For the seventh year in a row, here is a list of the books I read last year. (I only read 25 books in 2009, whereas I read 34 in 2008, and 31 in 2007.)
(Previous lists can be found here: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003.)
These books are listed in the order I read them, oldest first, except for the three fiction books which I listed separately at the bottom. My favorite books were #’s 8, 13, 15, 18, 21, and 23.
Nonfiction:
1. Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over, Cathy Alter
2. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School, Kathleen Flinn
3. Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Susan Shapiro
4. Thin is the New Happy, Valerie Frankel
5. Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher (Warning: this was my least-favorite of everything I read last year. I only finished it because it was a quick read.)
6. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
7. Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, Jennifer O’Connell (editor)
8. Lying Together: My Russian Affair, Jennifer Beth Cohen
9. Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea, Chelsea Handler
10. Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories, Katha Pollitt
11. Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital, Christopher Buckley
12. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, David Oliver Relin
13. Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America’s Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, William Queen
14. No Limits: The Will to Succeed, Michael Phelps
15. The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them, Amy Dickinson
16. I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, Giulia Melucci
17. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, Susan Jane Gilman
18. Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story, Lang Lang
19. Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain, Martha Sherrill
20. It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita, Heather Armstrong
21. The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, Kevin Roose
22. Nobody’s Mother: Life Without Kids, Lynne Van Luven
Fiction
23. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
24. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, Tiffany Baker
25. Last of the Breed, Louis L’Amour
