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As we’re thirteen days away from Christmas, and the drunken celebration season started last weekend with the company Christmas do, it’s unlikely that I’ll read many more books before the end of the year, so I present to you my ‘Top Reads’ in 2009 list. I’ve separated the list into young adult, adult and classics sections, because while I think they could all handle themselves in a death fight for a place on an ultimate top ten list, this way I get to include more of my favourite books. 2009 has been a very good reading year, let me recap in no particular order:
Top ten young adult novels
‘Ten Cents a Dance’ – Christine Fletcher
‘Nation’ – Terry Pratchett
‘Because I am Furniture’ – Thalia Chaltas
‘Looking for Alaska’ – John Green
‘Dooley Takes the Fall’ – Nora McClintock
‘What they Always Tell Us’ – Martin Wilson
‘The Last Exit to Normal’ – Michael Harmon
‘Empress of the World’ – Sara Ryan
‘Little Brother’ – Cory Doctrow
‘Chameleon’ – Charles R Smith
This was the hardest list to decide on. Four other books came so close to making it.
Top ten adult novels
‘Captivity’ – Debbie Lee Wesselman
‘The Tenderness of Wolves’ – Stef Penney
‘Temeraire’ – Naomi Novik
‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ – Steig Larsson
‘The Lizard Cage’ – Karen Connelley
‘The Post Office Girl’ – Stefan Zweig
‘Wolf Hall’ – Hilary Mantle
‘Dance Night’ – Dawn Powell
‘The Folded Leaf’ – William Maxwell
‘The Day the Falls Stood Still’ – Cathy Marie Buchanan
Maybe you can sense some patterns in this list. I do tend to prefer books that focus on characters, rather than plot twists, I often like to see a good romance develop and it seems I like books that suggest there may be animals in them.
Non fiction
‘England’s Mistress’ – Kate Williams
The amount of non-fiction I read was poor this year (as always), blame it on television for damaging my attention span. ‘England’s Mistress’ was an interesting biography, with a good grasp of the broader social and world history Emma Hamilton was surrounded by and provided me with my favourite random fact of the year (see review).
Classics
‘A Passage to India’ – E M Forster
‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ – Philip K Dick
I probably could have included at least three of the adult novels in this category as modern classics, but that seemed too complicated so instead I’ll just stick with these two. Another trend you might have spotted throughout the lists is that I like authors who use their middle initial, maybe I really would like J R R Tolkien after all...
Top ten young adult novels
‘Ten Cents a Dance’ – Christine Fletcher
‘Nation’ – Terry Pratchett
‘Because I am Furniture’ – Thalia Chaltas
‘Looking for Alaska’ – John Green
‘Dooley Takes the Fall’ – Nora McClintock
‘What they Always Tell Us’ – Martin Wilson
‘The Last Exit to Normal’ – Michael Harmon
‘Empress of the World’ – Sara Ryan
‘Little Brother’ – Cory Doctrow
‘Chameleon’ – Charles R Smith
This was the hardest list to decide on. Four other books came so close to making it.
Top ten adult novels
‘Captivity’ – Debbie Lee Wesselman
‘The Tenderness of Wolves’ – Stef Penney
‘Temeraire’ – Naomi Novik
‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ – Steig Larsson
‘The Lizard Cage’ – Karen Connelley
‘The Post Office Girl’ – Stefan Zweig
‘Wolf Hall’ – Hilary Mantle
‘Dance Night’ – Dawn Powell
‘The Folded Leaf’ – William Maxwell
‘The Day the Falls Stood Still’ – Cathy Marie Buchanan
Maybe you can sense some patterns in this list. I do tend to prefer books that focus on characters, rather than plot twists, I often like to see a good romance develop and it seems I like books that suggest there may be animals in them.
Non fiction
‘England’s Mistress’ – Kate Williams
The amount of non-fiction I read was poor this year (as always), blame it on television for damaging my attention span. ‘England’s Mistress’ was an interesting biography, with a good grasp of the broader social and world history Emma Hamilton was surrounded by and provided me with my favourite random fact of the year (see review).
Classics
‘A Passage to India’ – E M Forster
‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ – Philip K Dick
I probably could have included at least three of the adult novels in this category as modern classics, but that seemed too complicated so instead I’ll just stick with these two. Another trend you might have spotted throughout the lists is that I like authors who use their middle initial, maybe I really would like J R R Tolkien after all...