkind and American author
, and James Button’s
of his political family to name but a few highlights.
Turning to new releases, the much-loved Tracy Chevalier returns with The Last Runaway, Ronald Frame interrogates a key Dickens character in Havisham, and we have new novels in English from no less than two Nobel Prize winners: Herta Müller and José Saramago.
Speaking of all things European, the always-excellent Best European Fiction annual appears this month too. From Chile, we have a posthumous Roberto Bolaño, which will no doubt be highly anticipated by his many fans. Finally, from the US, there’s Ayana Mathis’s acclaimed debut and a new story collection from the ever wonderful George Saunders.
In non-fiction, the Selected Letters of William Styron are a major literary event, and there is an excellent option for the difficult-to-buy-for-at-Christmas with Assholes: A Theory.
From the blurb: ‘In the spirit of the bestselling
, philosopher Aaron James tackles the subject of assholes in a philosophical yet also humorous, entertaining and accessible inquiry into what makes a person an asshole. The book also explores different asshole types, the roles gender, nurture, and nature play, and how best to deal with assholes in daily life.’
Oh, and since my last column, which discussed the shortlist, the winner of the inaugural Most Underrated Book Award for 2012 has been announced. There’s now no excuse to miss out on what for many of us was one of the best Australian novels of recent times: Wayne Macauley’s The Cook.
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