New York Times notable books for 2009

Out of the 100 books they list, I have read a whopping two: Columbine and Zeitoun. Sigh.

It's not that I don't read. Both night tables are full of books. I guess it is just that I am reading books a couple of years old, such as Robert Clark's Dark Water about the 1966 flood in Florence and the controversial restoration of the Cimabue crucifixion, or finishing off Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma which I started flying to Stockton, CA in January; or Peter Chapman's Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World (title says it all), or Ron Hansen's novel, Exiles, an interweaving of Gerald Hopkin's poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, and Hansen's depiction of Hopkin's life and the lives of five nuns who perished in the wreck; Terry Tempest Williams' Leap, her in-depth meditation on Hieronymous Bosch's The Garden of Delights; and finally Julie Greene's The Canal Builders which speaks of the silver, not gold, people who built the Panama Canal (the non-white people were paid in silver and had none of the perks that the whites did, surprise, surprise).

So there is plenty to read... just not what is on the NYT book list.

FLASH: It is snowing!!!! Hooray (never mind that I don't have snow tires on yet)!