Favourite Reads of 2009 Part VI. . .

Today we turn it over to the guys and the library wholesalers - Ron Stadnik from Library Bound in Waterloo and Brad Wojak from United Library Services in Calgary, are two of the most prolific readers in the business and have such a wide range of reading tastes - I look forward to their lists every year because I know I'm going to be introduced to books that have not crossed my radar (plus Ron has chosen one of my own personal favourites this year and Brad is a fellow NYRB Classics fan!)

Ron's Favourite Reads of 2009:

So much for being quirky and esoteric: my choices have never been so mainstream. With books as moving as Dan Baum’s Nine Lives, or as fun to read as Atwood’s Year of the Flood or Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, I’m happy to read popular bestsellers. Special mention for Methland, a book about the life and death of an American small town that could easily be set in southwestern Ontario.

Fiction:

Consumption by Kevin Patterson
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
Far North by Marcel Theroux

Non-Fiction:

Nine Lives: Death and Live in New Orleans by Dan Baum
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
Methland: The Life and Death of an American Small Town by Nick Reding
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
Appetite for Self Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industy in the Digital Age by Steve Knopper
Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin

Ron Stadnik buys and recommends books for national wholesaler Library Bound. More of his favorite books can be found at www.librarybound.com

Brad's Favourite Reads of 2009:

David by Ray Robertson
Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage
Stitches: A Memoir by David Small. This is one of the finest graphic memoirs since Maus.
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Thought You Were Dead by Terry Griggs
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters by Rebecca Solnit

Brad Wojak is the adult book buyer for United Library Services in Calgary.