I read 72 books this year, which is more than my usual count, probably because I started reading more graphic novels again, which tend to read fast. The best book I read this year was probably Twitter and Tear Gas. If you want to understand why the civil rights movement and the labor movement won, while "occupy wall street" and the "arab spring" failed, this is the book to read. Zeynep Tufekci's writing is worth reading wherever you can find it. It's rare to find a book where I regretted checking it out from the library instead of buying it, and this book is exceptional. Other exceptional non-fiction were Abundance and The Woman Behind the New Deal. I will admit that I treated those two books as escapist fiction into a world where the American people actually elected leaders who could do good things.
The best fiction I read this year was Exhalation, but of course that was a re-read, so it shouldn't count. The best novel that was new to me was probably Norwegian Wood. It got me to read more Haruki Murakami, though that binge didn't last. A runner up would be A Widow for One Year.
The best graphic novel I read was Flashpoint. It's an excellent story and very much worth your time, even if you're not normally into superheroes.
I only got through one Audio Book this year, The Power Broker. It's well worth your time and you should read it in conjunction with Abundance to see how the American system went from being capable of doing amazing feats of construction in New York City to being barely able to build a toilet for $1 million in San Francisco. It's not for bad reasons, but you still wish that the pendulum hadn't quite swung all the way.
Here's to another year of great reading!
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