The List of Books I read in 2012

The Likeness by Tana French
This Beautiful Life by Helen Schuman
Scarecrow Returns by Matthew Reilly
Without Fail by lee Child
The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern
Gideon’s Corpse by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston
Taken by Robert Crais
Persuader by Lee Child
The Incendiary’s Trail by James McCreet
Paydirt by Paul levine
Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith
The Vice Society by James McCreet
The Last Child by John Hart
Victims by Jonathan Kellerman
The Enemy by Lee Child
A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch
One Shot by lee Child
The Thieves’ Labyrinth by James McCreet
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Dark Streets of Whitechapel by R. barri Flowers
Fall From Grace by Richard North Patterson
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan
The Hard Way by Lee Child
Waiting For Sunrise by William Boyd
The Anatomist’s Apprentice by Tessa Harris
Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
The Sins of the Father by Jeffrey Archer
The Yard by Alex Grecian
Nothing to Lose by Lee Child
The Innocent by David Baldacci
Some Danger Involved by Wil Thomas
Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
The Baker Street Letters by Michael Robertson
61 Hours by Lee Child
A Test of Wills by Charles Todd
Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva
Worth Dying For by Lee Child
In The Shadow of Gotham by Stephanie Pintoff
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters
The Affair by Lee Child
Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes by Bernard Schaffer
The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell
They Never Die Quietly by D.M. Annechino
Winter of the World by Ken Follett
The Panther by Nelson DeMille
The Kenendy Tapes by Ernest R. May
The Masked Adversary by James McCreet
The Black Box by Michael Connelly
Blood Atonement by Dan Waddell
Black Fire by Robert Graysmith
Threat Vector by Tom Clancy

The Classics:
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Animal Farm by George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

Short Stories:
Extraction by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston
Second Son by Lee Child
Deep Down by Lee Child
The Book Case by Nelson DeMille

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You’ve Been Waiting For It All Year…

Friends:

You waited all year and now, the time has come, for me to reveal my Top 10 books of 2012. Before we get to the list, a few notes: Last year my goal was to read 50 books and I met the goal. This year, my goal was to improve on the previous goal by 10%; safe to say that I shattered that goal with 68 books read. Coupled with that was a goal to read more classics of literature and I feel some measure of success by having read 14 of them. Also, a genre in which I typically avoid, I read 4 short stories this year. According to “goodreads.com”, a total of 24,465 pages were read.

On the whole, I would have to say that I was fairly satisfied with the books I read this year. Not only did I read the authors of whom I am familiar, but I also read quite a few authors who are new to me and have found some new favorites as a result. To provide you with my “Best Of” list, I have broken them down into the Top 10 contemporary fiction and the Top 5 of the classics.

So without further ado, I present the Top 10 contemporary fiction of 2012, in reverse order:

10) Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child. Of the books I read this year, I read the most books by Lee Child in the Jack Reacher series. Noteworthy now as the film starring Tom Cruise, Jack Reacher is a character I began reading at the end of 2011 and caught up with in 2012, reading a total of 10 Reacher books. This one is the first of two on the list. This one had it all; a really scary and sadistic bad guy, a good thinking-man’s plot, and classic Reacher action and attitude. Reacher is an action lover’s Sherlock Holmes and he definitely delivered in this installment.

9) The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell. Murders are being committed in modern day London and the only person who can find the killer is a genealogist? A fantastic first book of which there has been one other so far. A scary killer with a motive based hundreds of years in the past. Is he trying to correct a travesty of justice from years ago? A wonderful premise and perfect execution.

8) The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern. A fantasy of a novel about a travelling circus that only appears at night and the love affair between two magicians who have been pitted in a game of wits against each other unknowingly. Wonderful eye candy, with terrific descriptions of the circus and its characters. The best word I can use to describe it is whimsical.

7) Taken by Robert Crais. The books of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are among my favorites and this one delivers. Two lovers are kidnapped outside of Palm Springs by… who? Only Elvis and Joe can figure it out. And the only way to do so may just be for Elvis to be taken. A great mystery and classic Elvis and Joe action.

6) Winter of the World by Ken Follett. The second installment in his Century Trilogy, the events of World War II are chronicled through the eyes of our main characters, the offspring of the characters who experienced the beginning of the 20th century. As a history major and lover of historical fiction, this massive book delivered with non-stop excitement and tragedy.

5) The Last Child by John Hart. A thirteen year old boy’s twin sister goes missing after school one day and never returns. Is she dead or kidnapped? After a year everyone seems to have given up except for the boy, determined to learn the truth about his sister. As a twin myself I was drawn to this book, to experience the lengths one twin would go to learn the truth about his sister. A constant hum of foreboding permeated this one until the last pages when the mystery was revealed in heart-wrenching fashion.

4) The Black Box by Michael Connelly. No “Best Of” list would be complete without an entry from my all-time favorite Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch. This time Harry is investigating a murder committed 20 years ago during the LA riots, but the brass wants him to back off. How would it look if the murder of a white woman is solved 20 years later, when so many murders of African-Americans go unsolved? This one had it all, politics and intrigue and international ramifications. Classic Harry Bosch.

