2009 The Year In Review

And so 39 it is. I really thought that I was going to be able to make it to 40 this year but the holidays just sapped my reading. Nevertheless, I am pleased with the progress that I made. With a few exceptions I was able to read for pleasure pretty consistently across the whole year although I really powered through a bunch of books in the summer while on vacation.

I have to say that it was a pretty good variety as well. My non-fiction reading was, as usual, almost exclusively historical military books although I did read a business book. I was glad to get to a couple of more of the classic Vietnam books.

There were quite a lot of thrillers here but nothing specific really dominated. I read a bunch of books by Swedes who know the dark side of the soul. In memoriam of Westlake I was able to get to a few more of his novels that I had never read as well as a cool graphic novel adaptation of one of his books. Some of the best thrillers this years were some of the oldest - John Buchan and Erskine Childers books were both from before the first world war.

Science fiction perhaps suffered the most this year for me with only a few of my read which could be really classed as sf. I think 2010 will be the year to discover some great novels of the future.

Thanks to all who have read this blog over the year or at any time in the past. And especially to those of you that have commented. Analytics tells me that I have had ~1400 visits this year although I'll bet a lot of those were bots.

Here's to the new Decade!

• 09.01 Riders Of The Purple Sage by Zane Grey
• 09.02 Headed For A Hearse by Jonathan Latimer
• 09.03 The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
• 09.04 I Know A Trick Worth Two Of That by Samuel Holt
• 09.05 The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 09.06 Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell
• 09.07 The Light of Men by Andrew Salmon
• 09.08 The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson
• 09.09 The Vendetta by Nick Quarry
• 09.10 The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
• 09.11 Kinds Of Love, Kinds Of Death by Tucker Coe
• 09.12 How The Dead Live by Derek Raymond
• 09.13 Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith
• 09.14 A Rumor Of War by Philip Caputo
• 09.15 The Devil's Children by Peter Dickinson
• 09.16 In The Country Of Last Things by Paul Auster
• 09.17 Empire Of The Sun by J.G. Ballard
• 09.18 The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell
• 09.19 On The Beach by Nevil Shute
• 09.20 Intelligence In War by John Keegan
• 09.21 The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• 09.22 The Bitter Tea by Gavin Black
• 09.23 Last Stand At Saber River by Elmore Leonard
• 09.24 Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
• 09.25 To What End by Ward Just
• 09.26 Eureka by William Diehl
• 09.27 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
• 09.28 The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
• 09.29 The Limbo Line by Victor Canning
• 09.30 Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
• 09.31 Spook Country by William Gibson
• 09.32 Peril At End House by Agatha Christie
• 09.33 The Hunter by Richard Stark/Darwyn Cooke
• 09.34 The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
• 09.35 Miracles Of Life by JG Ballard
• 09.36 Cell by Stephen King
• 09.37 The Guns Of Heaven by Pete Hamill
• 09.38 The Big Blowdown by George P Pelecanos
• 09.39 King Suckerman by George Pelecanos