The ten best books of 2009

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I’ve lied to you again.

These are really just the best books read by me in 2009. I mean, seriously, who could read all the books that came out in 2009? Not even Michiko Kakutani, I bet.

And it may not even be my ten best books of ‘09 because I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a few I read back in the earlier months.

Also, it’s not ten. It’s only seven. But you know, it’s traditional to have ten on a list. (This started long before Letterman. It was Cotton Mather with his famous “Ten Top Ways to Kill a Witch” in the June 1711 Reader’s Digest.)

Fool by Christopher Moore

This statement will arouse controversy but I’ve always felt a comic novel should be funny. This fucker is massively, relentlessly funny. Sidesplitting, knee-slapping, milk-snorting…all that.  I started reading Moore’s vampire novel once and didn’t care for it, but this one, wow. Killer. It’s a retelling of King Lear, narrated by Pocket, the court jester. Moore has done his research; he uses period touches effectively, going anachronistic mainly in his footnotes and in the protagonist’s voice, which would not be out of place on Stewart’s or Colbert’s writing staff.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall is thick, it’s heavy and it’s sometimes hard to read (I have a couple of questions I’d like to ask Ms. Mantel) but it’s worth the slog due to its annoying brilliance. Those damn Brits and their superb English… WH won the Man-Booker Prize, which has it all over the Nobel lit and the Pulitzer. Apparently the M-B judges believe that a prize winner ought to be a book someone actually might read. Personally I was sold on WH the minute I read in a review that its hero was Thomas Cromwell, the guy who did in Thomas More, that so-called man for all seasons and enthusiastic torturer and burner of heretics. Anyway, you had to walk on eggshells to survive being a counselor to the ever-fascinating Henry VIII and the second most famous Cromwell in history did it as masterfully as anyone—right up until they chopped off his head.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Eggers shows the wisdom of the old newspaper maxim: If you’ve got a story, tell it. If you don’t, write it. You get two well-told stories in one here, though about the same man, and Eggers relates them in simple, straightforward, powerful prose. A New Orleans building contractor, family man and Syrian immigrant named Abdulrahman Zeitoun makes a fateful decision, to say put during Katrina, so he can safeguard his house and check on his properties and projects. The deluge is bad…and then things get worse.

Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood

Man-Booker Prize again, this one a mere finalist. Great comic idea: What if Tarzan’s old pal, Cheeta, now in retirement in Florida, wrote his autobiography? Hollywood exposes done well, even fake ones, are always entertaining and the salacious gossip here rings true. That Cheeta is funny isn’t surprising. That it’s also poignant is. Cheeta’s ghostwriter modestly takes no byline, but of course, if you care, Google knows all.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

All the smart kids like her so I figured I’d better give AGATS a whirl. Had a little trouble getting into it but after 20 or 30 pages it took off and soared. Let me tell you, to keep me interested in a story about a baby nanny takes some doing. Lorrie Moore is keeping me. (I’m not quite done.) The snatches of conversation wafting up to the nursery from the weekly meeting of mixed-race parents alone are worth the price of admission. Moore is frighteningly observant. And you know what else? She’s funny! Love funny.

Homer & Langley By E.L.Doctorow

Anyone who’s ever holed up in a mansion for 40 years and filled it with so much junk the stuff finally fell on you and killed you, leaving your disabled brother to starve to death, will identify with Doctorow’s take on a New York City urban legend that happens to be true. And face it, any one of us could end up like the Collyer Brothers if the cleaning lady just misses a couple of weeks. Doctorow’s so good at this whole novel-writing thing, he’s probably lying about his nationality and is really British.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

The least funny book on this list. Everyone—except right-wingers—knows that war is beyond horrible but every once in a while, somebody has to show us why all over again. O’Brien, who fought in Vietnam, does so, unforgettably in this memoirish novel. A modern classic. (Book was actually written in 1990 but what can I say? I just got around to it. Sue me.)