3) The Yard by Alex Grecian. Probably the book I most looked forward to this year. In the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper killings, Scotland Yard creates a new division to deal with the new onslaught of murders. A terrific use of the time and locale to create an enthralling mystery. Cannot wait for the next book.

2) Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. This one was on many “Best Of” lists a few years ago and now I know why. A portrayal of Vietnam told from the viewpoint of the people who were there. It does for the Vietnam War what “The Naked and the Dead” by Norman Mailer did for World War II. Harrowing and terrifying and yet human and passionate. At the end of the book you are left with a new perspective on the horrors our troops experienced while fighting for a cause they didn’t understand. Absolutely terrific.

Matterhorn would have been my number 1 except for:

1) The Incendiary’s Trail by James McCreet. It is early Victorian England and a killer is on the loose. How do I know this was my favorite book of 2012? Because from the opening lines until its last words, a smile was on my face a mile wide. If I were to write a book, I would want it to be this one. First, the story is told to us by a narrator who does not factor into the story, however he treats the reader as if we are a fly on the wall in every scene, bringing us into the fold as a co-conspirator, setting foot in places we should not be. Add to that the killing of conjoined-twins from a circus freak show as the first murder, spice in detectives who are competing to find the killer, a nasty deformed villain, and other assorted colorful characters and you have perfection. After this one, I devoured the other 3 in the series and wait with baited breath for the next one.

Now for the classics:

5) Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. A massive book, measuring 800 pages in length, it was Dickens’ last book and possibly his best. The events all surround an inheritance, with a cavalcade of classic Dickens characters and perfect prose to create a full and complete novel. Some of the passages are so beautiful, you wonder if anyone will ever be able to write like that again.

4) The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. The first detective novel written by a close friend of Dickens, The Moonstone involves a cursed diamond that goes missing and uses multiple narrators to piece together mystery of The Moonstone. A little too long but a terrific use of many voices to piece together one story. Which one is telling the truth? Want to talk about an unreliable narrator? One of the voices is of the culprit himself/herself. Can you figure it out?

3) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Astounding that a book written in the 1950s could predict the future so well. Intriguing and thought-provoking. The only downside was the ending; a little too neat and tidy, but a good read nonetheless.

2) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Classic Goth novel. You could feel the darkness surrounding the character, the mystery of Dr. Jekyll and his experiments. And who is it that is lurking in the shadows at night? The only drawback is that it wasn’t longer.

And finally—

1) Animal Farm by George Orwell. Why, oh why, did I not read this book sooner? Want to talk about having a smile on your face when reading a book? This was it. I read it in one seating and it was enthralling and comedic and entertaining and, most of all, though-provoking. A perfect novel and a strong example of why pigs are the worst species to be in charge. I loved this book!

So those are my Top 10 and Top 5 of 2012. What were yours?

“We need to be together here in this room. … We needed to be together to show that we are together and united.”

Friends:

The tragedy in Connecticut from last week was devastating and tragic. I cannot remember a shooting at a school of children so young since the shooting at the Jewish Community Center in Northridge in 1999 (the same community center I went to for preschool). As a parent, the thought of my children having a gun pointed at them for no reason at all and at such a young age is horrifying and my heart goes out to the parents of those children who were so tragically and cowardly murdered. I am not going to go into a discussion about gun control or anything political like that. In fact, the tragedy is still so fresh in my mind that I am finding it difficult actually processing it. Instead, I wanted to offer a re-print of a post from October, 2011. I hope that my positive feelings were not simple naivete, but were reflective of a good and decent society; not one that breeds monsters who eliminate kindergartners like they were characters in a video game.

Make sure to hug your kids and tell them you love them… and have a great week.

Friends:

Before I had children I wanted nothing to do with them. Which is why society never ceases to impress me.

When our oldest daughter was a baby (she is almost 6 now), people would stop us everywhere we went to say hello her. They would talk to her, make faces, coochie-coo her and all that nonsense that makes people look so ridiculous. They would let their guard down for just a moment to bask in the glory that is a newborn. Even before she was born, it seemed that everywhere we went people wanted to celebrate with us this miracle growing inside the mommy’s tummy.

At the time I thought it was some weird alignment of the stars. For the first 30 years of my life, I avoided children like they were the plague. Not only was there a fear of what to do with them, I never went out of my way to say hello to a baby or to tell a mother how beautiful her daughter was. If you wanted to have kids, go with my best blessings, so long as it didn’t disrupt my life. And I thought everyone else felt the same way.

Which is why the experience we have been having with our younger daughter (turning 1 in a few weeks) is so confounding. Just like with her older sister, people seem to gravitate to Kensi. They want to talk to her, to make faces, to wave to her and blow kisses. You would think that it would only be the women, the more sensitive and expressive of our society. But to my astonishment, that wasn’t the case. Kensi’s smile and laughter traverses gender lines, racial lines, age lines. We recently took our daughters across the country and everywhere we went it seemed that people wanted to meet Kensi. People seemed to take pride in being able to get Kensi to giggle or smile. And it brightens their day, even if just for a minute.

This got me to thinking, of course. What happens to us that people stop treating us the way they did when we were babies? We all can agree that a pregnancy is a miracle. We are happy for the mother, we want to rub the belly and ask inappropriate questions. And when the baby is born, we celebrate it and give our best of wishes. But sometime between infancy and adulthood, we as a society undergo a change. We make the determination that the child is no longer worth our extra-effort. We no longer go out of our way to try to make him or her smile. Something changes in us.

And that to me is a failing of our society. Babies are a miracle, which means that each one of us is a miracle. But we forget that. Why?

Look, I am not so naïve as to think that everyone sees babies the same way. I already told you that I was immune to a baby’s charms. But wouldn’t society be a better place if we treated people as the miracles that they are? We don’t have to love everybody; in fact, we don’t even have to like everybody. But if we at least acknowledged that each one of us is a miracle in our own right, that we were all at one time cooing babies that people wanted to shower with affection, wouldn’t that give us some perspective before we are mean to each other?

It’s just so confusing to me that people can make ridiculous faces at a baby one minute and the next minute forget how to treat their fellow man. It simply seems to me that if we stop and think for a minute about how we would treat someone if they were a giggling, smiling baby, that we would treat people better.

Society confuses me, but it also surprises me in such pleasant ways. To see a fellow human being, a stranger, let his guard down, to devote a few seconds to a smiling little girl gives me hope for our world.

Just one example-we were in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in July and had stopped to look at a map of the battlefields. As we were getting our bearings, a man in his 50s, obviously hardened by life with less teeth than Kensi, hobbled up to her. Just by looking at him you wouldn’t have thought he had a compassionate bone in his body. Kensi looked at him, a blank slate with no preconceived notions about the world. She smiled… and he smiled. And then he started speaking the gibberish that babies seem to love and then asked if he could take her home with him. Kensi had made his day and he had made mine, giving me hope for our world. Babies have the ability to soften our hearts; why can’t we maintain that softened heart?

Have a great week.

 

“Come, Zill. What you need to do is get your feet hot and your head cool.”

Friends:

We are coming to the end of the year, a time when we celebrate with family and friends and give thanks for all of the wonderful blessings that we have.  We also will look back at the year that is now concluding and identify the highlights and lowlights, the successes and failures, and the seized opportunities and missed opportunities.  And we will look to the New Year as a new beginning, a chance to right some wrongs, and a clean slate on which we can paint anew.  You may not actually make New Year’s resolutions, but we all in some manner or other take stock of the past year and assert a desire to make a change.

At the beginning of the year I made a decision that I needed to read more.  Not that I need to read more books, per se, but I needed to read better books, to broaden my own horizons.  We have talked about it frequently throughout the past year and I stayed with my commitment to read more classics, to try to ascertain why certain books are taught in the schools and what about them has allowed them to stand the test of time.  In a few weeks I will give you my top 10 list for the year in reading and I will include a list of those classics that I read as well.  But the book I am reading right now had a passage which resonated with me and that I wanted to share with you, especially given the fact that the year is coming to an end and 2013 is a blank slate.

The book is called “Babbitt” and was written in 1922 by Sinclair Lewis.  Lewis a few years later won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “Arrowsmith” and was known for portraying through his writings his criticisms of American society and capitalism.  “Babbitt” is no exception, focusing on the life and times of the average middle-class American man, focused more on success and stature than on a life of substance.  A real estate broker (insistent that he be called a “realtor,” as if that held more special cache), he struggles with his concept of the American dream and not only his place in it, but how others view him in it. 

With that in mind, here is the passage I wanted to share with you:

“Look here, old Paul, you do a lot of talking
about kicking things in the face, but you never kick.
Why don’t you?”

We all get complacent and lazy, each and every one of us.  We look at the beginning of the New Year as a chance to start fresh, but in all fairness, how many of us actually get off our duff and do something?  It is far easier to sit and complain, opine as to how things can get better, or actually come out and make predictions about how things will be better, but do we take that step?  In many instances no. 

Two things about the passage I shared with you are interesting and significant.  First is the fact that the main character is the one asking the question.  I know you may not have read the book before, but from what I told you, you can see that there is nothing particularly dramatic or trailblazing about him.  He is content living in his own world and not making waves so long as he rises in the esteem of others.  But inside he is constantly making promises and commitments to himself that he doesn’t keep.  He says he will stop smoking, but always says that one more won’t hurt.  He says he needs to exercise more and will walk to lunch, but decides to drive to lunch just this one last time. 

And yet he is the one asking the question of his friend, Paul.  It is clearly a call for help from Babbitt who, for some reason or another, cannot seem to get out of his own way to make a change in his own life.  The passage struck me merely because it felt like the pot calling the kettle black.  We all give advice to others, but when do we actually take that advice?  Do as I say, not as I do…

The second thing that struck me about the passage was the response:  “Nobody does.  Habit too strong.”  Now isn’t that the truth??

2012 is coming to a close and 2013 is wide open.  Now is the chance to kick things in the face.