The first thing you need to know, is this isn’t a “Best Of” List. That would require me to give reasons, make rigorous justifications, and – in the spirit of fairness and full disclosure – leave off books by people I know and love. What this really is, is a list of things I read and loved in 2012. I’m going to try hard to limit it to things that were also published in 2012, but there are a couple places where I’m going to deviate. The items on this list aren’t ranked. There are things on this list that are by friends of mine. It’s my opinion that I have a lot of talented friends.

Here’s some other things you need to know: I had reading goals for 2012. I was going to read a lot of nonfiction, because I like learning things, and because reading nonfiction helps me to come up with ideas for writing fiction. I was also going to read a lot of YA books, again for reasons related to my own writing. I succeeded in both of these things, though I’m not really going to talk about the nonfiction here, because the vast majority of what I read in that area wound up being for my novel-in-progress. But what I really found interesting is that a lot of the books that I genuinely, passionately loved, were either YA or mimetic fiction, or both. There really weren’t a lot of adult SFF books that stuck with me this year. I’m not making any claim that that means anything, beyond where my own reading tastes were, but I found it interesting.

So here’s what I loved:

Poetry:
Craig Arnold’s Made Flesh . Published in 2008, but on the list because it’s his final collection – he died in 2009. And it’s mythology-inflected, and wonderful.

Anne Carson and Bianca Stone’s Antigonick .

Comics:
Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ new series, Saga is terrific. Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez are currently working on the final issues of Locke & Key , a gorgeous, smart series that started out brilliant and then got even better. Chris Ware’s Building Stories is genius.