The best-selling lists from both online and offline bookstores reveal the major trends of 2012 that show shifts in Chinese readers' taste.

Many of this year's cinematic blockbusters are based on novels. This has in return triggered a fever for the original fictions.

Among them are Liu Zhenyun's Back to 1942 and Chen Zhongshi's White Deer Plain. The movie adaptations of these two novels, by acclaimed directors Feng Xiaogang and Wang Quan'an, became the center of public attention with their controversial stories.