NYTBR 13 Dec. 2009: The 10 Best Books of 2009 Issue

Books self is interested in reading after perusing the 13 December 2009 issue of The New York Times Book Review:

1.    After reading the list of “10 Best Books of 2009”, the following books:

• Maile Meloy’s short story collection, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It
• Lorrie Moore’s first novel in more than a decade, A Gate at the Stairs
• Jeannette Walls’ Half Broke Horses, a “novel based on family lore”
• Kate Walbert’s “exquisitely written novel” about “a British suffragist and a handful of her Anglo-American descendants”, A Short History of Women
• David Finkel’s book about the soldiers (average age 19) posted to Baghdad at the height of the surge, The Good Soldiers
• Carol Sklenicka’s “prodigiously researched” biography, Raymond Carver:  A Writer’s Life

2.    After reading Virginia DeJohn Anderson’s review of Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams :

• Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams

3.    After reading Marilyn Stasio’s Crime column, the following mysteries:

• Joseph Wambaugh’s The New Centurions (1971), Hollywood Station, and Hollywood Crows (2008)
• the newest in Charles Finch’s “beguiling Victorian mysteries”, The Fleet Street Murders
• P. D. James’ Talking About Detective Fiction

4.    After reading Ruth Scurr’s review of novelist Louis Begley’s “retelling the story of the Dreyfus Affair”, Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters:

• Louis Begley’s Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters