Omnivoracious

The Best Book Cover of 2009: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"

I thought the ancient proverb that would come in handy for our inaugural Best Book Covers of the Year poll would be "Don't judge a book by its cover," but the one I keep thinking of instead is "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Starting with the nearly unanimous disgruntlement our slate of nominees were met with, followed by some surprise upsets in the first round of voting, and finishing with an eeked-out victory by a cover I didn't expect to see at the top (although its charms are completely understandable), I was reminded again and again that what makes a good book cover is not, well, a truth universally acknowledged. Next year, we'll try to figure out a way to take advantage of those disagreements and open up the voting (without making it a self-promoting free-for-all: I should mention that almost all the write-in suggestions we got via the feedback button in our voting widgets were from authors nominating their own books--including some pretty well-known authors.)

But for 2009, our winner, in a stirring last-minute comeback that would have been close enough to send back for a recount were this, say, a Minnesota senatorial race, is the flesh-hungry mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. After upsetting Dave Eggers's furry Wild Things to win the Classics Reimagined category in the first round, P&P&Z, designed by Doogie Horner, passed the black-and-white grandeur of Nick Brandt's A Shadow Falls in the homestretch. Here are the final voting totals:

1. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: 16.8%
2. A Shadow Falls: 16.4%
3. Marcelo in the Real World: 13%
4. Wicked Plants: 13%
5. The Girl Who Played with Fire: 10%
6. The Interrogative Mood: 9%
7. How to Be a Movie Star: 8%
8. Rose's Heavenly Cakes: 7%
9. City Boy: 4%
10. Vanished Smile: 3%

--Tom

P.S. After I typed "Doogie Horner" above, I dug a little further (mainly to see whether he was a real person and not himself some weird mashup of Neil Patrick Harris and the 1978 National League Rookie of the Year). And I'm glad to report that, by Internet standards at least, he is a real person--and better yet, he's a combination standup comedian and graphic designer, who works for Quirk Books, the publisher of P&P&Z, and its inevitable followup, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and also helms a Philadelphia standup series, the Ministry of Secret Jokes. According to Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy, Horner "zombified" a portrait by Sir William Beechey (original to the right). Want more? Read a profile from the Philadelphia City Paper (from which I have borrowed the excellent beard montage below by Mike Reali), and listen to this Comic Vs. Audience podcast (both pre-zombie). Also see a lengthy discussion of the S&S&SM cover, in which Horner himself weighs in. Clearly I need to track down this guy...

Omni Daily Crush: "little blue and little yellow"

I'm falling in love (all over again) with the children's books of Leo Lionni (1910-1999).  During his long and prolific career as an artist, graphic designer, and author, he created more than 40 marvelous books for young readers.  Lionni was awarded the Caldecott Medal for children's illustration a wildly impressive four times in the 1960s.  Here are the medalists in order:  Inch by Inch (1960), Swimmy (1963), Frederick (1967), and  Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse (1969).  Each tells a unique and memorable tale about a small creature (an inch worm, a tiny fish, a little mouse, and another little mouse) through incredibly colorful and textured collages that make the reader want to reach for a pair of scissors, and some paper, fabric, and glue. The use of bold and tactile collage immediately reminds one of Eric Carle's books, and Carle has frequently expressed his admiration for Lionni, citing him as an important artistic influence.   Lionni's influence also extends into the 21st century through the work of rising star Steve Jenkins--an Amazon editors' favorite--who seems to be building upon the artists' legacy by relating stories about the natural world through a one-two punch of striking collage illustrations and scientific information.

But, back to Lionni.  With dozens of books to choose from, where does the first-time reader of Lionni start? Well, at the beginning, of course, with his groundbreaking book little blue and little yellow. (The absence of capitalization in the title is deliberate; I'll leave it up to the reader to ponder what Lionni had in mind.)  At the time of his small square book's publication in 1959, Lionni was already a very famous art director who influenced Madison Avenue advertising during the Mad Men era.  He launched his second career one day while riding a commuter train from New York City to his home in Greenwich, Connecticut with his two grandkids in tow. In the crowded train, it wasn't long before the three year-old and five year-old started to get antsy, and Lionni had to put his creative powers to good use, and fast.  In his autobiography he relates how inspiration struck:

"I automatically opened my briefcase, took out an advance copy of Life, and showed the children the cover, and tried to say something funny about the ads as I turned the pages, until a page with a design in blue, yellow, and green gave me an idea. 'Wait,' I said, 'I'll tell you a story.' " --Excerpt from Between Worlds:The Autobiography of Leo Lionni

Like a conjurer-philosopher, Lionni captivated his audience with a story of friendship between two very different colors who together created something entirely new and unexpected.  Not only do they learn about the creative potential of primary colors, but they also teach their families and friends a few things about mutual appreciation and understanding along the way.  little blue and litte yellow tells these important lessons through seemingly simple shapes of few colors set against the background of the square white page.  The text is equally economical. Much of the story's narrative is told not through words, but rather through the careful choreography of the colorful shapes in relation to each other.  Children immediately grasp the dance between the visual and verbal cues.  

The occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of little blue and little yellow is the perfect time to introduce preschoolers to Lionni's timeless classic. This and Leo Lionni's other magical picture books just might inspire a new generation of creative heros.

--Lauren

Omni Daily News

Start your reading: The organizers of the Tournament of Books, one of the highlights of the literary year, have for the first time announced their longlist, the 50 books they are considering for their 16-book bracket in January. They have most of our favorite fiction of the year covered, with some intriguing wild cards too, but among those from our own list that didn't make the cut: Cutting for Stone, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, Too Much Happiness, The Magicians, Blood's a Rover, and The Vagrants.

"Read across rather than down": Milorad Pavic, the game-playing Serbian novelist best known for his first novel, Dictionary of the Khazars, died recently in Belgrade at the age of 80 (the Times obituary just appeared today). The Dictionary, you may recall, was released in "male" and "female" editions that differed by a single, hidden paragraph. Dorkily, I of course have both versions on my shelf (not that I've read either), but only now I find that Pavic himself considered that owning both was "like incest."

Room for one more Teen Wolf reference: Bill Simmons, whose Book of Basketball our own Dave Callanan pretty much single-handedly made into a #1 bestseller, gets 2,200 words in his ESPN column to run his deleted scenes from what was already the fattest sports book since, well, you know Simmons would make a joke about Wilt's little black book here... [P.S. After posting, I just ran across New York mag's roundtable on The Book of Basketball, featuring Jonathan Lethem, Sherman Alexie, FreeDarko's Bethlehem Shoals, among others, which is worth a post of its own but probably won't get one.]

Moving & shaking: An appearance on Ellen this morning raises Lewis Blackwell's lovely coffee-table book, The Life & Love of Trees, into our Top 100 and up to the top spot in today's Movers & Shakers list.

Omni Personal Shopper: An Octomom Who Loves Solid Fiction

In today's installment of Omni Personal Shopper, we're offering recommendations for a fiction-loving octogenarian mom, who appreciates generational sagas, armchair travel, and no-frills prose. 

Meet the 88-year-old fiction-loving mom as described by her daughter:

My mother is 88 years old and only reads fiction, the local daily newspaper, and Time and Vanity Fair magazines. Her all-time favorite novels are An American Tragedy and Gone with the Wind. She likes novels with "substance," which she explains are those with a great story, strong characters (preferably a female protagonist), not overly descriptive, no dialects, often spanning several generations, and of long length. She hates sit coms and wouldn't read any novel in the romance genre. No gimmicks. Nothing too literary. Exotic locales are of interest as are rags to riches. Thanks!

Based on this description, we'd have to say that your mom fearlessly immerses herself in the world of the novel, and enjoys characters with pluck, gumption, chutzpah--whatever you want to call it. Here's our line-up of chunky novels starring protagonists with pluck.

• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
  Mari recommends this satisfying story that spans three generations in a family of strong-willed women--including the mysterious Authoress, whose hand-illustrated book of fairy tales provides the only clue to the past of a tiny girl who travels alone on a ship from England to Australia.

• Serena by Ron Rash
  Ron Rash's sleeper novel caught the attention of our own Daphne Durham early on, and the book went on to land a coveted spot in our Top 10 Books of 2008.  If you're mom enjoys strong female protagonists, then Serena Pemberton will certainly fit the bill.  From the moment Serena steps off the train in the book's opening chapter, you know that her new husband George has gotten way more than he's bargained for.  Together they build a timber empire in the mountains of North Carolina, and the misses has no qualms about clear cutting their family's path to fortune during the economic turmoil of the Depression era.

• The Dollmaker by Harriett Arnow
  As Tom points out, it was a beloved and bestselling novel in its day, so your mother may already know it, but Harriett Arnow's The Dollmaker is unknown to many of today's readers. Scribner has brought the story back in print this year in a new paperback edition, though, and it might be just the sort of story she likes. The locales (Appalachia and Detroit) may not be exotic, and there are more rags than riches, but the heroine of the story, Gertie Nevels, who takes her family from rural Kentucky to industrial Detroit, is one of the strongest and most compelling women characters in American fiction. She does speak in a rural dialect, which sounds like it might be a dealbreaker, but the novel itself is told in a clear, no nonsense style.

• The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis
  Based on your mom's appreciation of epic survivor tales, strong female characters, and and her openness to reading about diverse historical periods, places and cultures, I'd strongly recommend Carolina De Robertis's breathtaking new novel which set in Uruguay from the turn of the twentieth century up through the 1960s. The reviews for this debut novel  are overwhelmingly enthusiastic.  De Robertis might just might turn out to be your mom's new favorite author.

And two more books that are sure to please a mom who loves a good marathon read:

• The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett. Tom suggests two more must-read novels from Ken Follett. Follett's mainly known for spy thrillers like Eye of the Needle, but when he published a very different story, The Pillars of the Earth, twenty years ago, it became by far his most popular novel ever. The story of a master builder with a dream of building a cathedral in England in the 12th century, it's a riveting page-turner for all of its 997 pages. His follow-up, World Without End, came out just a couple of years ago, and his fans found it nearly as satisfying as the original book. Between these two tomes, mom be can revel in 2,000+ pages of fascinating and well-paced fiction.

--Lauren

Graphic Novel Friday: "The Book of Genesis Illustrated" by R. Crumb

When it was announced that R. Crumb decided to tackle The Book of Genesis, I braced myself for the riotous response. As one of the founders of underground comix and a preliminary voice in graphic satire and subversion, R. Crumb's every project is one to watch, let alone one where he interprets something as literally sacrosanct as The Bible. (Not to mention the publisher's decision to release it just in time for the holidays.) Let there be controversy!

Then The Book of Genesis Illustrated arrived, but any controversy was secondary to the finished product. As Crumb states in his hand-lettered introduction, "If my visual, literal interpretation of The Book of Genesis offends or outrages some readers...all I can say in my defense is that I approached this as a straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes."

NPR's Susan Jane Gilman gave it high praise: "It's a cartoonist's equivalent of the Sistine Chapel, and it's awesome." Yet there's a caveat in her cheer: "I have to tell you, it took me a while to get used to. Crumb, after all, is one of those innately funny people whose mere way of expressing things makes you laugh."  It's as if Crumb's natural talent serves to disarm those of us expecting an approach with more venom.

When God comes to Noah, for example, He arrives nonchalantly, His great beard sprawling as Noah tills the soil. In my favorite moment of the book, God, rather than creating a spectacle to impress or awe Noah, simply sits with him beneath a tree, hands on His knees. Noah is bug-eyed and dumb-founded (and rendered not unlike a hobbit), but Crumb's God is relatable and commanding at the same time. It's the context, mixed with Crumb's frank, high-spirited art, that offers such moments of good-natured levity. In a scene that escaped me from my years of Sunday school, God returns to Noah after the flood, and Crumb depicts it so warmly that it's difficult to believe this work is a "straight illustration job."

"And God said…'This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for everlasting generations. My bow have I set in the clouds to be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth, and henceforth, when I send clouds over the earth, the bow shall appear in the cloud."

In this panel, Noah and his sons stand before God under the shade of a tree, and as God extends his arm, a rainbow flows from His crown. It's a tiny moment in a 224-page, oversized book, but it packs an immediate impact.

For fans looking for Crumb's voice as well as his signature artwork, there is an eight-page, all-text "Commentary" at the end of the book, where he offers inspirations, clarifications, and opinions on each chapter in Genesis. Chapters 29 and 30 focus on Jacob, Leah, and Rachel in a very adult love triangle that eventually involves a couple of handmaids as well. Crumb notes:

"The story in these chapters seems almost intentionally meant to provide bedroom-comedy relief. But who can say how such a tale was received by its ancient listeners? Did they laugh? We'll never know."

David Hajdu, author of The Ten Cent Plague, offered his own commentary on The Book of Genesis in a recent New York Times review: "Crumb’s book is serious and, for Crumb, restrained. He resists the temptation to go all-out Crumb on us and exaggerate the sordidness, the primitivism and the outright strangeness (by contemporary standards) of parts of the text. What is Genesis about, after all, but resisting temptation?"

Last week, R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis held the No. #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller list for Hardcover Graphic Novels. It also landed in our editors' Top 10 picks for Best Comics & Graphic Novels of 2009. Crumb made a rare choice with this project, opting not for the easy story--to incite and offend--but to hold steadfast to the source material, allowing the words to speak for themselves and inspire his own interpretation.

--Alex

More Best Books of the Year: Time Magazine's Top 10s

Time magazine, as part of its "flood the zone" Top 10 of Everything coverage, has added three books top 10s to the heap of year-end lists (Largehearted Boy's compilation is getting so long it makes me a little nauseous to scroll through it all...). Time's presentation requires a lot of clicks to maneuver through (unless you go to this bare bones summary page), but here are all the links (as usual, props to Time for ranking their lists, which is no less arbitrary than choosing a top 10 in the first place, and all the more fun):

Fiction:

1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2. The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter
3. Swimming by Nicola Keegan
4. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
5. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
6. Jeff in Venice, Geoff in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
7. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
8. Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
9. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
10. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell

Nonfiction:

1. The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
2. D-Day by Antony Beevor
3. Lit by Mary Karr
4. Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith
5. The Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed
6. Logicomix by Apostolis Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie Di Donna
7. Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon
8. Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
9. Cooking Dirty by Jason Sheehan
10. Cheever by Blake Bailey

Children's:

1. Duck Rabbit by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld
2. Guess Again by Mac Barnett and Adam Rex
3. Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth by Diane deGroat and Shelley Rotner
4. Crow Call by Lois Lowry and Bagram Ibatoulline
5. Elephants Cannot Dance! by Mo Willems
6. Creature ABC by Andrew Zuckerman
7. How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You? by Jane Yolem and Mark Teague
8. Pick a Pumpkin, Mrs. Millie! by Judy Cox and Joe Mathieu
9. The Composer Is Dead by Lemony Snicket and Carson Ellis
10. The Snow Day by Komako Sakai

Notable: The Age of Wonder seems to be establishing itself as the nonfiction book of the year, with competition from The Good Soldiers and The Lost City of Z. This is the first time I've seen The Kindly Ones on a US end of the year list (it did make the Globe and Mail's top 100 in Canada). And I must admit I'd never heard of The Windup Girl, but it does sound pretty appealing (the William Gibson comparisons alone...). Worth noting also that the Time critic responsible for most of the adult book writeups, Lev Grossman, has his own novel, The Magicians, on many other people's best of 2009 lists, including ours. --Tom

Keep Judging: Surprise Finalists in the Best Book Covers of 2009

Last night the voting closed for the first round of our Best Book Covers of 2009 poll: the 60 covers we nominated have been narrowed to 10 finalists, one from each of the original categories. Now all 10 category champs are on a single ballot, and voting is open for you to choose the overall best cover of the year. (Or at least the best cover among those we originally nominated.... By far the most common response we got to the poll was from people who didn't find their own favorites among our choices and wanted to have a write-in option. We agree that the choices were pretty limited when opinions on what makes a good cover differ so strongly (as we found out!), so we hope we can find a way to open things up more next time.)

What were the favorites so far? You can see all the finalists above (in the order of total votes received in the first round), and you can find the full voting order in each category after the jump. Some of the results followed my own expectations: I wasn't surprised to see The Girl Who Played with Fire and Wicked Plants make it through the first round. But there were plenty of other surprises. My money was on Dave Eggers's furry cover for The Wild Things to sweep all the way through the finals--it's such a one-of-a-kind production (which makes everyone who sees it in the flesh start giggling) that the competition actually seemed a little unfair. But zombies (and Jane Austen) apparently top wild things: The Wild Things ended up finishing third in a very close race behind the two reimagined versions of Austen's Pride and Prejudice, with the grisly pastiche Pride and Prejudice and Zombies coming out on top.

I also figured Andre Agassi's strikingly, well, open photo on the cover of Open would take the Famous Faces category with ease, but, in another close race, he was topped by the classic Philippe Halsman glamour shot of Elizabeth Taylor on the cover of How to Be a Movie Star. I guess La Liz still has star power, and her famous "violet" eyes (well, maybe not just her eyes) trump Andre's soulful brown ones.

And I was also really pleased that enough people must have liked the cover of City Boy (a memoir of urban planning, of all things, which I only came across when I was searching on Amazon for this other City Boy) as much as I did to make it the winner in Paperbacks. I'm going to try to find out more about the story behind that photograph...

We'll have more of our continuing covers coverage, but in the meantime, here's how the first round of voting turned out:

New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2009

Publishing assistants all across Manhattan were kept from their dinners so they could hit the refresh button, but the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2009 list finally did go live this afternoon/evening. No big surprises there for anyone who's been reading the Book Review all year, and no real sleepers of any kind, but I for one was especially glad to see Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, which was met with enthusiasm here and there but also a lot of mixed reviews, make the list--it has a few flaws in my mind too, but on the whole it's probably my favorite book of the year. The things it did well, it did so well that all else is forgiven (and even its failures were interesting). Ditto Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City, which inspired some really hostile responses (as well as some ga-ga raves), but which I found primarily delicious. I was surprised not to see Wolf Hall or Cheever there (looks like the Raymond Carver bio, which Stephen King reviewed more for Carver's life than the book itself in a recent NYTBR, got the lit bio slot), and very surprised not to see the new Alice Munro collection, after last week's cover rave, but things do get tight when you have only 10 spots (maybe such arguments are what delayed the list a few hours today...). Of those 11 top 100 consensus books I identified last week, two (The Age of Wonder and The Good Soldiers) are here too.

Fiction:

• Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy
• Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
• A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert
• Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Nonfiction:

• The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
• The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
• Lit by Mary Karr
• Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed
• Raymond Carver by Carol Sklenicka

As always, the major publishers are well-represented, although after last year's Knopf-fest, only one book (Moore) represents the borzoi this year, plus two more from publishing-group mates Doubleday and Pantheon. Scribner is the leading imprint, with three on the list. And with all the attention given this year to the lack of women writers on year-end and award lists, it's worth noting that six out of these ten were written by women. --Tom

Omni Daily News

The anti-list list: The Millions has launched their annual Year in Reading feature, which bucks the trend (happily indulged in over here) of making Best of the Year lists that "posit an illusory pinnacle of achievement and quality," in favor of collecting a British-style series of what-was-the-best-book-you-read-last-year replies, under the commendable rationale that "true discoveries are often made not by finding out what everybody liked, but by getting from one trusted fellow reader a recommendation that strikes a nerve or piques an interest." Two pluses: they give each contributor more room to make their case than the usual UK list does, and they string out their posts throughout December, which makes for enjoyable daily grazing. So far, recommendations from Hari Kunzru, Julie Klam, Phillip Lopate, and LanguageHat's Stephen Dodson, who finally convinces me that, yes, I really have to go all-in on the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary as my big (my only?) gift request this year.

What Canada will read: Two big Canada lists are announced this week: The Globe and Mail's annual top 100 list (which, if we add it to our top 100 consensus list from last week, narrows the agreed-upon books to only two: Asterios Polyp and The Lost City of Z), and perhaps the most influential one of the year, the 2010 Canada Reads lineup of five books that will be debated on the CBC early next year in a series that always sends the books high onto bestseller lists.

Down with Daddy Lit: In the Daily Beast, Lizzie Skurnick lays waste to the budding genre of reverent, "child curation" Daddy Lit with a barrage of memorable one-liners, aimed mainly at Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, "a singular entry in the annals of parenting literature—bypassing a now-commonplace obsession with one’s offspring to head straight to sanctification."

Moving & shaking: Could it be that Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac birthday ode to John Crowley has sent his novel Little, Big, one of the all-time cult novels (which has been sitting on my to-read pile forever), to the top of our Movers & Shakers list today?

3 x 100: Comparing the NYT 100 Notables to Amazon and PW

The New York Times announced their 100 Notable Books on Thanksgiving Eve (they'll appear in the print edition of the Book Review on Sunday), which completes the annual triumvirate of US top 100s, including PW's list and ours. I won't go to the cut & paste lengths of linking to all 100 of the NYT's picks, but you can find them all in this list on Amazon. What I will do, as I have done in the past two years, is pick out the books we all three agree on. The three lists don't all cover the same territory (the NYT and PW don't include kids' books, and the NYT also leaves art books, cookbooks, kids' books, and other specialty titles for other year-end lists, while PW also doesn't include kids' books and shows a much heavier interest in comics, religion, and genre fiction than we or the NYT do in our main lists), but our common picks do give a sort of consensus on the most-admired fiction and nonfiction of the year.

Eleven books appear on all three lists, the same number as in 2007 (last year we agreed on 13), although I'm also going to list two books that we and PW agreed on that also appeared in the NYT's other year-end lists:

• Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
• Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
• Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
• The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
• Born Round by Frank Bruni
• Cheever by Blake Bailey
• Columbine by Dave Cullen
• Fordlandia by Greg Grandin
• The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
• The Lost City of Z by David Grann
• Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
• Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan (not in NYT's 100 Notable, but in their best cookbooks list)
• The Jazz Loft Project by Sam Stephenson (not in NYT's 100 Notable, but in their Gift Books list)

Only two novels pleased everybody, along with a graphic novel. And what else do you notice about these shared picks? Yes, just like the much-debated PW top 10, no women (but four Davids and a Dave!)...

Is this list a hint of what to expect from the NYT's 10 Best, coming next Wednesday? Last year half of that list came from the consensus picks, but in 2007 only two did. My money's on The Age of Wonder, The Good Soldiers, Lost City of Z, and Cheever to be on that list, along with the big award winners Wolf Hall and Let the Great World Spin, which were in our overall top three but didn't make the PW list. But we'll see... --Tom

P.S. One further clarification: for those readers who don't read the NYT tea leaves as closely as many in the industry do, the Sunday Book Review and the daily book reviews are entirely separate, and so while the 100 Notable and 10 Best lists are put together by the Sunday Book Review staff, the regular daily reviewers--Kakutani, Maslin, and Garner--have each chosen their own 2009 top 10s. Those looking for further consensus will note that four of the books above (The Good Soldiers and Lost City of Z for Kakutani and Await Your Reply and The Age of Wonder for Maslin) also appeared on those lists.