A few of our Fiction staff’s favorites from 2008

The time between December 26 and January 1 is always pretty meager when it comes to news. I try to avoid TV news, radio shows and newspapers that fill their time and pages with their “look back at the year” and “top ten this” and “top ten that” features. Yet I absolutely canNOT resist any Top Books of the Past Year lists, such as Top Ten Novels of 2008 (Seattle Times) and the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2008. One of the New Year rituals I treasure is looking back at the books I’ve read and enjoyed most and coming up with my own Top Ten list. In previous years, I had to gather all the notebooks and scraps of paper where I wrote down book titles, authors and my impressions of books. This year I just went to my GoodReads account and sorted by books read in 2008. I narrowed it down a bit more by books read that were published in 2008, which was especially useful when our Fiction Department staff had the opportunity to talk about some of our favorite books of the past year in a recent issue of Library Journal. Keep in mind that these were just a few of our faves from the past year (I like that it was “favorites” rather than “best”; no judgments and so much more enjoyable of a way to approach reading).

We submitted the book titles for that list a couple of months ago, and dozens more books have been devoured and enjoyed by my wonderful colleagues since then. My own Top Ten Fave list has a few new contenders that I read during Seattle’s recent (and rare) snow days. I think I’ll work on my list now, on this New Year’s Day morning. And then, of course, I’ll run, pay bills, rearrange the furniture, repaint the bedroom ceiling and learn to speak Italian.