SATURDAY December 29th, will be a special edition of the Saturday Review of Books especially for booklists. You can link to a list of your favorite books read in 2012, a list of all the books you read in 2012, a list of the books you plan to read in 2013, or any other end of the year or beginning of the year list of books. Whatever your list, it’s time for book lists. So come back on Saturday the 29th to link to yours, if I missed it and it’s not already here.

However I’ve spent the past couple of weeks gathering up all the lists I could find and linking to them here. I’ll be posting each day this week and next, leading up to Saturday the 29th, a selection of end-of-the-year lists with my own comments. I’m also trying my hand at (unsolicited) book advisory by suggesting some possibilities for 2013 reading for each blogger whose list I link. I did this last year, and I don’t really know if anyone paid attention or not. I do know that I enjoyed exercising my book-recommending brain.

If I didn’t get your list linked ahead of time and if you leave your list in the linky on Saturday, December 29th, I’ll try to advise you, too, in a separate post.

Tim Challies: My Top Books of 2012. Mr. Challies likes biographies, history, and Christian practical theology. I’m going to suggest that he read a couple of my favorite narrative histories: Men to Match My Mountains by Irving Stone and, the book I suggested last year to Mr. Challies, The Shooting Salvationist (aka Apparent Danger) by David Stokes.

Largehearted Boy’s Favorite Novels of 2012. I’m sort of groping for recommendations here because I haven’t read a single one of largehearted boy’s favorites of 2012. However, he does seem to like literary fiction set in exotic or foreign parts. So I’m suggesting Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski.
Boy’s favorite non-fiction of 2012. And for nonfiction he should really read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (as should everyone else) and perhaps Walking from East to West by Ravi Zacharias.

Jackie at Farm Lane Books is looking forward to the books of 2013. She also has a continuing-to-be-updated list of her best books of 2012. I think Jackie would like a couple of my 2012 reads if she hasn’t read them already: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein and perhaps The Summer of Katya by Trevanian.

Jamie at Perpetual Page Turner has a whole list of survey questions (and answers) for book bloggers to reminisce about their reading year. And there’s a linky so that you can see other people’s survey answers, too. Jamie is quite fond of YA dystopian and fantasy fiction, so I’m recommending Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde and Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Tony Reinke, author of Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books, shares a list of the Top 12 Books of 2012 at John Piper’s Desiring God blog. Several of these sound really good, including Jared Wilson’s Gospel Deeps and Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything by Steve DeWitt. I hesitate to recommend anything to such a well-read author, but fools rush in. Perhaps Mr. Reinke would benefit from and enjoy a couple of books that have helped me this year: Equipped to Love by Norm Wakefield, an excellent teaching book on the contrast between idolatry and real love, and Phil Vischer’s memoir (which contains some choice nuggets of spiritual truth), Me, Myself, and Bob.

LitLove at Tales from the Reading Room has a Best Books of 2012 list that includes Willa Cather, Ann Patchett, Kate Summerscale, and Lianne Moriarity, among others. She might like the mystery I just finished, A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd, or as I suggested last year, something by Edna Ferber or Wendell Berry.

Sophisticated Dorkiness: My Picks in Book Riot’s Best Books of 2012. Kim was only allowed to pick two favorites in this exercise, and they’re both books that I need to get my hands on: Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Fooling Houdini by Alex Stone. Kim might like River of Doubt by Candace Millard; it’s not about Taft, but rather about an adventure in South America that Taft’s predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt went on. Kim also likes re-imagined fairy tales and precocious kids, so maybe The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy by Nikki Loftin would be up her alley.

G Reads: My 2012 End of the Year Book Survey. Ginger’s Favorite New-to_me Authors of 2012. Ginger’s list/survey is a part of Perpetual Page Turner’s round-up of end of the year books and blogging surveys. If you want to see more survey-type lists, Jamie has a linky there. Ginger reads a lot of YA, and one of her newly discovered authors is Sara Zarr, so I’m recommending Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr and Where I Belong by Gillian Cross.

Ready When You Are C.B.: Favorite Reads of 2012, the Longlist. Because of Mr. James’ list and several others, I’m going to have to read HHhH by Laurent Binet, and I think something, probably Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. I’m going to go out on a limb and recommend The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky to Mr. James, based more on his favorites from 2009. That one ought to keep him busy for a while.

Book Diary: My Best Books of 2012. I saw several books on this list that I want to check out, too: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, Brain on Fire by Susanah Cahalan, and In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner. I think Kathy might like The Mascot by Mark Kurzem (nonfiction) and My Enemy’s Cradle by Sara Young (Fiction, both set during World War II.

O.K. that’s ten (or more) lists for today. Come back tomorrow for more, and don’t forget to to add your year-end booklist to the Saturday Review of Books on December 29th.