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Year consensus · 2009

The Most Recommended Books of 2009

We counted 2,764 entries from 111 sources in 2009. The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes appeared on 11, tied for the most of any book.

A source counts once per book, whatever the result: a win, a shortlist place, or a list pick. We show books named by 3 or more sources. 2009 is the award or list year, not the publication year.

11 sources

  1. The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

  2. Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

10 sources

  1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

9 sources

  1. Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey

8 sources

  1. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

7 sources

  1. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli

  2. Columbine by Dave Cullen

  3. Lit by Mary Karr

  4. Love and Summer by William Trevor

  5. Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge

  6. Stitches by David Small

  7. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

  8. The Lost City Of Z by David Grann

  9. The Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

6 sources

  1. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

  2. American Rust by Philipp Meyer

  3. Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

  4. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

  5. Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

  6. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin

  7. Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips

  8. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

  9. Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

  10. Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

  11. The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt

  12. The Good Soldiers by David Finkel

  13. The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius by Graham Farmelo

  14. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

  15. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

5 sources

  1. Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman

  2. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

  3. Higher! Higher! by Leslie Patricelli

  4. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

  5. Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

  6. The City & the City by China Miéville

  7. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

  8. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles

  9. The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

  10. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

  11. The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans

  12. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

4 sources

  1. A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert

  2. All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon

  3. Anathem by Neal Stephenson

  4. Blame by Michelle Huneven

  5. Born Round by Frank Bruni

  6. Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

  7. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

  8. Calumet City by Charlie Newton

  9. Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith

  10. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

  11. Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Morris Dickstein

  12. Fire by Kristin Cashore

  13. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor by Brad Gooch

  14. Imperial by William T. Vollmann

  15. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer

  16. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

  17. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

  18. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

  19. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou

  20. Louis D. Brandeis: A Life by Melvin I. Urofsky

  21. Nation by Terry Pratchett

  22. Open by Andre Agassi

  23. Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout

  24. Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan

  25. Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer

  26. Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World by Marilyn Nelson

  27. The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

  28. The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan

  29. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

  30. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

  31. The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon

  32. The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge

  33. The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

  34. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

  35. The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

  36. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley

  37. This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

  38. Tinkers by Paul Harding

  39. Wanting by Richard Flanagan

  40. Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser

  41. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

  42. Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales by Lucy Cousins

3 sources

  1. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War by Neil Sheehan

  2. A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit

  3. A Scattering by Christopher Reid

  4. A Village Life by Louise Glück

  5. African American Mystery Writers: A Historical & Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey

  6. Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone

  7. American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell

  8. Big Machine by Victor LaValle

  9. Birds by Kevin Henkes

  10. Border Songs by Jim Lynch

  11. Chronic by D.A. Powell

  12. Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

  13. City Boy by Edmund White

  14. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

  15. Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day by Diane Ackerman

  16. Death of a Cozy Writer by G.M. Malliet

  17. Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

  18. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

  19. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789 – 1815 by Gordon S. Wood

  20. Far North by Marcel Theroux

  21. Generosity by Richard Powers

  22. Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold

  23. Going Bovine by Libba Bray

  24. Graceling by Kristin Cashore

  25. Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds by Trevor Herriot

  26. Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

  27. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

  28. How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall

  29. If I Stay: A Novel by Gayle Forman

  30. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

  31. Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

  32. Lovecraft Unbound by Ellen Datlow

  33. Money Shot by Christa Faust

  34. Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca

  35. Once the Shore by Paul Yoon

  36. Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory

  37. Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha A. Sandweiss

  38. Please by Jericho Brown

  39. Raymond Carver by Carol Sklenicka

  40. Savvy by Ingrid Law

  41. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

  42. Spooner by Pete Dexter

  43. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

  44. The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

  45. The Believers by Zoë Heller

  46. The Case for God by Karen Armstrong

  47. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis

  48. The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

  49. The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P.T. Barnum by Candace Fleming

  50. The Healing of America: The Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Healthcare by T. R. Reid

  51. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

  52. The Magicians by Lev Grossman

  53. The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

  54. The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan

  55. The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper

  56. The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

  57. Trigger City by Sean Chercover

  58. Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy

  59. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson

  60. Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl by Albert Marrin

Sources counted in 2009