Books Read in 2009 Part One
Explore the first part of my 2009 reading list featuring a curated selection of books I read that year. Discover great titles and find your next favorite read!
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The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman
A penetrating take on how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence
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The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
by Rainer Maria Rilke
"This miracle of a book, perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this century has ever produced," (Chicago Tribune) should stand as the definitive English language version.
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The Love Dare
by Stephen Kendrick
The Love Dare is a 40-day guided devotional designed to strengthen every marriage and the same powerful book that plays a pivotal role in the new movie Fireproof.
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Winesburg, Ohio
by Sherwood Anderson
Winesburg, Ohio, gave birth to the American story cycle, for which William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and later writers were forever indebted. Defying the prudish sensibilities of his time, Anderson never omitted anything adult, harsh, or shocking; instead he embraced frankness, truth, and the hidden depths everyone possesses. Here we meet young George Willard, a newspaper reporter with dreams; Kate Swift, the schoolteacher who attempts to seduce him; Wing Biddlebaum, a berry picker whose hands are the source of both his renown and shame; Alice Hindman, who has one last adventure; and all the other complex human beings whose portraits brought American literature into the modern age. Their stories make up a classic and place its author alongside the best of American writers. With an Introduction by Irving Howe and an Afterword by Dean Koontz
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Winter's Tale
by Mark Helprin
When master mechanic Peter Lake attempts to rob a mansion on the Upper West Side, he is caught by young Beverly Penn, the terminally ill daughter of the house, and their subsequent love sends Peter on a desperate personal journey. Reissue.
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Then We Came to the End
by Joshua Ferris
No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.
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The Optimist's Daughter
by Eudora Welty
A young woman who has left the South, returns to New Orleans several years later when her father is dying. After his death, she and her young stepmother go back to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding of the past and herself. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
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Suttree
by Cormac McCarthy
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road, here is the story of Cornelius Suttree, who has forsaken a life of privilege with his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River near Knoxville. Remaining on the margins of the outcast community there—a brilliantly imagined collection of eccentrics, criminals, and squatters—he rises above the physical and human squalor with detachment, humor, and dignity.
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Goodbye, Columbus
by Philip Roth
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winnning writer of explosive wit, merciless insight, and a fierce compassion comes "a masterpiece" (Newsweek) that illuminates the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and friends and neighbors in the American Jewish diaspora. Roth's award-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation. Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer break and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories that range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender.
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The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga
Includes a reading group guide, a conversation with the author, and an excerpt from "Between the assassinations."
