My favorite book from 2009 was Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

A part of my 2009 goals, (thanks to Eric Mattson™), was to read 20 novels. For the most part, I accomplished this, (a couple were non-fiction), and loved the process and outcome. I don't think I've read this much in a year before.

With the Slacker Bookclub I sunk my teeth into several classics that I never approached while a slacker high school student. Being in a bookclube provided a great opportunity to get together for dinner and drinks to discuss the book, as well as motivation to get through the books. And mostly, I was very pleased with the books, really enjoying or appreciating several of them.

Here is the list for 2009:

• Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham
• Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammet
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
• This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Sound and the Fury, William Falkner
• Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert
• Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
• A Widow for One Year, John Irving
• Sieze the Day, Saul Bellow
• Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
• 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
• For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway
• The Man in the High Castle, Phillip K Dick
• Ubik, Phillip K Dick

I was happy to get into several of these authors. At least half of the above list were extremely interesting and/or thought provoking for me, and I would give hefty recommendations for them.

Picking a best of is not easy and I would probably pick a different best of on a different day. I thought For Whom The Bell Tolls was fantastic. I thought the Corrections was a great novel. And I am excited to re-read or read more from Bellow, Falkner and Fitzgerald.

I'm still thinking about my reading goals for 2010, I don't know if I want to make a specific target. The list is still large, but at least I knocked a little chunk off it in 2009.