2009: The Year in Review

I can't believe it's time for an end of the year post again. It feels like I was writing last year's just a couple of months ago. Before I tell you what my 28 favourite reads of the year were*, a few words about my giveaway: first of all, a big thank you to everyone who played along. Secondly, after the post was up and a few of you had already guessed, I realised that I had forgotten to tell you about a very important rule: my end of the year list would only include one book per author. And obviously, if I left a comment clarifying that so late in the game, I'd be rigging future guesses, and it wouldn't be fair to people who had already tried to guess.

I felt really bad for those who guessed two books by the same author, especially when they'd definitely be on my list if not for the rule. So in the end, what I did was put the names of everyone who got at least four books right in the hat. Which was pretty much everyone who tried. I remember that last year I was a bit surprised that so few of you got all five books, or even just four books, right. But this year everyone did guess. I suspect it's because I was quite a bit more shameless about unleashing by inner gushing fangirl in 2009.

Anyway, without further ado, the winner is:

Priscilla at The Evening Reader - congratulations, Priscilla! Just e-mail me your address and your book of choice, and it shall be yours. And now on to my favourite reads of 2009, not necessarily in order (except for number one):

Fiction

• Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan - I've been gushing about this book all year, and for a reason. It's dark and uncomfortable, yes, but also wise, moving, beautiful and necessary. Remembering certain scenes still brings tears to my eyes.
  


• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - I shan't say a thing, because the first rule of the Fingersmith Club is that you don't talk about Fingersmith. (This will make sense if you read it, promise.)
  


• The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson - A beautiful story about love, longing, loss and shape-shifting foxes set in Old Japan.
  
  
• The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt - Like Eva, I want to crawl into this book and live there. (Except I'd magically stop time and never actually get to the shattering final section, which is about WW1 and made me cry pretty much all the way through.)
  
  
• The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak - A novel in stories, also set in Japan and also featuring kitsune, only this time it's modern Japan. And now that I think of it, it deals with many of the same themes as The Fox Woman. They also have the fact that they're beautifully written in common, but they each have their own distinct feel. Still, I loved them both for many of the same reasons.
  
  
• Paper Towns by John Green - I almost left this out because somehow I was convinced I'd read it last year. But no, it was in 2009, and what an amazing reading experience it was.
  
  
• The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness - Okay, so I'm kind of breaking my one-book-per-author rule, but it's a series! It's the same story! It's practically one book, really. And what a book - smart, action-packed and completely heartbreaking. Boycolt! (Another thing that will make sense if you read it.)
  
  
• What I Was by Meg Rosoff - I loved everything I've read by Meg Rosoff, but this touched me more than any of her others.
  
  
• Bone by Jeff Smith - Hey, I read the one-volume edition, so it counts as one book.
  
  
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - Like Fyrefly so brilliantly said, this book is not even dystopian, it's just thopian. A scary yet hopeful portrait of a reality that seems increasingly closer to our own.
  
  
• Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith - A beautiful modern myth about gender and sexism and, clichéd though this sounds, the power of love.
  
  
• Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand - Gothic, subtly fantastic, Victorian, wonderfully written, and a joy to read.
  
  
• Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin - Le Guin at her best.
  
  
• Saplings by Noel Streatfeild - I couldn't stop thinking about this book for days after I finished it. A brilliant psychological account of the effect of WW2 on a group of children.
  
  
• Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - My favourite Atwood to date.
  
  
• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenagger - Yes, it was every bit as good as everyone always told me it was.
  
  
• Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter - The things Carter does with language make my head spin. In the best possible way.
  
  
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt - Again, you were right all along. I couldn't put this book down.
  
  
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - I had a lot of trouble deciding between this and The Woman in White, but in the end I think I had more fun with The Moonstone.
  
  
• Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett - Not one of my favourite Discworld books like I said, but the truth is that I still enjoy even my least favourite books by Terry Pratchett more than most other books.
  
  
• Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin - Beautifully written, tragic, and very moving.

Non-Fiction

• Bad Science by Ben Goldacre - This should be required reading in schools everywhere.
  
  
• Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby - My favourite of the "Stuff I've been reading" collections, and that's saying a lot.
  
  
• Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank - A fascinating look at the history and meaning of the concept of virginity.
  
  
• Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon - The book that confirmed my brain crush on Michael Chabon.
  
  
• Reasonable Creatures by Katha Pollitt - I love Pollitt's sarcasm, insight, and plain good sense.
  
  
• 84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff - Okay, so I'm cheating again, but they were in a single volume! Helene Hanff was such a pleasure to spend time with.
  
  
• Bluestockings by Jane Robinson - A fascinating book about what the first women to fight for the right to an education had to endure.
  

Honourable mentions: Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut, Old Man's War by John Scalzi, Emma by Kaoru Mori, Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce, Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley, The Savage by David Almond & Dave McKean, How to be Good by Nick Hornby, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, Cheek by Jowl by Ursula Le Guin, Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bayou by Jeremy Love, Dramacon by Svetlana Chmakova, My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger, The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson, Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block, Howards End by E.M. Forster, Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and I'll shut up now.

Reading Stats

I hesitated about whether to include these or not - I'm a bit wary of numbers and of anything that makes reading seem like a competitive sport. I don't think numbers mean very much at all, I hate comparisons, I'd take quality over quantity any day, and I don't think more of people or their intelligence the more or the faster they read.

Stiil, in the end I decided to include these because I did in previous years, and because stats can be fun. But please please please don't congratulate me for having read a lot (relatively speaking of course), because it's not necessarily a good thing, even for a voracious bookworm. If given the choice, I'd have done other things with my time too.

Total: 262 books
Novels: 145
Short Story collections/Anthologies: 6 (A noticeable decrease from last year's 17. Please read more short stories, self.)
Comics aka Graphic Novels: 56
Non-Fiction: 42
Poetry: 1 (Boooo. Bad Ana. Well, to be fair, I read this one book - Atlas by Katrina Vandenberg, which has been on my nightstand since February - like 15 times, but it's still just one book.)
Plays: 12
In Translation: 21 (Almost all from Japanese, and Manga inflated the number.)
By women: 138
By men: 124
By people of colour: 41
By new to me authors: 136 - which is far too much. I need to devote more of my time to reading authors I already love.
Classics: 24 (Not that bad a year for classics, it turns out.)
Re-reads: Only one, Pobby and Dingan. How can this be?! Thank goodness for the Flashback challenge. I need it.
Chunksters (450+ pages): 17
Favourite authors discovered this year: Easy - Margo Lanagan, Kij Johnson and Sarah Waters. I honestly can no longer imagine my reading life without them. Also Patrick Ness, Meg Rosoff, David Almond and Wilkie Collins.
Least favourite book: The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. Apologies to any Kate Morton fans, but I honestly hadn't hated a book this passionately in a long, long time.
Best reading month: February (30. The explanation is that I read two Manga series. Also, it was a month off between the end of the first and the start of the second school semester, so other than working part time, all I did was read.)
Worst reading month: December (15)

* Why the weird number? Well, I could say "my blog, my rules", but the truth is that while I meant to make it 25 - 20 fiction and 5 non-fiction - I just couldn't leave any of these books out. I tried!