Some authors wrote books and some authors died. Dunno if that sums up any year, but both happened in 2012.Oh - and, of course - Fifty Shades of Grey * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *A Literary Review of 2012    It was the year that J.K. Rowling returned to publishing with The Casual Vacancy, and yet the creator of Harry Potter was completely overshadowed, and that is not an overstatement, by an author called Erika Leonard, who used to work as a TV executive and started off by writing Twilight fan fiction.Erika Leonard writes as E.L. James. She is the author of the Fifty Shades trilogy (Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, Fifty Shades Freed). While the first in the series was originally self-published earlier, it hit the bigtime in 2012 and James turned erotica into literature’s biggest genre of the year. She sold millions of copies. There is going to be a movie. There is a Fifty Shades of Grey board game. There are Fifty Shades of Grey cakes. The Fifty Shades of Grey Classical Album was released. Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey are household names. Book clubs read the novel with everybody discussing the merits of spanking in a literary narrative.The book is set mostly in Seattle and the staff at the city’s Visitor Information Center now have to handle hundreds of questions about the locations mentioned in the novel. Time Magazine listed E.L. James as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Frankly, the world went crazy for Fifty Shades of Grey.Fortunately for those of us less inclined to be dazzled by that form of the erotic arts, there were plenty of other publishing triumphs to celebrate in 2012 as well, including new books from the likes of Salman Rushdie, Richard Ford, Zadie Smith, Hilary Mantel, and many more.(more)http://www.abebooks.com/books/features/literary-review-2012.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-C130114-b00-2012rvAM-000000xx-_-01cta&abersp=1