New York Times Notable Books 2009 Ed.

Here.

Thanks to Literary Saloon

Read
How It Ended--Jay McInerny
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders--Daniyal Mueenuddin--to be reviewed shortly
Love and Summer--William Trevor
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Love and Music--Kazuo Ishiguro

Reading
Wolf Hall--Hilary Mantel
Let the Great World Spin--Colum McCann
Love and Obstacles--Aleksandar Hemon

Want to Read
The Casebook of Victor Frankestein--Peter Ackroyd
Every Man Dies Alone--Hans Fallada (A nice counterbalance to present reading of The Kindly Ones.)
Generosity--Richard Powers
The Lacuna--Barbara Kingsolver
Lark and Termite--Jayne Anne Phillips

The Little Stranger--Sarah Waters

My Father's Tears and Other Stories--John Updike
Once the Shore--Paul Yoon
Too Much Happiness--Alice Munro
The Year of the Flood--Margaret Atwood
Lit: A Memoir--Mary Karr

Came Close to Reading


The Anthologist--Nicholas Baker
Invisible--Paul Auster
One DOA, One on the Way--Mary Robison
The Song is You--Arthur Phillips

I think probably the major miss here was Yiyun Li's The Vagrants.  I'm only catching up with modern fiction, but if I had to cite one "to read" book for the whole year--I think it would be likely to be this one. In one review it had been likened to Ha Jin, but the spirit is nothing at all the same.  Other reviews had it relentless, horrifying, and basically depressing--which, I suppose in some ways of reading it could be.  But what it said and what it represented to me was the endurance of the human spirit, and the commonallity of humankind in search of being loved.  I'd make this part of my notables for 2009.