Books Read - 2012

As is the annual tradition, here is the final list of books I completed reading in 2012, in chronological order of completion; links are to posts in which I've either written about the book or the author, or posted excerpts.

Following the list would normally be detailed comments and observations, including remarks on my favorite books of the year, plus a statistical breakdown, but for private reasons the stats will be heavily truncated and comments non-existent (links are also somewhat incomplete), unless the urge to update this post hits me at some later date.

1. Lightning Rods, Helen DeWitt
2. Feminist Theory: from margin to center, bell hooks
3. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, James C. Scott
4. Zone, Mathias Énard (Charlotte Mandell, trans.)
5. Liquidation, Imre Kertész (Tim Wilkinson, trans.)
6. Stoner, John Williams
7. Dreaming of Dead People, Rosalind Belben
8. Mavis Belfrage, Alasdair Gray
9. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and self-recovery, bell hooks
10. I., Stephen Dixon
11. End of I., Stephen Dixon
12. Slowness, Milan Kundera (Linda Asher, trans.)
13. Meyer, Stephen Dixon
14. Now that you're back, A.L. Kennedy
15. Dogma, Lars Iyer
16. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, Timothy Mitchell (also)
17. Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde
18. An Autobiography, Angela Davis
19. Eva's Man, Gayl Jones
20. Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, James and Grace Lee Boggs (also)
21. The Notebook, Agota Kristof (Alan Sheridan, trans.)
22. The Proof, Agota Kristof (David Watson, trans.)
23. The Third Lie, Agota Kristof (Marc Romano, trans.)
24. The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook, James Boggs
25. Open City, Teju Cole
26. My Happy Life, Lydia Millet
27. On With the Story, John Barth
28. Territorial Rights, Muriel Spark
29. Making Things Better, Anita Brookner
30. The Rules of Engagement, Anita Brookner
31. A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul
32. Mao II, Don DeLillo (re-read)
33. The Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud
34. The Quiet American, Graham Greene
35. Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide, Barbara Trepagnier
36. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, David Graeber
37. Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life, Vivian Gornick
38. Introduction to Modernity, Henri Lefebvre (John Moore, trans.)
39. My Struggle, Book One, Karl Ove Knausgaard (Don Bartlett, trans.)
40. Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, Harold Bloom
41. Near to the Wild Heart, Clarice Lispector (Alison Entrekin, trans.)
42. Dublinesque, Enrique Vila-Matas (Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean, trans.)
43. Barley Patch, Gerald Murnane
44. The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730s-1840s, Immanuel Wallerstein
45. The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789-1914, Immanuel Wallerstein
46. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, Emily Martin
47. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, Carolyn Merchant
48. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
49. Garnethill, Denise Mina
50. Exile, Denise Mina
51. Resolution, Denise Mina
52. Ripley Under Ground, Patricia Highsmith
53. Human Wishes/Enemy Combatant, Edmond Caldwell
54. Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy
55. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, Silvia Federici
56. The Gift, Lewis Hyde
57. Stories in the Worst Way, Gary Lutz
58. Infinity: The Story of a Moment, Gabriel Josipovici
59. Prosperous Friends, Christine Schutt
60. Time is the Simplest Thing, Clifford D. Simak
61. Steelwork, Gilbert Sorrentino
62. The Passion Artist, John Hawkes
63. Why Call Them Back From Heaven?, Clifford D. Simak
64. Red the Fiend, Gilbert Sorrentino
65. The Lime Twig, John Hawkes (re-read)
66. Aberration of Starlight, Gilbert Sorrentino (re-read)
67. City, Clifford D. Simak
68. Florida, Christine Schutt (re-read)

Some statistics
Number of books written by men: 38.5
Number of books written by women: 29.5
Number of books which were acquired via the Big Dalkey Get: 0
Number of other Dalkey books: 4
Number of books in translation: 10
Number of books by writers known primarily to me through their blogs: 2 (Lars Iyer, Edmond Caldwell)
Number of books that were borrowed from the library: 7
Number of books read on the Kindle: 0

Fiction or Poetry (or sufficiently literary memoir):
Number of books: 49
Number that are poetry: 0
Number that are memoirs: 1 (possibly Knausgaard's My Struggle here)
Number that are re-reads: 4 (not counting two novels I read twice this year, but according to my arbitrary rules only counted once: Human Wishes/Enemy Combatant and Infinity)
Number of authors represented: 15
Number of books by woman authors: 20
Number of woman authors: 7
Number of books by American authors: 11
Number of American authors:
Number of books by African-American authors: 0
Number of African-American authors: 0
Number of books by non-American, English-language authors: 13
Number of non-American, English-language authors: 10
Number of books in translation: 9
Number of authors of books in translation: 7
Number of translated books by woman authors: 4
Number of foreign languages represented in translation: 4 (French, Hungarian, Spanish, Norwegian)
Most represented foreign language: French (5: 3 Kristof, 1 Kundera, 1 Énard)
Number of Nobel Prize-winners: 2 (Kertész, Naipaul)
Number that could be categorized as science fiction: 4
Number of science fiction books written by women: 1
Number that could be categorized as crime fiction: 5
Number written by women: 5

Non-Fiction:
Number of non-fiction books: 19
Number of books by woman authors: 9.5
Number of books in translation: 1 (Lefebvre, from the French)
Number that are biographies or letters or memoirs: 2 (Gornick's of Emma Goldman; Davis's auto-bio)
Number that are philosophy or about philosophy: 2 (Lefebvre, Merchant)
Number that are books of criticism or essays: 3
Number that are about politics or economics or history: 13
Number about pop music: 0
Number about science: 2 (Martin, Merchant)
Number about feminism: 6
Number about racism or history of slavery or African American experience: 5
Number about parenting or education: 0
Number that are anthropology: 4 (Scott, Martin, Graeber, Hyde sort of)

Comments & Observations:
Possibly to come. Or not. See this post for passing remarks on many of the novels listed above, especially in the second half of the list, including favorite novels of the year.