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.

As I’ve have gotten older, I have become That Dreaded Aunt that Gives Books for Presents. The thing is, the kids I know get so. much. crap, for their birthdays and Christmas. So much plastic. So much that will be forgotten and discarded within weeks of unwrapping. It exhausts me, and makes me sad.

So, instead of adding to the great pile of toys, I opt to give books. I know books will never be opened with the excitement of a noisy, brightly colored plastic thing, but books don’t mind not being the star of the show. Books will patiently wait on the shelf, and, long after all the flashy gifts are gone, those books will beckon. Books will take them places and hopefully become their life-long friends.  Books are sneaky like that.

Here’s a short list of some of my favorite knitting, yarn and sheep related picture books for your consideration.

The The New Sweater: The Hueys, Book 1

“The Hueys are small and mischievous, unique compared to the world’s other creatures–but hardly unique to one another. You see, each Huey looks the same, thinks the same, and does the same exact things. So you can imagine the chaos when one of them has the idea of knitting a sweater! It seems like a good idea at the time–he is quite proud of it, in fact–but it does make him different from the others. So the rest of the Hueys, in turn, decide that they want to be different too! How? By knitting the exact same sweater, of course!”

Red Knit Cap Girl

A hand knit hat and the moon? You know I’m going to love it! Actually this book is so lovely it made me teary.

“Red Knit Cap Girl lives with her animal friends in an enchanted forest. There is so much to see and do, but more than anything Red Knit Cap Girl wishes she could talk to the Moon. Join Red Knit Cap Girl and her forest friends on a journey of curiosity, imagination, and joy as they search for a way to meet the Moon.”

Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters

This is a great book for knitters with a sense of humor.

“A fastidious fellow, Lester likes everything just so. So when Cousin Clara moves in and knits him truly dreadful sweaters as fast as he can surreptitiously dispose of them, Lester must think of a way to get rid of them for good — or be doomed to look like a clown forever.”

 Yetsa’s Sweater

This picture book captures what really goes into knitting a sweater, the love and the care and the intention. It’s just achingly lovely and so full of truth.

“On a fresh spring day, young Yetsa, her mother and her grandmother gather to prepare the sheep fleeces piled in Grandma’s yard. As they clean, wash and dry the fleece, laughter and hard work connect the three generations. Through Yetsa’s sensual experience of each task, the reader joins this family in an old but vibrant tradition: the creation of Cowichan sweaters. Each sweater is unique, and its design tells a story. In Yetsa’s Sweater, that story is one of love, welcome and pride in a job well done.”

Shall I Knit You a Hat?: A Christmas Yarn

“To protect his ears from the cold and snow, Mother Rabbit knits Little Rabbit a hat. He loves his hat so much, he and his mother make them for all of his friends.”

Woolbur

I have blogged about Woolbur before; it’s one of my favorite picture books of all time ever. It’s fun and sweet and the message is that being yourself is okay. Every child should have this book.

Knitting Nell

From Booklist: ”Nell is a busy young knitter, but because she has a quiet voice and a hobby that doesn’t engender much excitement, she takes a back seat to her friends. Nell is not just knitting for herself; much of her knitting time is spent making scarves, blankets, and mittens for those in need. When the sweater that she enters in the county fair earns a blue ribbon and she gets a special medal for her good works, both Nell and her hobby become a lot more popular. Knitting may not seem a natural subject for a picture book, although more girls and boys are taking it up. However, Roth zeroes in on common kid traits such as shyness and a propensity to help others and wraps the knitting around them.”

Weaving the Rainbow

This one will be of particular interest to the weavers.

From School Library Journal: “In this satisfying picture book, a young woman raises sheep, shears them, cards and spins the wool, dyes the yarn, and weaves it at a loom. She is an artist who takes pleasure from and applies patience to each phase of her work. Lyon’s writing is lyrical, and the gentle pacing is calming. Terms like “yearling,” “skein,” “warp,” “weft,” “shuttle,” and “treadles” are understandable in context and bring richness to the text.”

Charlie Needs a Cloak

“A shepherd shears his sheep, cards and spins the wool, weaves and dyes the cloth, and sews a beautiful new red cloak.”

A New Coat for Anna

This book is sadly out of print but, if you are lucky, you can find a second hand copy. Although she has no money, Anna’s mother barters and trades with craftspeople to get a new coat for Anna. This book is a treasure.

The Goat in the Rug

This one is for the goat lovers!

A few weeks back, Amy Carol blogged about how much she was enjoying baking form a new cookbook called Vintage Cakes. Since cake is pretty much my raison d’être, I immediately went to Amazon and ordered a copy for myself. Only I ordered the wrong book. Because there are currently two brand-new cookbooks called Vintage Cakes.  Go figure.

Vintage Cakes: More Than 90 Heirloom Recipes for Tremendously Good Cakes

Vintage Cakes: Timeless Recipes for Cupcakes, Flips, Rolls, Layer, Angel, Bundt, Chiffon, and Icebox Cakes for Today’s Sweet Tooth by Julie Richardson

The good news is that both books are well worth having. Each is filled with recipes for cakes that I have only read about in British “Big House” literature and seen on BBC dramas. Lardy cake, anyone?

I haven’t baked from either book yet, but I have planned which cake I’m going to make every week from now through the holidays, starting with the Victoria Sandwich Cake on the cover of the Jane Brocket book.

If you care about cake like I do -and I’m not sure anybody cares about cake like I do-  you need these two books.

The Life of a Bowerbird: Creating Beautiful Interiors with the Things You Collect by Sibella Court

This is the most charming and inspiring book I’ve seen in a long time. I am a big fan of Sibella Court’s previous book but it’s hard to explain exactly what kind of book this is. It’s not a “how to” book but it’s a lot more than just eye candy. FYI, Bowerbirds are most known for their unique courtship behaviour, where males build a structure and decorate it with sticks and brightly coloured objects in an attempt to attract a mate. Delightful!

Remember when I was reading that book that I couldn’t put down long enough to pee?

Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie is absolutely un-put-down-able. This memoir chronicles Rushdie’s 10 years in hiding  beginning in 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini placed a fatwa on him for a dream sequence he wrote about in his fictional work, The Satanic Verses. I remember some of the events in this book vividly but, when reading Joseph Anton, I was completely amazed by how much of what was reported in the press at the time was completely factually incorrect.

Joseph Anton is by far the best memoir I’ve read in ages and it’s packed with awesome details about Britian’s version of the witness protection program. For example, not only did Rushdie have to pay for his own ever-changing hiding places, he also had to find them himself! He even had to pay for the armored car that his government protectors drove him around in. There are also real and serious issue about freedom of speech addressed here. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)by Mindy Kaling

Okay, I admit to having a total fangirl crush on Mindy Kaling, actress, producer and director from The Office and now her own adorable show, The Mindy Project. This book is pretty much the polar opposite of the Salman Rushdie book. It’s just fun, although the writing is smart and funny and charming.

Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris

Okay, in my defense, this book was a late-night, Ambien-induced Kindle purchase that I have no memory of actually making. But when I finished what I was reading and needed to start something new, it was already downloaded so I started it. And finished it the same night. This book scared the socks off me! I actually got up in the middle of the night to make sure all the doors were locked because I was terrified of a serial killer from the 1940s. I mean, even if he hadn’t been executed for his crimes, he’s be dead by now anyway! That’s how scary this book is.

But it’s also a fascinating look into Occupied Paris during World War II. I knew very little about the history of this era in France but I will definitely be reading more deeply on the subject. (My friend Amy recommends Sarah’s Key, another non-fiction book set in that era.)

My Ideal Bookshelf edited By Thessaly La Forge, with art by Jane Mount

I am so excited about this book that I’m writing about it even though I haven’t received my pre-ordered copy yet. Here’s Amazon’s description:

“The books that we choose to keep –let alone read– can say a lot about who we are and how we see ourselves. In MY IDEAL BOOKSHELF, dozens of leading cultural figures share the books that matter to them most; books that define their dreams and ambitions and in many cases helped them find their way in the world. Contributors include Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Keller, Michael Chabon, Alice Waters, James Patterson, Maira Kalman, Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, Miranda July, Alex Ross, Nancy Pearl, David Chang, Patti Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Dave Eggers, among many others.”

Do you have any great book recommendations? I would love to hear them. I’ve been thinking about starting a JMF book club; let me know if you would be interested in participating.