Well, it's that time of year, the holiday season, when everyone with an opinion creates an end of year best of list. I'm no different. So here they are, my favorite books of the year in no particular order, minus any mysteries because I'll be writing about those next week.



Blame by Michelle Huneven (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)

This is a hard one to describe. My brother hated it, not enough action moving the plot along but that was fine with me because this is a book of consequences that had me thinking long after I finished. Patsy MacLemoore is a young wild child of a history professor who after a long night of drinking finds herself in jail accused of running over a mother and daughter, something she has no recollection of at all. She accepts the blame and goes to jail. The rest of the book is the morally ambivalent aftermath of that horrible event, how it shaped her life, and all the what if? questions that come with never really knowing the truth. A hard book to read but well worth the effort.

Selling Your Father's Bones: America's 140 Year War Against the Nez Perce Tribe by Brian Schofield (Simon & Schuster)

One of the first books I read and still one of the best. Brian Schofield is a British journalist who followed the 1700 mile flight of the Nez Perce from the U.S. Army in 1877. Part travelogue, part history lesson he tells the story of the conquering of the west, warts and all. Along the way he talks to descendants of the survivors who surrendered to the Army only forty miles from Canada and shares the bitterness over the lies, the broken treaties, and the ecological degradation, that still imbues their lives a century and a half later. An excellent addition to the library of anyone who cares about the history of the west.

Spooner by Pete Dexter (Grand Central Publishing)

For some reason all the novels I seemed to pick up this year were full of family angst. A suicide here, a dead brother there, a family sitting shiva, dysfunctional brouhahas everywhere. While Spooner isn't a walk in the park it at least moves forward at a positive pace which is something I need when when I read fiction. At it's heart the story is about relationships, specifically father/son relationships. It's also the semi-autobiographical story of Pete Dexter himself, one of my favorite authors, as he puts himself into the shoes of Warren Spooner who grows from teen reprobate to baseball phenom to newspaper columnist to successful author, all with the help and support of his step-father who was the only one to see hope in Spooner when he was a boy. Thank you Mr. Dexter for finally finishing this grand opus.

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

This is my favorite book of the year! I came in work one day and saw it sitting on the counter, a single copy looking all lonely. Being the kind bookseller I am I took it home with me and boy am I glad I did. One night, that's all it took, for me to read it from cover to cover and I've been singing it's praises ever since (in fact someone is buying a copy as I type this). Ostensibly it's about running, ultra-marathons in particular, but it is also the story of an eccentric American and a reclusive Mexican Indian tribe considered some of the best long distance runners in the world and a race no one saw. Think John Krakauer (Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven) except without any tragedy and you'll have a good idea how good this book is. Reading, for me, doesn't get much better.

Well, there you go, a few of my favorites out of the many I've read over the year. Let me know what you think. Also, tell me what some of your favorites are. I'm always interested in suggestions. Next week, my favorite mysteries.

See ya,
Pete