Happy new year!

I'm going to start the new year by looking back on the old one in the true style of a bookworm -- by picking out a few of the best books I read in 2012. I'm going to limit myself to six and they'll all be books that I first read in 2012, rather than books I was re-reading (I re-read a lot of books). I like to keep track of the books I read and I also love making lists, so over the course of the year I've written down every book that I've read and the date that I finished reading it. This includes novels, poetry anthologies, plays, and non-fiction but, fairly arbitrarily, excludes manga. I'm well aware that I've mentioned most of these novels before now, but you and I have both probably forgotten what I said about them anyway. Right: here we go!

12th January: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
I know I never stop talking about John Green, and I know I've talked about this book before, but that's because he's a fantastic author and it's a fantastic book. TFIOS is about Hazel Grace Lancaster, a sixteen year old who is making the long walk to the grave as she deals with her terminal cancer. It's a cancer book, but it's so much more than that; John Green doesn't glamourise death and doesn't make his characters into perfect little heroes. There is so much honesty in this story and such wonderful characters that are unashamed to be intelligent but still unquestionably teenagers with flaws and misconceptions. This is the only novel I've ever finished and then immediately gone back to read again just days later, because there was still so much of me invested in the characters and I couldn't let it go without a second read.

3rd February: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Uglies is the first book in a trilogy (though there's a fourth, separate book) of dystopian novels -- yes, I know I don't shut up about dystopia either. I struggled to think of a particular reason why I loved this series so much, because I never connected with the protagonist and had a love-hate relationship with just about every other character. But maybe that was exactly what I liked so much; there wasn't a good guy and a bad guy, no faceless force like in so much dystopian fiction. There were just people. Complicated people who did stupid things they thought were for the best. Westerfeld created a world set far off in the future, with incredible technology and societies we can barely imagine -- and then he put ordinary people into this extraordinary world and made it so much more real.

17th March - Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
I never quite know whether to love Shakespeare's work or not, because sometimes I adore it (Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream), sometimes I hate it (Macbeth) and sometimes I'm in the middle (Othello). Julius Caesar was definitely up at the top end until half of the characters decide to independently commit suicide, which seemed a little unlikely. Still, it's a brilliant play and the portrayal of not only individual characters but of groups is very interesting -- the illogical and violent actions of a mob, for example. One of the best qualities of Julius Caesar is its quotability; look it up, if you're interested.

9th April: Divergent by Veronica Roth
Another dystopian novel and also part of a trilogy, Divergent covers the topics of loyalty, strength, personal identity and control with a remarkable brutality. In this novel, characters are split into factions at the age of sixteen based on single personality traits: kind of like Hogwarts houses, but factions are far more isolated from each other and essentially decide your entire life, including the job you'll have and the people you're able to befriend. The exploration of weaknesses in Divergent is fascinating, because even the strongest people can be bettered by their fears in simulations designed to test your raw abilities.

18th July: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Up until this year I'd never read anything by Jane Austen because various people had told me they didn't like her work; what convinced me to try Pride and Prejudice was The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a video blog adaptation of the novel. Based on what I'd been told, I expected to be bored, to have to wade through it, to not empathise with any of the characters -- I've never been more wrong. The world Austen creates is so delightfully complex that even the slightest plot twist complicates everything; not only does she write about the Bennet family (which would be complicated enough), but she writes about their friends, neighbours, distant relatives, and anybody who remotely affects their lives. The characters' lives intertwine beautifully and the analysis of character flaws extends from the rich and prideful to the selfless and humble.

27th October: The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin
This is actually a poetry anthology I read for school, but it deserves to go on this list. The first Philip Larkin poem I read was, unfortunately, Here, which I was unimpressed with because I don't find a train to be the most thoughtful metaphor for an emotional journey. However, Larkin grew on me; his poetry may be miserable, but his different explorations of death are fascinating in their variety and I frankly adore the language he uses. It took time for me to see more than moaning and a sarcastic outlook to Larkin's poetry, but there was a lot more to see once I got there.

What were your favourite books of 2012? I have a whole new pile of novels to read once January exams are over, and I'm looking forward to starting my list of favourite books for 2013!