If you’re like me, you keep a list of books you read, and at this time of year, you may run your finger back over it, remembering not just the plots, the soul-lifting favorites, and the drudges cast aside in frustration. You also remember the when and where of each book. This one on a plane to somewhere cold, that one in bed on a warm summer night. That list, even if it is just titles and authors and nothing more, is a diary in layers. Your days, other plots, imaginary people.
And so when, in preparing our annual Year in Reading series, we ask our esteemed guests to tell us about the “best” book(s) they read all year, we do it not just because we want a great book recommendation from someone we admire (we do) and certainly not because we want to cobble together some unwieldy Top 100 of 2011 list (we don’t). We do it because we want a peek into that diary. And in the responses we learn how anything from a 300-year-old work to last summer’s bestseller reached out and insinuated itself into a life outside those pages.
With this in mind, for an eighth year, we asked some of our favorite writers, thinkers, and readers to look back, reflect, and share. Their charge was to name, from all the books they read this year, the one(s) that meant the most to them, regardless of publication date. Grouped together, these ruminations, cheers, squibs, and essays will be a chronicle of reading and good books from every era. We hope you find in them seeds that will help make your year in reading in 2012 a fruitful one.
As we have in prior years, the names of our 2011 “Year in Reading” contributors will be unveiled one at a time throughout the month as we post their contributions. You can bookmark this post and follow the series from here, or load up the main page for more new Year in Reading posts appearing at the top every day, or you can subscribe to our RSS feed and follow along in your favorite feed reader.
- Stephen Dodson, coauthor of Uglier Than a Monkey’s Armpit, proprietor of Languagehat.
- Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad.
- Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Aphabet.
- Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints.
- Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin.
- Nick Moran, The Millions intern.
- Dan Kois, senior editor at Slate.
- John Williams, founding editor of The Second Pass.
- Michael Bourne, staff writer at The Millions.
- Michael Schaub, book critic for NPR.org.
- Scott Esposito, coauthor of Lady Chatterley’s Brother, proprietor of Conversational Reading.
- Hannah Pittard, author of The Fates Will Find Their Way.
- Benjamin Hale, author of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore.
- Geoff Dyer, author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition.
- Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding.
- Deborah Eisenberg, author of Collected Stories.
- Duff McKagan, author of It’s So Easy: And Other Lies, former bassist for Guns N’ Roses.
- Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.
- Amy Waldman, author of The Submission.
- Charles Baxter, author of Gryphon: New and Selected Stories.
- David Bezmozgis, author of The Free World.
- Emma Straub, author of Other People We Married.
- Adam Ross, author of Ladies and Gentlemen.
- Philip Levine, Poet Laureate of the United States.
- Mayim Bialik, actress, author of Beyond the Sling.
- Hamilton Leithauser, lead singer of The Walkmen.
- Chris Baio, bassist for Vampire Weekend.
- Bill Morris, staff writer at The Millions.
- Rosecrans Baldwin, author of You Lost Me There.
- Carolyn Kellogg, staff writer at the LA Times.
- Mark O’Connell, staff writer at The Millions.
- Emily M. Keeler, Tumblrer at The Millions, books editor at The New Inquiry.
- Edan Lepucki, staff writer at The Millions, author of If You’re Not Yet Like Me.
- Jami Attenberg, author of The Melting Season.
- Dennis Cooper, author of The Marbled Swarm.
- Alex Ross, author of Listen to This, New Yorker music critic.
- Mona Simpson, author of My Hollywood.
- Yaşar Kemal, author of They Burn the Thistles.
- Siddhartha Deb, author of The Beautiful and The Damned: A Portrait of the New India.
- David Vann, author of Legend of a Suicide.
- Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
- Edie Meidav, author of Lola, California.
- Ward Farnsworth, author of Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric.
- Daniel Orozco, author of Orientation and Other Stories.
- Hannah Nordhaus, author of The Beekeeper’s Lament.
- Brad Listi, founder of The Nervous Breakdown.
- Alex Shakar, author of Luminarium.
- Denise Mina, author of The End of the Wasp Season.
- Christopher Boucher, author of How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive.
- Parul Sehgal, books editor at NPR.org.
- Patrick Brown, staff writer at The Millions.
- Jacob Lambert, freelance writer, columnist, contributor to The Millions.
- Emily St. John Mandel, author of Last Night in Montreal, staff writer at The Millions.
- Kevin Hartnett, staff writer for The Millions.
- Garth Risk Hallberg, author of A Field Guide to the North American Family, staff writer at The Millions.
- Jeff Martin, author of The Late American Novel.
- Jane Alison, author of The Sisters Antipodes.
- Matthew Gallaway, author of The Metropolis Case.
- Nuruddin Farah, author of Crossbones.
- Natasha Wimmer, translator of The Third Reich.
- Jean-Christophe Vatlat, author of Aurorarama.
- Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Illumination.
- Brooke Hauser, author of The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens.
- Belinda McKeon, author of Solace.
- Ellis Avery, author of The Teahouse Fire.
