New York Times (NYT) Most Notable - 2009

The Book Review has made these selections from books reviewed since Dec. 7, 2008, when they published their previous Notables list. Read more about each book (including links to NYT reviews) on this page.

Fiction and Poetry:

1. Amateur Barbarians, by ROBERT COHEN
2. American Rust, By PHILIPP MEYER
3. The Anthologist, By NICHOLSON BAKER
4. The Art Student’s War, By BRAD LEITHAUSER
5. Asterios Polyp, Written and illustrated by DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI
6. Await Your Reply, By DAN CHAON
7. Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, By MAILE MELOY
8. The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, By PETER ACKROYD
9. Chronic City, By JONATHAN LETHEM
10. The Confessions of Edward Day, By VALERIE MARTIN
11. Dearest Creature, By AMY GERSTLER
12. Do Not Deny Me: Stories, By JEAN THOMPSON
13. Don’t Cry: Stories, By MARY GAITSKILL
14. Every Man Dies Alone, By HANS FALLADA; translated by MICHAEL HOFMANN
15. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, By WELLS TOWER
16. Family Album, By PENELOPE LIVELY
17. Follow Me, By JOANNA SCOTT
18. A Gate at the Stairs, By LORRIE MOORE
19. Generosity: An Enhancement, By RICHARD POWERS
20. Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, By JEANNETTE WALLS
21. How it Ended: New and Collected Stories, By JAY McINERNEY
22. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, By DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN
23. Invisible, By PAUL AUSTER
24. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, By GEOFF DYER
25. The Lacuna, By BARBARA KINGSOLVER
26. Lark and Termite, By JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS
27. Let the Great World Spin, By COLUM McCANN
28. The Little Stranger, By SARAH WATERS
29. Love and Obstacles: Stories, By ALEKSANDAR HEMON
30. Love and Summer, By WILLIAM TREVOR
31. The Museum of Innocence, By ORHAN PAMUK; translated by MAUREEN FREELY
32. My Father’s Tears: And Other Stories, By JOHN UPDIKE
33. Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, By KAZUO ISHIGURO
34. Nothing Right: Short Stories, By ANTONYA NELSON
35. Once the Shore: Stories, By PAUL YOON
36. One D.O.A., One on the Way, By MARY ROBISON
37. Sag Harbor, By COLSON WHITEHEAD
38. A Short History of Women, By KATE WALBERT
39. The Sky Below, By STACEY D’ERASMO
40. The Song Is You, By ARTHUR PHILLIPS
41. Too Much Happiness, By ALICE MUNRO
42. Typhoon, By CHARLES CUMMING
43. A Village Life, By LOUISE GLÜCK
44. Wolf Hall, By HILARY MANTEL
45. The Year of the Flood, By MARGARET ATWOOD

Nonfiction

1. The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn, By LOUISA GILDER
2. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, By RICHARD HOLMES
3. Ayn Rand and the World She Made, By ANNE C. HELLER
4. Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, By FRANK BRUNI
5. The Case for God, By KAREN ARMSTRONG
6. Cheever: A Life, By BLAKE BAILEY
7. City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s, By EDMUND WHITE
8. Closing Time: A Memoir, By JOE QUEENAN
9. Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places, By BILL STREEVER
10. Columbine, By DAVE CULLEN
11. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent, By ROBERT W. MERRY
12. Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, By JAMES McMANUS
13. Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, By MORRIS DICKSTEIN
14. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, By LINDA GORDON
15. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, By GORDON S. WOOD
16. The Evolution of God, By ROBERT WRIGHT
17. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon, By NEIL SHEEHAN
18. The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found, By MARY BEARD
19. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, By T. J. STILES
20. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, By BRAD GOOCH
21. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, By GREG GRANDIN
22. The Good Soldiers, By DAVID FINKEL
23. The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11, By JOHN FARMER
24. Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme, By TRACY DAUGHERTY
25. Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, By DOUG STANTON
26. In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic, By DAVID WESSEL
27. The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, By STEVEN JOHNSON
28. The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China, By HANNAH PAKULA
29. Lit: A Memoir, By MARY KARR
30. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, By LIAQUAT AHAMED
31. Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY
32. The Lost Child: A Mother’s Story, By JULIE MYERSON
33. The Lost City Of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, By DAVID GRANN
34. Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever, By WALTER KIRN
35. Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, By MELVIN I. UROFSKY
36. The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks, By ROBIN ROMM
37. Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, By NICK REDING
38. My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times, By HAROLD EVANS
39. The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street, By JUSTIN FOX
40. Open: An Autobiography, By ANDRE AGASSI
41. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, By REBECCA SOLNIT
42. Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life, By CAROL SKLENICKA
43. Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, By LARRY TYE
44. Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force — the NYPD, By CHRISTOPHER DICKEY
45. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, By MATTHEW B. CRAWFORD
46. The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, By GRAHAM FARMELO
47. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, By ROBIN D. G. KELLEY
48. The Third Reich at War, By RICHARD J. EVANS
49. The Weight of a Mustard Seed: The Intimate Story of an Iraqi General and His Family During Thirty Years of Tyranny, By WENDELL STEAVENSON
50. When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present, By GAIL COLLINS
51. Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, By BENJAMIN MOSER
52. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, By DOUGLAS BRINKLEY
53. Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, By DANIEL JONAH GOLDHAGEN
54. Yours Ever: People and Their Letters, By THOMAS MALLON
55. Zeitoun, By DAVE EGGERS