Welcome to the Best Books of 2009, our choices for the very best out of a year's worth of reading. You'll find great books for readers of all ages and interests in our top 100 editors' and customers' lists, as well as our year-end top 10s in dozens of categories. Topping our own list is our book of the year, Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann's gorgeous and moving novel of New York City in the '70s, set against the backdrop of Philippe Pettit's Twin Tower tightrope crossing.
Top 100 Editors' Picks
We know: ranking books is crazy. How, for example, do you compare a 32-page picture book warning you, charmingly, of the world's most dangerously cute creatures with a 1,344-page intensely personal history of the California-Mexico border? Well, in our top 100 editors' picks we've done just that, and more. The bottom line? Whatever the order, these are the books we've loved the best this year. Start browsing with our top 10:
Our top 100 customer favorites are ranked according to customer orders on Amazon.com through October. (Only books published for the first time in 2009 are eligible.) The list starts with these bestsellers:
After weeks of voting and tens of thousands of ballots submitted, Amazon customers have chosen the Best Book Cover of 2009: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, cover designed by Doogie Horner. See all 60 of our original nominees, and read our updates on the voting results for the first round and the finals on Omnivoracious, the Amazon books blog.
Best of 2008 Now in Paperback
Still catching up with last year's best books? In the year since we announced our favorites for 2008, most of our Top 100 editors' picks have come out in paperback. Start your browsing with last year's book of the year, Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency.
Every book, it seems, now has a video trailer, but not all of them rise to the occasion the way these 2009 favorites of ours have. Whether it's with period costume and surprising props, imaginative animation, or nothing more than an author who can really tell a story (or a bad joke), each of them made us want to read the book they told us about:
