Obviously, the best novel of the year is Ellen Ullman's By Blood, the best nonfiction book Richard Lloyd Parry's People Who Eat Darkness, the best manifesto Jeff Speck's Walkable City, the best travel book (and the best-titled book) Rosecrans Baldwin's Paris, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down, the best vampire book Brian McGreevy's Hemlock Grove, the best memoir Davy Rothbart's My Heart is an Idiot, the best debut Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.*

by Sarah Scire Picking favorites is almost always tricky business. For the staff of FSG, crowning just a few of the many books they read "the best of 2012" seemed close to impossible. There were last-minute additions, half-hearted apologies for self-interested choices, lengthy disclaimers about how all of the books they'd worked on were their favorites, and multi-part questions about eligibility ("This book was written almost two decades ago but first translated in 2012—with the exception of an excerpt two years ago. Does it count?"). Restricting everyone's favorites to books published in 2012 seemed unfair (and likely to start an uproar) so we chose to ask three questions we hoped would shed light on the staff's diverse reading habits: