Top Books from 2008...That We'd Really Like to Read Before 2010

So it turns out that coming up with a list of favorite books from 2008 is a lot harder than coming up with our favorite music albums. This is not because we can't agree. Nor is it due to any lack of good books from the past year. 

It's that we realized that we haven't actually read very many of the books that came out in the last year - turns out, we're still catching up with our reading list from 2007! Which in turn included a few books from the year before. And...you get the idea, right?

In any case, a very many excellent-sounding books have come out in the past twelve months, which we really would love to spend some time with in the near future. These are a few that caught our eye or have been highly recommended by customers (who theoretically have actually read them!):

FICTION:

The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane - Historical fiction set in Boston during WWI

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski - A mute boy flees his family home after the death of his father to live in the wilderness

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (fiction - and which we DID actually read!) - The story of a sci fi nerd growing up within the Dominican community in New Jersey

Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen - An ambitious rewrite of his trilogy "Killing Mr. Watson," "Lost Man's River," and "Bone by Bone" into one novel.

Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri - A new set of short stories from one of our favorite authors.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson - A thriller in which a journalist researches an unsolved with the hopes that it will resurrect his career

The Soul Thief, by Charles Baxter - A graduate student loses, re-collects, and then loses again his idea of self and personal history.

NONFICTION:

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami - Diary entries, short essays, and other thoughts from Murakami centered around his years of long-distance running.

The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins - Short nonfiction essays giving personal accounts and observations of the war in Iraq

Finding Beauty in a Broken World, by Terry Tempest Williams - Part creative memoir and part researched nonfiction, Williams makes connections between disparate events to form a picture of the whole.

Payback, by Margaret Atwood - The idea of debt and payback explored in personal memoir, historical reflection, and conversations on current events.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, by Elizabeth McKracken - A memoir of a woman dealing with the grief and meaning of a miscarriage.

Nothing to be Frightened Of, by Julian Barnes - Barnes, an agnostic, muses on death, mortality, and memory.

What other books do you recommend checking out?!

(Image: Chocolate Geek via Flickr Creative Commons)