Books Read in 2009

I got 40--who can beat that? Probably a lot of people. That's less than one a week.

Best novel (I'm slow here, playing catchup):

Yup, Kite Runner. I haven't seen the movie either. I don't know how much of this story--the culture and racism that was so well expressed in the novel--could come across in a film. But I'll get around to the movie eventually, I'm sure.

Best nonfiction would be Devil in the White City. But its only real competition was The Soloist. For some reason, other books didn't thrill me--some covered interesting topics, but the writing was pedantic; others were just dated tomes that I read as research.

Biggest disappointment: The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have no problem with the author de-heroizing Simon Bolivar, but the story never grabbed me. Garcia Marquez, it seems, uses his prose to make points--like the tedium of a long marriage in Love in the Time of Cholera. I barely made it through that, but I appreciated his courage as a writer. I couldn't stay with The General in His Labyrinth past the middle, though--and it had such a beautiful cover!