What I read in 2009

This year I made a point of keeping a list of everything I read. Maybe my brain is just getting old, but I hate it when my friend sends me that e-mail asking for my top five books of the year and I am left tearing my hair and squinting, trying to remember. Here are the books I read in 2009, in the order (more or less) that I read them.

Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Elizabeth George, In Pursuit of a Perfect Sinner
Elizabeth George, Write Away
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice****
Dante Alighieri, The Inferno****
Carol Shields, Jane Austen
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano
Toni Morrison, A Mercy***
Natalie Tyler, The Friendly Jane Austen
Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies**
Gary Paulsen, The Car
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany***
John Updike, Rabbit, Run****
Laura Lippman, No Good Deeds
Laura Lippman, The Sugar House
Laura Lippman, Life Sentences
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go***
George Eliot, Middlemarch****
Ron Rash, Chemistry and Other Stories**
Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft
Heather Sellers, Page After Page
Eula Biss, Notes from No Man's Land***
Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar's Children****
Chester Himes, A Rage in Harlem
Kelly Gallagher, Readicide
Penny Kittle, Write Beside Them
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
Anonymous, Burton Raffel translator, Beowulf
Traci Gardner, Designing Writing Assignments
Kathryn Stockett, The Help
Lynda Barry, 100 Demons**
Joseph O'Neill, Netherland***
Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, The Poet's Companion
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath****
David Lee, The Porcine Canticles
Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Apocalyptic Swing****
Kim Addonizio, Ordinary Genius
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief**
Dr. David Kessler, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
Danny Gregory, The Creative License
Jean M. Twenge, PhD, and W. Keith Campbell, PhD, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement
L.K. Ludwig, True Vision: Authentic Art Journaling
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter***
Ellery Akers, Knocking on the Earth
Larry Levis, Elegy
Katherine Howe, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

That is the list -- and I still have that strange feeling that I have left something off.

I look at this list, and I feel a sense of loss. There are so many books that I wanted to read and did not. And I am really saddened that there is not a single title by Anthony Trollope on the list. A dreadful oversight.

Four stars means the book was truly extraordinary (for me when I read it -- who am I to assign ratings to Dante and Jane Austen?). Allow me to rephrase that: four stars means I had a truly extraordinary experience of the book. There are several books of poetry on this list, one by a relatively young and divinely gifted poet whose father was once my teacher, about half a light-year ago. I continue to worship at the feet of Edward P. Jones, and feel he is underrated and not as well-known as he deserves to be. Toni Morrison's prose always makes me melt. Eula Biss is an essayist who addresses issues of race sensitively and with precision. Next year I hope to read more essay collections, more poetry collections -- more in general. And I will definitely read several titles by Anthony Trollope, because I feel I have neglected my secret love.

When I read I fall into a state that is divine, dreamlike, and limitless. Time is suspended, the world recedes from me. I cannot think how anyone lives without this sensation.