Not only is it the end of 2009, but it’s the end of a decade. All the bloggers around me are coming up with best of the year lists, and the truly ambitious are writing best of the aughts lists.

I really don’t have the stamina for all that.

First off, GoodReads* is telling me that I only rated 9 books with 5 stars in the past year, and I’d say that only a third of those were published in 2009. So I guess I’m gonna talk about those three books.

Secondly, how are people my age writing best of the decade lists?! 10 years ago, I was 15 and reading God-knows-what. Probably textbooks, because I did that kind of thing for fun back then. And Dean Koontz, because I am from the suburbs. So that means I’ve only had about 5-6 years with an awakened literary sensibility, and that simply isn’t enough time to read a decade’s worth of books  and make a knowledgeable pronouncement on the Best Books of the Decade.

So you are getting, oh, My Three Favorite Books Published in 2009. Based on a sample pool of Seven Books Read That Were Published in 2009. Enjoy!

The Hakawati
by Rabih Alameddine

How have none of you read this book? I know you haven’t read this book, because there are only 151 ratings on GoodReads. Is it because it’s set in Lebanon? Is it because the jacket, while stunning, looks kinda girly? Is it because you saw it marketed as “a retelling of the Arabian Nights for the modern age” and dismissed it like so much Amy Tan? WHY?

THIS BOOK JUST READS SO WELL.

It’s like…a Lebanese Brothers Grimm, replete with inspired retellings of the Arabian folk tale canon. But it’s also a moving story about leaving home for America. And shedding one’s ethnic skin. And then trying to put it back on. And dying fathers. If you’re home for the holidays without a book (yeah, right—I don’t know anyone who isn’t going home with 10+ books), I urge you to bring home The Hakawati. Reading it is like crawling into a cave made out of paisley velvet. That is the best simile I can come up with.

Never Learn Anything From History
by Kate Beaton

I don’t know how you feel about web comics, but I’m sure you weren’t thinking, “Historical figures in historically accurate situations, but speaking hilariously.”** That’s what Kate Beaton does.

Also, to her credit, this collection of her best comics made me want to read up on my history. This is a big deal. I’ve studiously avoided history class since my sophomore year of high school. How did I get this far in life with absolutely no concept of American or world history? By studiously avoiding any conversation about facts. I mean, take this blog, for example. There is not one fact in the whole of it.

Asterios Polyp
by David Mazzuchelli

I think I’ve written about this graphic novel before. I cannot emphasize to you enough that this graphic novel is the apex of what a graphic novel can achieve. I should have received this book as a prize for completing my senior course in “The Graphic Novel.” The professor should have given it to me and said, “Pam, now you are ready.”

Anyway, that’s it for me. Care to share your top three? Lengthy justifications not required.

*I’m noticing that as I enter my late 20s—horrors!—I’m increasingly relying on external sites to do the mental record-keeping for me. Just like my poor compy, I’m running out of memory.

**Except for Beaton’s wordless depiction of Napoleon eating a cookie. Perhaps not historically accurate. But would that it were so!