Well, my official books read total was 205. I thought that I had read more, but the official "Books Read" monthly notebook does not lie. That total is books I read for fun, ones I reviewed for SLJ, and ones that I listened to in audiobook format.
Here is a list of some of my favorite books from this past year, broken into my own "genre" categories (or stolen from yabooknerd's fantastic year end list). Not all of these books were published in 2009. I tried really hard this past year to read books that were recommended to me over and over, some of them being much older!
In no particular order:
Best Endings of Great Series
The Last Olympian - Rick Riordan
Silvertongue - Charlie Fletcher
Best Follow Up Book
Everwild - Neal Shusterman
Best Fantasy Books
Eon: Dragoneye Reborn - Alison Goodman
The Books of Umber: Happenstance Found - P.W. Catanese
Quick and Fun Paranormal Romance
Moonlight - Rachel Hawthorne
Best Ghost Story
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Best Realistic Fiction
The Summer I Turned Pretty - Jenny Han
Best Science Fiction AND Flat Out Romance Triangle (Quadrangle?)
The Host - Stephenie Meyer
Best Steampunk
Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Best Dystopia Novels
The Maze Runner - James Dashner
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
Best Mythology Book
Radiant Darkness - Emily Whitman
Best Mystery
Death by Bikini - Linda Gerber
Best New "Got Me Hooked" Series
Chicagoland Vampires - Chloe Neill
Best Tween Book
Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life - Wendy Mass
Best Adventure
Bloody Jack - L.A. Meyer
Best Fairy Tale Retellings
Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale - Donna Jo Napoli
Princess Ben - Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Best "New to Me" Author
Maria V. Snyder - Poison Trilogy, Glass Trilogy
Utterly Shocking, Yet Compelling
Living Dead Girl - Elizabeth Scott
Book That Had Me Bawling
Before I Die - Jenny Downham
Best Use of Librarians in Story
Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians - Brian Sanderson
Historical Fiction
Samurai Shortstop - Alan Gratz
Killer Unicorns, Need I Say More?
Rampant - Diana Peterfreund
Does JacketWhys know about that Death by Bikini cover? It's great! I can't do a "Best of 2009" list, let alone keep an actual list of what I've read. I could never be that organized! There were three or four books I really loved in 2008. There were some really good books this year, but none that reached quite that same level for me. Or at least, none that I can think of at the moment.
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