Everybody else is doing it, so here are my eleven top reads for 2009. Why eleven? Because I had three 10/10s, one 9.5/10 and the rest were 9/10 and it seemed churlish to omit one just to get to ten. I notice that I haven’t read as much this year as in previous years- 53 compared to over 100 in other years. I shall attribute this to actually doing some writing on my thesis (as distinct from reading away merrily in the meadows of literature) and an improvement in health in the second half of the year. Both thoroughly good things.
So here they are, folks with links to the posts if I’ve written them:
1. Nam Le The Boat 10/10
2. Leo Tolstoy War and Peace 10/10
3. Richard Holmes The Age of Wonder 10/10
4. Grace Karskens The Colony 9.5/10
5. Peter Godwin When a Crocodile Eats the Sun 9/10
6. Richard Flanagan Wanting 9/10
7. Kate Atkinson Case Histories 9/10
8. Louis Nowra Ice 9/10
9. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 9/10
10. E. P. Thompson Whigs and Hunters 9/10
11. Wendy Moore Wedlock 9/10
Not a bad little list, if I say so myself. A few of the classics there- Tolstoy and Fitzgerald; three recent Australian fictions – Le, Flanagan and Nowra; and a historian/biographer or two- Thompson, Holmes, Karskens.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 
Nice list Janine … and even nicer that your health has improved. Great news. As you will have seen probably, Nam Le and Flanagan are on my list too.