Best Books Read in 2009

Since circumstances prevented my original plan for them, the Best of 2009 series will become the January Feature. A note: These aren't the best books written in 2009, but rather the best books I read in 2009. I don't think any of them were written in 2009, to be honest. So, without further ado, the Best Books of 2009.

5. American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis
"I gotta return my videotapes, I've gotta return my videotapes."

      American Psycho is Ellis' third book, and it's easily his most disturbing. Patrick Bateman is your typical mid-1980's Wall Street executive, loaded with cash and drugs and awash in a sea of meaningless relationships. Or is he a serial killer? Does he make it all up as a way to mentally stimulate himself? If he's not making it up, why can't he get anybody to notice?

I found this book's treatment of the problems of maintaining one's identity facinating. In our daily lives, everything people know about us comes from what we tell them. We in general, and Bateman in particular, are the ultimate unreliable narrators. Bateman is able to project a veneer of normality so well that his friends and coworkers don't suspect that he's secretly either A) a psychotic murderer, or B) a psychotic who spends most of his time imagining committing murder.

I definitely recommend this book, but only if you can stomach the more graphic bits. Learn the lesson from me, and don't read it while trying to eat lunch. Bad plan.

4. A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
"I saw Substance D growing. I saw death rising from the earth..."

This book is a memoir wrapped in science fiction. Dick has said that everything portrayed in this book, he'd witnessed during his years living with street people and taking amphetamines. It's the second book on this list to tackle the problem of identity.

Federal agent Fred poses as drug addict Bob Arctor in order to infiltrate the lifestyle and expose dealers of the highly addictive, psychoactive drug called Substance D. During this work, Fred/Arctor becomes addicted to D, which has the side-effect of splitting his brain into two parts. The consequence is that, when Fred is assigned to focus his investigation on Arctor, he forgets that the two are the same person. Eventually, Fred's bosses figure out that Fred and Bob are the same, pull him off the case (in which Arctor was never the real target anyway), and put Fred in rehab.

One of the interesting themes of the book is the question of who's truly in control of one's actions. A major twist at the end of the book completely undermines all of Fred/Arctor's actions and decisions throughout the book. It turns out that he was never the master of his destiny, that an outside source used him for its own end. This was a great book, and I look forward to seeing the movie version.

3. Charlie Wilson's War, by George Crile
"I'm Congressman Charlie Wilson, and they're fixing to give me an award in there."

  The fabric of American society changed drastically after September 11, 2001, but I don't think many Americans understand how the people who crashed those planes came to know how to plan that sort of operation. Many think terrorism just sprang up so that Fox News and CNN had something to report on after the Soviet Union fell. They might know that the Soviets tried to invade Afghanistan in the 1970's, but they probably don't know how deep the CIA and Congressman Charlie Wilson were in the funding, training and weapons development for the mujahideen. This book shows just how dirty their hands got.


This book made me realize just how much power a determined politician can wield and how much of an impact they can have on the world. It's kind of scary. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to try and understand how our world became what it is today.

2. Public Enemies, by Bryan Burrough
"Each would emerge into public view as easily recognized, media friendly icons: The family of kidnappers, the fugitive lovers, the charismatic escape artist, the psychotic killer, the misunderstood country boy."

This book was just cool. It tells the stories of the rises and falls of the major players of the 1930s Crime Wave. The tales of the era's most notorious gangsters are meticulously researched and presented chronologically. Prior to reading it, I had no idea that Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger operated at the same time. There's a good balance between showing the romance of the gangster's lives and showing the cost and stress it leveled at them. All but one of them, Al Karpis of the Barker Gang, ended up dead.

This is my favorite kind of non-fiction book. It focuses on one period of time and one group of people and shows how they live and the effect they had on America. Without the kidnappings, bank robberies and massacres these people committed, there wouldn't be much of an F.B.I. today. In Burrough's depiction of the societal conditions that created these characters, I can envision a new crop of criminal folk heroes, especially if the economy keeps getting worse.

1. Here, There and Everywhere, by Geoff Emerick

This is the best book I read in 2009. Like Public Enemies, it focused on a sliver of our culture, one that affected millions of people. The Beatles might be the greatest, certainly the most influential, rock band of the 20th century.

Uniquely, Emerick focuses on the band's music more than he relates amusing drug anecdotes (a problem I found when I read Richard Cole's "Stairway to Heaven," the biography of Led Zeppelin that didn't make this list for just that reason).

Similar to a DVD director's commentary, Here, There and Everywhere talks about how the Beatles' songs were made, what techniques Emerick and Beatles' producer George Martin used to create the band's dynamic sound. He also gives an interesting perspective on the band's breakup - attributing it more to the pressures of being with the same people for so long, doing the same things, and the various philosophies that influenced each member's vision of what direction the band's music should take.

All of the books on this list are definitely worth reading. Hope you enjoy them, if you read them; and I hope you enjoyed reading this.


Khatru update: I may have lost track of pages I've scanned, but I think the next one is ready to start coloring and texting. It will be up some time this week. As for the website, I still need to figure out if I can post to the school's server remotely, or if I need to go ahead and find external hosting (which I'll need to do eventually anyway since you can only keep files on the school server for six months). I'll let everyone know when I get it all figured out. Until then, you can continue to find new pages of Khatru at Shastrix, as well as here on the blog.