critic’s picks – best books of 2009

Another year of publishing gone by, and if you know me, you know I didn’t read anything new. So I will pass along some of the critical picks if you’re looking for something good. I tend to read almost all fiction so that’s what’s here.

• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi – LG
• Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell – LG
• Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon – PW
• “Moe Prager” mysteries by Reed Farrel Coleman – NPR
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins – LG
• Spooners by Pete Dexter – Am
• Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer – LG, PW
• The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam – NPR
• Tinkers by Paul Harding – Am
• The Believers by Zoe Heller – NPR
• Swimming by Nicola Keegan – LG
• The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larson – Am
• Big Machine by Victor Lavalle – PW
• Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem – NYT
• The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell – LG
• The Stalin Epigram by Robert Littell – WP
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – LG, WP, Am
• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann – Am
• Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy – NYT
• American Rust by Philipp Meyer – WP
• The City & The City by China Mieville – Am
• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore – NYT, WP, Am, NPR
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin – LG, PW
• The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk – WP
• Brooklyn by Colm Toibin – Am, NPR
• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower – LG
• This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper – Am
• The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez – Am
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese – Am
• Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls – NYT
• A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert – NYT
• The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter – LG, NPR
• Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead – Am

Am – Amazon, LG – Lev Grossmas for Time, NPR – Maureen Corrigan for NPR, NYT – New York Times , PW – Publisher’s Weekly, WP – Washington Post

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