Favourite Reads of 2009 Part IV. . .

Today we're also going north. Usually by this I mean Barrie (I know, I'm a hopeless Toronto-centric city girl), but we're actually going even further than that. Jonathan Lewis is a librarian at the Atikokan Public Library in Northern Ontario. Here are his reading picks.

Jonathan's Favourite Reads of 2009:



Little, Big by John Crowley
Smokey Barnable journeys to an old family estate where for many years people have interacted with another world that exists within our own.

Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis
The author makes himself the main character and is tormented by frightening events that seem to have emerged from his earlier novels.

Thunderstruck by Eric Larson
This is the true story of Marconi's development of wireless radio and how it helped to catch an English murderer.

Ice by Vladimir Sorokin, translated by Jamey Gambrell
Some people who live among us are not human and they search for others of their kind by identifying their speaking hearts with a hammer of ice.

Alice in Sunderland by Brian Talbot
This graphic novel explores the whole history of the city of Sunderland, England, including all of its legends and famous personages.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
A powerful tycoon sends an advertising man on a bizarre quest to find a unique sheep that could be the key to a decades old mystery.

The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
A student locates a legendary book that allows its reader to enter the consciousness of others.

Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
On an alternate Earth where North America is Russian, an aristocratic young man has an intermittent love affair with his cousin.

The Spiritual Brain by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary
A neurosurgeon shows how the subjective mind cannot be explained as just the physical brain.

Drood by Dan Simmons
Wilkie Collins narrates the final years of Charles Dickens including disturbing encounters with a horrifying figure named Drood.



J


Jonathan Lewis is CEO Librarian of the Atikokan Public Library in the township of Atikokan in Northwestern Ontario. He is a member of the JASI steering committee and the local Municipal Cultural Planning committee. He prefers not to read newly released books right away so that they can stay on the New Books shelf for others.