As a part of my efforts to avoid all news this past weekend, I spent what can only be called a ridiculous amount of time looking through my Amazon purchases to see what I read in 2012. It started as a hunt for the name of a particular book I wanted to recommend to my sister but an hour after finding the title, I still enjoying scrolling though the pages and pages of Amazon purchases, and becoming almost nostalgic for my immediate reading past.

Rather than write off an afternoon to something so silly, I’ve made of a list of some of my favorite reads of 2012 to share with you. This list represents about a third of my total reading for 2012, but even I started to get bored towards the end.

Non-fiction

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. How I wish this book had been around when I was starting my business!

Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers Seth Godin is great but what I love most about his books is the original thoughts of my own that they spur.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Graceful: Making a Difference in a World That Needs You 

The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice

Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work

The Editor in Chief: A Management Guide for Magazine Editors

Expressive Photography: The Shutter Sisters’ Guide to Shooting from the Heart

Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World

The Craftsman

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work I’m giving this book as holiday gifts to a couple of friends. It’s wonderful.

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. This was a re-read and I am currently re-re-reading it. Absolutely spellbinding.

Speaking of Lincoln, I finally got around to reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. The Spielberg Lincoln movie is based on this book and it is un-put-down-able.

The Feast Nearby: How I lost my job, buried a marriage, and found my way by keeping chickens, foraging, preserving, bartering, and eating locally (all on $40 a week). Loved this!

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. A look inside the orthodox Jewish community, although it is certainly told from a specific (and anti-) point of view.

Gypsy Boy: My Life in the Secret World of the Romany Gypsies One of the most interesting books I read this year. Absolutely fascinating.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This book is beautifully written and I learned so much about the poverty culture of India from it. It is also the most depressing thing I’ve ever read in my whole life. Just keep reminding yourself that it’s non-fiction and that there is no happy ending coming.

Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir The best combination of pathos and belly laughs. Shalom Auslander is a brilliant, hilarious writer.

The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir. This is one of my favorite memoirs of the year, about a boy growing up in Communist China and his grandmother’s obsession with buying her own casket.

A Year in the Village of Eternity: The Lifestyle of Longevity in Campodimele, Italy It’s really rare for a book to make you want to eat healthier and move to Italy at the same time. If I ever turn up missing, I’m in Campodimele.

Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction Weird and interesting.

We Is Got Him: The Kidnapping That Changed America An interesting story about the first child kidnapped for ransom in the United States.

Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris This book gave me actual nightmares. You have been warned.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) Lighthearted and delightful. Nothing earth shaking but very funny.

Joseph Anton: A Memoir I know I already blogged about how much I enjoyed this account of Salman Rushdie’s life while in hiding from an Islamic fatwa, but it’s really an enthralling read.

A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation This story is so crazy that you have to keep reminding yourself that it’s true. This American Life did a story on this case a few years ago and I was so excited that the book really fleshes out the missing details from the radio piece.

Fiction

Death Comes to Pemberley PD James plus Jane Austen. What’s not to like?

I read this whole mystery series, set in Reykjavi­k. Jar City is book one.

Frozen Assets: An Officer Gunnhildur Mystery is the first book in another mystery series set in Iceland. After reading this series I started thinking that everyone in Iceland was either a murderer or had been murdered.

How It All Began: A Novel. I liked this book a lot. It reminded me a bit of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which I also read this year and loved.

Roseanna: A Martin Beck Police Mystery I devoured the Marin Beck mystery series this year. It is one of the first police procedural series, originally published back in the ’60s. This book seriously has influenced nearly every mystery writer working today, and you’ll understand why when you read them. I was blue for a week when I finished the final book in the series.

A Discovery of Witches: A Novel  I liked this book very much, although I don’t know that I loved it as much as most people seemed to.

The Ladies Auxiliary: A Novel. This is a fictional account of living in an orthodox Jewish community in Memphis. The characters are very well drawn and haunting.

A Son of the Circus This was another re-read and I had forgotten how much I love this book. Almost my favorite John Irving book, after A Prayer for Owen Meany, my favorite book of all time ever.

Broken Harbor: A Novel  I am a complete and utter fool for anything by Tanya French. I can’t recommend them all highly enough.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A Novel All the popular bloggers raved about this book, so I was convinced I’d hate it, but instead I loved it. Which will teach me not to be such a book snob.

I would love to hear your favorite fiction and non-fiction book of 2012.