Books of 2009

Here’s the annual rundown of books I read this past year:

Chris Anderson	FREE: The Future of a Radical Price
Paul Arden	It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be
Brian Ashcraft with Jean Snow	Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan’s Video Game Centers
Julian Baggini	The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and 99 Other Thought Experiments
Stephen Baker	The Numerati
Alan Beattie	False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World
Michael Chabon	The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Stephen M. R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill	The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything
Tyler Cowen	Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disorganized World
Chris Denove and James D. Power IV	Satisfaction: How Every Great Company Listens to the Voice of the Customer
Niall Ferguson	The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Mark L. Frigo and Joel Litman	Driven: Business Strategy, Human Actions, and the Creation of Wealth
Neil Gaiman	Odd and the Frost Giants
Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves	Interworld
Benjamin Gilad	Business War Games: How Large, Small and New Companies Can Vastly Improve Their Strategies and Outmaneuver the Competition
Seth Godin	Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
Sasha Issenberg	The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy
Craig Karmin	Biography of the Dollar: How the Mighty Buck Conquered the World and Why It’s Under Siege
Koushun Takami	Battle Royale
Stephen Leeb	Game Over: How You Can Prosper in a Shattered Economy
Jonah Lehrer	How We Decide
Martin Lindstrom	Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy Is Wrong
Danny Meyer	Setting the Table: the Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business
Haruki Murakami	What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (A Memoir)
Dan Roam	Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
John Rolfe and Peter Troob	Monkey Business: Swinging through the Wall Street Jungle
John Rosenberger, John Nash and Ann Graham	The Deciding Factor: The Power of Analytics to Make Every Decision a Winner
Peter Sheahan	Flip: How to Turn Everything You Know on Its Head and Succeed Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings
David M. Smick	The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers of the Global Economy
Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams	Wikinomics
Dana Thomas	Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
Rob Walker	Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are
Carlos Ruiz Zafon	The Angel’s Game
Various	What Matters Now

Fewer fiction on the list this time around, and a fair bit of pass-along reading from my dad. While there are a couple of misses on the list — didn’t much care for Flip! or Create Your Own Economy — there are several that are absolutely exceptional, such as Free, The Sushi Economy, What Matters Now, and what I feel was the best book I read this year, Buying In.

All in all, a great reading list for 2009. As for 2010, I’ve only got three books on queue right now (one of which is my copy of Nancy Duarte’s Slide:ology that’s been sitting on my shelf for months!), so suggestions are very welcome.