Advertisement
Jacket Copy

Publishers Weekly’s top 10 books of 2009

By Carolyn Kellogg
Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.


On Monday, industry trade magazine Publishers Weekly will announce its best books of the year, a longish, multi-genre list. Today, USA Today has a preview of its picks -- it’s sharing the biggest news, Publishers Weekly’s top 10 books of 2009:

“The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science” by Richard Holmes “Await Your Reply” by Dan Chaon “Big Machine” by Victor LaValle “Cheever: A Life” by Blake Bailey “A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon” by Neil Sheehan “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders” by Daniyal Mueenuddin “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi” by Geoff Dyer “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon” by David Grann “Shop Class as Soulcraft” by Matthew Crawford “Stitches: A Memoir” by David Small

Advertisement

These lists are always fun and debatable, but getting a best-of-2009 in October, two months before the year’s end, seems a bit premature -- like selling Christmas decorations before Halloween. Wait, what? Stores do sell Christmas decorations before Halloween? Carry on, then.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Jacket Copy
Carolyn Kellogg

Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Prior to coming to The Times, Kellogg was editor of LAist.com and the web editor of the public radio show Marketplace. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Southern California.

Advertisement