The Big Sleep
It's a good year in which one gets to read two Raymond Chandlers in a six-week period, so 2012 is officially a good year. I'm teaching The Big Sleep, so I just re-read it for class preparation. I won't discuss it here, so as not to get my words fed back to me in class.
It's wonderful, though, and if you haven't read it, you should be deeply disappointed in yourself. But hopeful of a better life to come, of course.
CBsIP: Down the Great River, Captain Willard Glazier, the Soldier-Author
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
Personal and Military History of Philip Kearny, Major-General United States Volunteers, John Watts De Peyster (this is consistently dreadful)
The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois