My Favorite Books of 2009

By request, I'm highlighting my "Top 20" of the 81 books I read in 2009. The only order of the books below is chronological. More recent reads are on top. These books were more interesting than the rest but from the original 81, I'd recommend them all. Generally, I tried not to waste my time on boring books. The one exception was The Christmas Bus which I got for free on my Kindle and kept reading for sentimental reasons during the holidays even though I wasn't really into it.

Best Non-Fiction: Guests of the Ayatollah, by Mark Bowden
Best Fiction: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

• The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
• Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
• Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks
• Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks
• Interred with their Bones, by Jennifer Lee Carrell
• The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris
• Liars and Saints, by Maile Meloy
• The Virgin Blue, by Tracy Chevalier
• The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart
• Food Matters, by Mark Bittman
• The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
• Band of Sisters,by Kirsten Holmstedt
• A Reliable Wife, by Robert Goolrick
• American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Kabul Beauty School, by Deborah Rodriguez
• Remembrance of Things Paris : Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet, by Ruth Reichl
• Guests of the Ayatollah, by Mark Bowden
• Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri