Christian Science Monitor Best Books of 2009

Each year, the Christian Science Monitor posts it best novels of the year. Here are the picks for 2009:

Lark and Termite
By Jayne Anne Phillips
Knopf
72 pp

The Help
By Kathryn Stockett
Putnam
453 pp

The Weight of Heaven
By Thrity Umrigar
HarperCollins
365 pp

Woodsburner
By John Pipkin
Doubleday, 366 pp.

The Thing Around Your Neck
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf
218 pp.

Let the Great World Spin
By Colum McCann
Random House
349 pp.

The Anthologist
By Nicholson Baker
Simon & Schuster
245 pp.

Love and Summer
By William Trevor
Penguin Group
212 pp.

A Gate at the Stairs
By Lorrie Moore
Knopf
336 pp.

Mathilda Savitch
By Victor Lodato
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
304 pp.

The Children’s Book
By A.S. Byatt
Knopf
688 pp.

Wolf Hall
By Hilary Mantel
Henry Holt
532 pp.

They also list their Best Books of 2009: Nonfiction:

A World of Trouble:
The White House and the Middle East – from the Cold War to the War on Terror
By Patrick Tyler
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
628 pp

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

PW's Best Books of 2009

(Please note: When I originally saw this list at PW, it stopped after True Compass. When I looked again at the source page on 11/3/09, the list had more titles on it. I have since added those titles.)

PW Top 10

• Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
• Await Your Reply: A Novel by Dan Chaon
• A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
• Big Machine by Victor LaValle
• The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard HolmesStitches by David Small
• Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford
• Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
• The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Fiction

• The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
• The Fate of Katherine Carr by Thomas H. Cook
• Spooner by Pete Dexter
• Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
• The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
• Ravens by George Dawes Green
• Tinkers by Paul Harding
• The Believers by Zoë Heller
• The Vagrants by Yiyun Li
• How to Sell by Clancy Martin
• New World Monkeys by Nancy Mauro
• The Last War by Ana Menendez
• Nemesis by Jo Nesbø
• Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips
• The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage
• Drood by Dan Simmons
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
• Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
• Once the Shore by Paul Yoon

Poetry

• Chronic by D.A. Powell
• Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker
• The Bitter Withy by Donald Revell
• The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy
• Upgraded to Serious by Heather McHugh

Mystery

• Bryant and May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler
• The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah
• The Dark Horseby Craig Johnson
• The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta
• Londongrad by Reggie Nadelson
• The Lord of Death by Eliot Pattison
• The Cloud Pavilionby Laura Joh Rowland

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror

• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Lovecraft Unbound edited by Ellen Datlow
• The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory
• The City & the City by China Miéville
• Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Mass Market

• Captive of Sin by Anna Campbell
• Soulless by Gail Carriger
• A Dark Love by Margaret Carroll
• Child of Fire by Harry Connolly
• Hunt at the Well of Eternity by Gabriel Hunt, as told to James Reasoner

Comics

• Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke and Richard Stark
• Driven by Lemons by Josh Cotter
• Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou with art by Alecos Papdatos and Annie Di Donna
• The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefèvre
• Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe by Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco
• A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
• You’ll Never Know: A Good and Decent Man by Carol Tyler
• Pluto by Naoki Urasawa

Nonfiction

• Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by Frank Bruni
• Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets by Cadillac Man
• Columbine by Dave Cullen
• Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich
• The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
• Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti
• Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
• Food for Thought, Thought for Food edited by Richard Hamilton and Vincente Todolo
• Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen
• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
• The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe
• True Compass: A Memoir by Edward M. Kennedy
• Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
• Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer
• Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn
• Gabriel García Márquez by Gerald Martin
• Green Metropolis by David Owen
• Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant—and Save His Life by Daniel Asa Rose
• Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
• Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan by Doug Stanton
• Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957–1965 by Sam Stephenson
• Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout
• Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 by Gordon S. Wood

Religion

• Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir by Susan E. Isaacs
• The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
• The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Our Pain by Scott Cairns
• Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
• The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox
• Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom
• In Due Season: A Man’s Life by Paul Wilkes
• Judas: A Biography by Susan Gubar
• Muslims in America: A Short History by Edward E. Curtis IV
• Rashi by Elie Wiesel

Lifestyle

• Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy by Lidia Bastianich and Tanya Bastianich Manuali
• Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan
• Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller
• Child Care Today: Getting It Right for Everyone by Penelope Leach Gourmet Today by Ruth Reichl

Children's Fiction

• Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Going Bovine by Libba Bray
• Fire by Kristin Cashore
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• If I Stay by Gayle Forman
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
• Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick
• The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness.
• A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck
• When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
• Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
• Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
• Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
• Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor, illus. by Jim Di Bartolo
• The Uninvited by Tim Wynne-Jones

Source: Publishers Weekly

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704595.html
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704596.html

2009 ALA Notable Books

The American Library Association (ALA) Notable Books List began in 1944. The judging panel is guided by the RASD Board of Directors statement of purpose and list of criteria for Notable Books.

The 2009 ALA Notable Book List

FICTION

Alameddine, Rabih. The Hakawati 

Aslam, Nadeem. The Wasted Vigil

Bausch, Richard. Peace  

Benioff, David. City of Thieves

Erdrich, Louise. The Plague of Doves 

Galchen, Rivka. Atmospheric Disturbances 

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth 

Millhauser, Steven. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories 

Sheers, Owen. Resistance 

Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteridge 

Talarigo, Jeff. The Ginseng Hunter 

NONFICTION

Coll, Steve. The Bin-Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century 

Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War 

Filkins, Dexter. The Forever War 

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 

Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family 

Harris, Mark. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood 

Horwitz, Tony. A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World 

Mayer, Jane The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals 

Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto 

Taylor, Nick. American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work 

Vanderbilt, Tom. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us) 

Wickersham, Joan . The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order 

POETRY

Hirsch, Edward Special Orders: Poems 

Tate, James Ghost Soldiers: Poems