Literary Alphabet Soup

As the year comes to a close I try to not to start any new books and instead I wrap up the ones I'm already in the middle of. This year held some great reads.

My top books for 2009:

The Brothers K, The Hunger Games, Anna Karenina, Peace Like a River, Here is New York, The History of Love, Atlas Shrugged, The Portable Dorothy Parker, The Things They Carried and 84, Charing Cross Road

I tend to take on reading challenges to get me to pick up books I might not have and the best example of this was "The Good Women of China." I needed an author whose name began with an X for my alphabet author challenge and so I picked this nonfiction book up and it was really good. It's extremely sad, but it gave me a much better idea of what Chinese women have had to go through over the last few decades.

Anyway, I just finished 3 challenges for 2009. The first: 999 Challenge, where I picked 9 categories and read 9 books in each category in 2009. The second: 100 book challenge, which is self-explanatory. And finally: Alphabet Challenge, where you read one author for each letter of the alphabet. Here's my alphabet...

* A: Margaret Atwood - The Penelopiad

* B: Bill Bryson Shakespeare: The World As A Stage

* C: David Czuchlewski - The Muse Asylum

* D: David James Duncan - The Brothers K

* E: Barbara Ehrenreich - Nickel and Dimed

* F: F. Scott Fitzgerald - Babylon Revisited

* G: John Green - Looking for Alaska

* H: Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch

* I: Ian McEwan - Black Dogs

* J: Julia Child - My Life in France

* K: Nicole Krauss - The History of Love

* L: Jeff Lindsay - Darkly Dreaming Dexter

* M: Frank McCourt - Teacher Man

* N: Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book

* O: Tim O'Brien - The Things They Carried

* P: Dorothy Parker - The Portable Dorothy Parker

* Q: Anna Quindlen - Blessings

* R: Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged

* S: David Sedaris - When You Are Engulfed in Flames

* T: Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

* U: Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose

* V: Sarah Vowell - Partly Cloudy Patriot

* W: E.B. White - Here is New York

* X: Xinran - The Good Women of China

* Y: Richard Yates -Revolutionary Road

* Z: Zadie Smith - On Beauty

Photo by moi.