Slate magazine has listed overlooked fiction and nonfiction books of 2012. I haven't heard about many of these books, so it's a nice gesture on the part of Slate to decide to run the underrated list instead of the best list which what usually runs around this time every year. Some the books mentioned include 'Londoners' by Craig Taylor:

"For obvious reasons, Londoners was much more of an event when it was published in the United Kingdom in 2011, though you need not be interested in the English capital to appreciate Craig Taylor's journalistic achievement. Collecting dozens of first-person testimonies, from a fruit vendor to financiers to city officials to frustrated former residents who left for the country, Taylor paints a vast portrait of London that doubles as record of modern Western life itself. It made me wish a similar book existed for every city or town on Earth, though Taylor's curiosity and eye for diverse characters would be hard to replicate."

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The verdict is out. The New York Times has named the best books of 2012. Some the authors listed include Zadie Smith and author of Zeitoun, David Eggers. The book list includes both fiction and non-fiction. Here's the paragraph on the Eggers new book, A Hologram For the King: "In an empty city in Saudi Arabia, a ­middle-aged American businessman waits day after day to close the deal he hopes will redeem his forlorn life. Eggers, continuing the worldly outlook that informed his recent books “Zeitoun” and “What Is the What,” spins this spare story — a globalized “Death of a Salesman” — into a tightly controlled parable of America’s international standing and a riff on middle-class decline that approaches Beckett in its absurdist despair.You can get snippets about the books before you decide to read them."

The books have been selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

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