- Buzz Poole, author of Madonna of the Toast.
- A.N. Devers, editor of Writers’ Houses.
- Mark Bibbins, author of The Dance of No Hard Feelings.
- Elissa Schappell, author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls.
- Rachel Syme, NPR contributor.
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles
The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews
Like what you see? Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.
E-mail
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Support the Millions
subscribe to our RSS feed
become a fan on Facebook
at 12:08 pm on December 1, 2011
These books really stood out for me: The Passage by Justin Cronin; Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro; The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood; I Knew This Much Is True by Wally Lamb; The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins.
at 2:10 pm on December 1, 2011
The really good ones:
State of Wonder-Ann Patchett
The Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson NF
Ester and Ruzya – Masha Gessen NF
Train Dreams – Denis Johnson
Unnatural Selection – Mara Hvistendahl NF
Born in Africa-Quest for Origin of Humans – Martin Meredith NF
Sacred Trash – Hoffman and Cole NF
The Free World – David Bezmozgis
Principles of Uncertainty – Maira Kalman
The Singer’s Gun – our own Emily Mandel
Daniel Stern, Interpreter – Ludmila Ulitskaya
Ether & Stories – Evgenia Citkowitz
The China Study – Dr. Campbell (life changing book) NF
and especially Binocular Vision – Edith Pearlman
and my very guilty wonderful pleasure: The Jane Whitefield detective series by Thomas Perry read in order of publication
can hardly wait for other Millions readers to chime in with their lists.
at 3:33 pm on December 1, 2011
Secret Daughter by Shilpi Gowda
at 4:40 pm on December 1, 2011
I just wrote a blog post about this, this article serving as the inspiration. I’d have to say, looking back at my list (and I do record them), my top three favorites are:
“The Yacoubian Building” by Alaa Al Aswany.
“What was the Hipster” (non-fiction) published by N+1
“Super Sad True Love Story” by Gary Shteyngart
at 1:23 pm on December 2, 2011
Some of this year’s highlights have been:
The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins,
White Teeth by Zadie Smith,
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz,
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler,
Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy,
Toni Morrison’s Beloved,
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte,
Eavan Boland’s Outside History and Object Lessons,
ans Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers.
at 4:02 pm on December 2, 2011
I read a lot of good books this year, but without question the best was Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante, which I only heard about through my local bookstore, The Book Lady in Savannah, Ga. Powerful, heartbreaking, confusing. Brilliant plotting and writing and the depth and horror of it was still occurring to me days after I finished reading it.
at 8:31 am on December 3, 2011
I’ll do a full wrap up at the end of the year on my blog, but a few stand-outs for me this year were:
The Memory Chalet – Tony Judt
Angel – Elizabeth Taylor (the writer, not the actress)
To the End of the Land – David Grossman
at 11:00 am on December 3, 2011
I always look forward to this feature each year. With a month left to go, my favorite books of the year are (in no particular order):
Meditations in Green, by Stephen Wright
Loving, by Henry Green
Party Going, by Henry Green
Voss, by Patrick White
Troubles, by J. G. Farrell
The Ambassadors, by Henry James
Washington Square, by Henry James
Warlock, by Oakley Hall
Wizard of the Crow, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Sanctuary, by William Faulkner
Don Quixote, by Cervantes (Edith Grossman’s translation)
Death of the Fox, by George Garrett
Mr. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell
The Big Rock Candy Mountain, by Wallace Stegner
Parades End, by Ford Madox Ford
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, by Vladimir Nabokov
at 9:08 am on December 6, 2011
[...] of my favourite book-related websites, The Millions, chooses to do a Year in Reading feature instead; they ask various contributors such as Jennifer Egan “to name, from all the [...]
at 8:12 pm on December 6, 2011
[...] Millions is running their fantastic annual feature called “The Year in Reading,” where authors recommend books they’ve read in 2011. So far the list of writers [...]
at 8:05 pm on December 7, 2011
A few from a very long list…
Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce, both by Joseph Boyden
Lev Grossman’s books, The Magicians and The Magician King
Rondo by Kazimierz Brandys
The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Elizabeth and Hazel by David Margolick
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje
Objects of Our Affection by Lisa Tracy
To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt
The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
Kate Atkinson’s novels featuring Jackson Brodie
at 1:56 pm on December 8, 2011
[...] account as my guide, here is my ‘Year in Reading’ a la what the Millions is doing over on its site. Looking back on a whole year I’m sad I didn’t get to as many books as I wished to, but [...]
at 4:38 pm on December 8, 2011
My list is classics-heavy because I’m filling some gaps in my literary education, but I managed to read some modern literature as well.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant (non-fiction)
Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. Le Guin
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht
Reamde by Neal Stephenson
Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Hombre by Elmore Leonard
The book I’m currently reading, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, will make my year-end list as well.
at 4:56 pm on December 9, 2011
[...] and have found more than a few recommendations there. For the 8th year, The Millions is featuring “A Year in Reading” (#yir2011 on Twitter), where famous authors and celebrities write a short post about what [...]
