Best of 2012: Readers’ Choices

A few weeks ago, I asked you to fill out a brief survey indicating your favorite books, movies, songs, and blog posts of 2012. Before I launch into my personal best-of-2012 lists this week, I thought I’d give the reader responses center stage. These are listed in no particular order except that if one of the selections was picked by more than one reader, it is in bold at the top of the list.

Also, you might see some works that were released before 2012 on here, and that is because the way I phrased the question (and the way my best-of lists work) is that you can select anything that you watched/read/heard for the first time in 2012.

Best Movies of 2012: Readers’ Choices

  • Silver Linings Playbook
  • The Prestige
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife
  • Going My Way
  • The Raid: Redemption
  • The Trip
  • Moonrise Kingdom
  • Billy Elliot
  • Beasts of Southern Wild
  • Taken
  • Argo
  • In Bruges
  • Dial M for Murder

Best Songs of 2012: Readers’ Choices

  •  Holocene by Bon Iver
  • The Black Mills Tape – Pye Corner Audio
  • Any song I heard by Mumford and Sons
  • Sisterly- Fang Island
  • “The Bravest Man in the Universe” by Bobby Womack
  • Call Me Maybe
  • Gravity – Sara Bareilles
  • The North by Stars
  • “Ho Hey” The Lumineers
  • Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye
  • “Bloody Mary” by Silversun Pickups
  • “High Hopes” by Glen Hansard
  • “Bad Religion” by Frank Ocean
  • Madness by Muse

Best Books of 2012: Readers’ Choices

  • Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
  • Lamb by Christopher Moore
  • Count Zero
  • The Passage by Justin Cronin
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  • The Paris Wife
  • The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
  • The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
  • Replay
  • Ready Player One
  • The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
  • Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
  • The Book Thief
  • The Hunger Games trilogy

Best Blog Entries of 2012: Readers’ Choices

Also, as promised, I randomly selected one of the entries to win a copy of Winter Wonders. Congrats to Laura G! And thank the rest of you for taking the time to fill out this survey. You connected me with a lot of great movies, books, and songs, and it was neat to look back at the entries that made a mark on you.

3 thoughts on “Best of 2012: Readers’ Choices”

  1. I have had the live version of Gravity on my iPod for a couple of years. Sara Bareilles absolutely kills it. That whole album is amazing as a matter of fact (as is Careful Confessions, from which a lot of the songs were actually rerecorded). Undertow, Come Round Soon (the first version from Careful Confessions is far better than the Little Voice version though), Love on the Rocks–some of my favorite songs ever. I honestly don’t think there is a bad song on either album.

    Anything by Glen Hansard has my vote. I once joked to someone that I want him and Marketa Irglova to sing me to sleep every night.

    Just watched Beasts of the Southern Wild tonight. I have mixed emotions about it. I thought some parts were great, but there were some things I thought needed tweaking. That little girl is absolutely adorable though.

    I wonder if the person that picked The Time Traveler’s Wife movie has also read the book (my guess is yes)? If so, do you think the love for the book made you like the movie more? I enjoyed the book, but I kind of felt like parts of it didn’t translate as well on film as I would have hoped. The relationship when he time travels back and visits his wife when she is a child just came off as strange when you’re actually watching it, but it’s very sweet in the book. I kind of felt the same about The Hunger Games movie. I think I would have thought it was very strange if I hadn’t read the book first.

    Ready Player One was compulsively readable–I couldn’t put it down–but even as I was tearing through it I could tell the writing left something to be desired. Still loved it though.

    The Paris Wife and The Book Thief are also great choices! I haven’t read a lot of the others on the list (though some are in my queue) but I’m glad to have some more recommendations now. Thanks to everyone for their responses and to Jamey for soliciting them.

    Reply
    • I was a little surprised by the selection of The Time Traveler’s Wife. I LOVED the book, and usually I don’t let a love for a book get in the way of my opinion of the movie, but I thought the movie didn’t “get” the book at all. It’s no big loss–the book is always there for me to reread–but I’m curious about that selection as a top movie.

      Reply
      • That’s kind of what I was getting at. I’m not sure the movie stands alone on its own merit. I can see it being a good supplmentary piece to the book (to see certain parts come to life), but I’m don’t know if I would have liked it as much if I hadn’t read the book. I think it was too hard for them to work in certain things, which hurt the movie in the long run.

        Reply

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