If books fig­ure into your hol­i­day gift-giv­ing plans, then we’ve got a lit­tle some­thing for you — a meta list of the best books of 2012. It’s now Decem­ber, the final month of the year, which means that news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines can start tak­ing stock of 2012 and declare their favorites.

The New York Times Book Review announced The 10 Best Books of 2012 this week­end, just a few days after nam­ing the 100 Notable Books of 2012. Some famil­iar names appear on the win­nowed down list — Robert Caro, Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith — but I’m most tempt­ed by Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist?: An Exis­ten­tial Detec­tive Sto­ry. The ques­tion has crossed my mind late­ly.

The Wash­ing­ton Post boils down three lists — The Best Graph­ic Nov­els of 2012, 50 Notable Works of Fic­tion, 50 Notable Works of Non­fic­tion — to one. Behold The Top 10 Books of 2012. Fic­tion-wise, I’m not blown away by the picks. But, when it comes to Non­fic­tion, they’re on the mark with House of Stone: A Mem­oir of Home, Fam­i­ly, and a Lost Mid­dle East by Antho­ny Sha­did, the award-win­ning New York Times jour­nal­ist who died ear­li­er this year in Syr­ia.

You can find more good reads with “Best of” lists cre­at­ed by NPR, Pub­lish­ers Week­ly, Esquire, Huff­Po and The Guardian. And if you’re look­ing for a deal, don’t miss this: Amazon.com is now offer­ing 40% off books appear­ing on its list of 2012 Edi­tors’ Picks. Mean­while Audible.com has pro­duced its own list of favorites, and it’s worth high­light­ing if only because, when you sign up for a Free Tri­al, you can down­load one of their selec­tions (or pret­ty much any oth­er audio­book you want) for free. Learn more and ini­ti­ate the free down­load here.

Now my dear fel­low read­ers, it’s your turn. We want to hear what books (pub­lished in 2012) left the strongest impres­sion on you. Give us your thoughts in the com­ments sec­tion below and we’ll pub­lish the Open Cul­ture Best of 2012 list lat­er this week. We look for­ward to hear­ing your picks!

While Scot­tish physi­cian and author Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, he seems almost whol­ly of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry: a trained sci­en­tist who fer­vent­ly believed in “spir­i­tu­al­ism” and fairies, and an accom­plished and pro­lif­ic writer whose most famous character—that most log­i­cal of detectives—had a cocaine addic­tion and more per­son­al quirks than the aver­age neu­rot­ic. Like Joseph Con­rad, Doyle sailed–as a ship’s doctor–to Euro­pean colonies in West Africa and found him­self deeply affect­ed by the bru­tal exploita­tion he encoun­tered. And like Con­rad, he seems to embody a turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry British­ness poised between old and new worlds, when Vic­to­ria gave way to Edward and moder­ni­ty limned the Empire. Although the age of film and of tele­vi­sion have always embraced Sher­lock Holmes, his cre­ator belongs to the age of the nov­el. Nev­er­the­less, he agreed to the 1927 inter­view above, pos­si­bly his only appear­ance on film. In the brief mono­logue, he dis­cuss­es the two ques­tions that he most received from curi­ous fans and jour­nal­ists: how he came to write the Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries and how he came to believe in “psy­chic mat­ters.”

Doyle attrib­ut­es the cre­ation of Holmes to his sci­en­tif­ic train­ing, and to a keen irri­ta­tion when read­ing detec­tive sto­ries whose pro­tag­o­nists stum­bled on solu­tions by chance or nar­ra­tive non sequitur. He also describes his admi­ra­tion for a colleague’s impres­sive “deduc­tive” abil­i­ties. What if, Conan Doyle rea­soned, the detec­tives had the pow­ers of a doc­tor? Oh, had he lived to see his premise flipped in House (and sue for roy­al­ties). Doyle also express­es his amuse­ment at the creduli­ty of his read­ing pub­lic, many of whom believed in the real­i­ty of Sher­lock Holmes and Dr. Wat­son and who sent them regards and advice. At this point in the inter­view, Doyle turns to a sub­ject upon which many thought him cred­u­lous: psy­chic and super­nat­ur­al expe­ri­ence. He goes to some lengths to estab­lish his bona fides, say­ing that he stud­ied spir­i­tu­al­ism for forty-one years and did not arrive at his ideas in haste. But Doyle was eas­i­ly tak­en in by sev­er­al hoax­es and insist­ed through­out his life that Har­ry Hou­di­ni pos­sessed psy­chic pow­ers, despite Houdini’s protests to the con­trary. It seems this was one area in which Doyle’s rea­son failed him—in which he resem­bles the mys­ti­cal Yeats more than the skep­ti­cal Wat­son and Holmes.

You can down­load free copies of The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes from our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks. You can also find four adap­ta­tions of Sher­lock Holmes in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

After half a cen­tu­ry and 31 books, Philip Roth casu­al­ly announced last month in an inter­view with a French mag­a­zine that he was call­ing it quits. He actu­al­ly made the deci­sion back in 2010, after the pub­li­ca­tion of his Book­er Prize-win­ning nov­el Neme­sis. “I did­n’t say any­thing about it because I want­ed to be sure it was true,” the 79-year-old Roth told New York Times reporter Charles McGrath last week in what he said would be his last inter­view. “I thought, ‘Wait a minute, don’t announce your retire­ment and then come out of it.’ I’m not Frank Sina­tra. So I did­n’t say any­thing to any­one, just to see if it was so.”

Although Roth had been pri­vate­ly telling friends about his retire­ment for two years, accord­ing to David Rem­nick in The New York­er, the pub­lic announce­ment came as a shock for many. From his 1959 Nation­al Book Award-win­ning debut Good­bye, Colum­bus and Five Short Sto­ries and his out­ra­geous­ly fun­ny 1969 clas­sic Port­noy’s Com­plaint through his remark­ably pro­lif­ic late peri­od, with its steady stream of beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed nov­els like Oper­a­tion Shy­lock, Sab­bath’s The­ater and The Human Stain, it seemed as though Roth had the cre­ative ener­gy to keep writ­ing until he took his last breath.

But per­haps if we’d paid clos­er atten­tion we would­n’t be so sur­prised. In this 2011 video, for exam­ple, which shows Roth read­ing a few pages from Neme­sis after it won the Man Book­er Inter­na­tion­al Prize, he basi­cal­ly says it: “Com­ing where they do, they’re the pages I like best in Neme­sis. They con­sti­tute the last pages of the last work of fic­tion I’ve published–the end of the line after 31 books.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Philip Roth on Aging

Philip Roth’s Cre­ative Surge and the Death of the Nov­el

Philip Roth Pre­dicts the Death of the Nov­el; Paul Auster Coun­ters