at 7:07 am on December 12, 2011
[...] The Millions kicks off its always entertaining and enlightening “Year in Reading” series. [...]
at 1:35 pm on December 12, 2011
[...] to offer the highlights from their own reading in the previous year, a project simply called A Year in Reading. Inspired by this, I offer some of the best books that I read in 2011 that I recommend without [...]
at 8:49 pm on December 12, 2011
[...] #yir2011 pieces today. Check out which books made the cut for @EdanL, @mrkocnnll, and @emilymkeeler bit.ly/v5qsZU 12 [...]
at 3:09 pm on December 13, 2011
Train Dreams – Denis Johnson
Just Kids – Patti Smith
Into the Whirlwind – Eugenia Ginzburg
Cain – Jse Saramago
Comedy in a Minor Key – Hans Keilson
In A Strange Room – Damon Galgut
Sarah Bakewell book on Montaigne
Rin Tin Tin – Susan Orlean
Almost Dead – Assaf Gavron
The World Without Us – Alan Weisman
Binocular Vision – Edith Pearlman
at 8:28 pm on December 14, 2011
The whole Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.
at 12:49 pm on December 15, 2011
[...] The Millions : A Year in Reading 2011. [...]
at 2:04 pm on December 15, 2011
[...] like Salon, The Millions, and The Guardian go straight to the authors for their recommendations. I decided to do the same, [...]
at 9:54 am on December 17, 2011
[...] trying to finding a good read/gift this winter, how about one of the many from The Millions’ A Year in Reading 2011 (as picked by many excellent contributors such as authors and [...]
at 9:11 am on December 19, 2011
[...] books everyone has read in 2011. (The discussion was inspired by the Millions’ great series, A Year in Reading.) When I looked back through my 2011 reads, I was surprised to find that there were exactly five [...]
at 1:02 pm on December 20, 2011
[...] year The Millions has a feature called “A Year in Reading” that I really enjoy. Throughout the month of December, they publish a bunch of short little [...]
at 4:48 pm on December 20, 2011
[...] The Millions year in reading. [...]
at 8:09 am on December 22, 2011
[...] More from A Year [...]
at 10:50 am on December 27, 2011
[...] in Ireland, read and enjoyed a couple of my favorite novels in 2011, Anna Karenina and Gilead. The Millions has an entire series of posts by their staff writers, and by other selected authors and… My suggestion for Mr. O’Connell: War and Peace by Tolstoy is just as good as Anna Karenina, [...]
at 5:00 pm on December 31, 2011
[...] a few predictably iconoclastic exceptions, are pretty much identical). Like The Millions‘ A Year in Reading list, where writers describe their favorite reads this year (regardless of the books’ publication [...]
at 5:09 am on January 4, 2012
[...] because they’re not all albums from 2011. This is also what I like about The Millions’ annual Year in Reading: the picks aren’t restricted to stuff that was released during this last spin around the sun. I [...]
at 1:54 am on January 12, 2012
[...] at it again, with a couple of strong recent posts. If you prefer to look back at 2011, try their Year in Reading, which asked a long list of authors, including some well known ones like Colum McCann, Jennifer [...]
at 12:10 pm on January 15, 2012
[...] roundup gleaned from The Millions’ excellent Year in Reading series. I loved the Year in Reading series, partially because it focused on favorite books read, [...]
at 12:15 am on March 19, 2012
[...] chose this book, and several others, when I was reading The Millions: A Year in Reading series where they ask authors, editors, musicians and actors to write about the best books [...]
at 5:24 am on April 9, 2012
[...] literary underclass barred from the publishing establishment.” The Millions‘ “A Year in Reading” feature is underway. Colum McCann, Jennifer Egan and Michael Schaub are among the contributors in [...]
at 6:44 pm on September 21, 2012
[...] One was that Philip Levine, the U.S. Poet Laureate for 2011-12, selected it as his entry for The Millions’ A Year in Reading 2011 book list. Ever since I read his seminal collection What Work Is some twenty years ago, I have deeply admired [...]
at 8:02 am on January 23, 2013
[...] of marginalia. I’ve followed in the footsteps of writers like Sam Anderson who catalogs his year in marginalia over at The Millions and the New York Times. In fact, Anderson’s work inspired me to write [...]
2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
Best of the Millennium; Readers' List
A new way to browse The Millions! Books and Reviews
Bookmark these links to stay on top of the hottest books:
Hot 100 | Awards | Movers & Shakers | Bargain Books | Kindle Bestsellers
Subscribe to RSS feeds for new releases: Literary fiction (for Kindle) | Biography | Graphic Novels | Food | History | Nonfiction | Science | Travel | New Release RSS Feeds for Movies, Music and More
More From Notable Articles
More From Year in Reading
Other Recent Articles
Recent Comments
2012, 2011, 2010, 2009,
2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
Readers' List
© Mmix The Millions. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a cc attribution-noncommercial-Sharealike 2.5 License.