LoL 2012

So much happened in one year, it feels like a lifetime has passed. The theme of 2012 was, for me, epistemology (retrospectively I would call the theme of 2009 ethics, 2010 aesthetics, and 2011 networks). How do we know what we know? How do we know what we don't? How do we know that we know? I have remained conscious of these questions throughout the year, whether during active contemplation or by implicit awareness. This has also had the effect of making me realise the pervasiveness of intellectual sins in the world, rendering them all the more frustrating, and even at times discouraging.

Yet I am heartened by the beauty of the works which I had the pleasure of encountering throughout the year, all monuments to human achievement in their own right. Only the three categories of fiction, non-fiction and movies appear below as they are the only categories to which I had sufficient exposure to judge in 2012. It is astounding how many of the non-fiction books I read in 2012 were the magna opera of their authors, even though not all of them made the list. If I have seen further over the last year, it is because I have been fortunate to have stood on the very top of a totem of giants, whom you will find below.