Favorite Reads of 2009 (Best Books of the Year list)

2009 was a great year for reading. But it was a banner year especially in terms of my reading Westerns. In previous years, this underappreciated genre had comprised perhaps around 10% of my annual reading, but last year they really took hold of me, and a solid one-third (44) of the 125 books I read in 2009 were Westerns!

Of course, there was also the usual assortment of crime, horror, general (i.e., "literary") fiction, nonfiction, and even a respectable amount of science fiction and fantasy, especially since I discovered good sword-and-sorcery through my introduction to Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber. In any case, 2009 was a solid year for reading in general — I discovered some great authors who have since become favorites — and this is the best of what I read.

For more on why I chose these particular books as the best of the year, click on the link to read the original review. I'm taking a break until January 4. Happy holidays! I'll be back with a review of — you guessed it! — another Western.

Crime:
• Josh Bazell, Beat the Reaper
• Lester Dent, Honey in His Mouth
• Harry Dolan, Bad Things Happen
• Ed Gorman, The Midnight Room
• Ross Macdonald, The Zebra-Striped Hearse
• Alice Sebold, The Almost Moon
• Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

Horror:
• Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle
• Robert E. Howard, The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
• Richard Laymon, Come Out Tonight
• Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Cemetery Dance
• Dan Simmons, Drood

Westerns:
• Peter Brandvold, .45-Caliber Firebrand
• Lou Cameron (writing as Tabor Evans), Longarm
• Forrest Carter, Gone to Texas (The Outlaw Josey Wales)
• Ralph Compton, The Goodnight Trail
• L. Ron Hubbard, Six-Gun Caballero
• John D. Nesbitt, Death at Dark Water
• T.V. Olsen, A Man Called Brazos
• Robert J. Randisi, Trapp’s Mountain
• Frank Roderus, Charlie and the Sir
• Joseph A. West, The Man from Nowhere