Great Finds in 2009

2009 is the year that almost doubled the number of books in my archive. Though I think I will be more disciplined in buying and will probably focus on reacquiring my lost titles of graphic fictions next year, I'm still more inclined to accomplish quality reading (and cut the percentage of unread books to below 50%) in 2010 than using the idle time for adventurous searching I did this year. So far, acquiring the right book at the right time is a safer strategy. I admit that  "chance" is a good factor, as this "randomness" in discovering a rare book is admittedly a good attribute of a cool book trip.

2009-- what a year of searching! The following is a list of my favorite acquisitions.

Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)

Flatland (Edwin Abbott)

2001 A Space Odyssey (Arthur Clarke)

Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter Thompson)

On the Road (Jack Kerouac)

Necronomicon (Al Hazred)

The Christ Commission (Og Mandino)

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

The Diary of Anne Frank

Anne Frank's Tales From the Secret Annex

The Book of Five Rings (Miyamoto Musashi)

Joseph Campbell: An Introduction (Robert Segal)

Notes From Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

The Colour of Magic (Terry Pratchett)

Steppenwolf (Herman Hesse)

The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

The Odyssey (Homer)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh)

Xerxes Invades Greece (Herodotus)

The Gnostic Gospels (Elaine Pagels)

Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)

Declare (Tim Powers)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke)

Nobody Here Gets Out Alive (Sugerman & Hopkins)

Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Baigent, et. al.)

Foundation (Isaac Asimov)

Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill)

I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)

Little, Big (John Crowley)

Rendezvous With Rama (Arthur Clarke)

Spy Catcher (Peter Wright)***

Tehanu (Ursula K. Le Guin)

The Apocrypha (Edgar Goodspeed)

The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)

The Day of the Jackal (Frederick Forsythe)

The Einstein Intersection (Samuel Delany)

The Ipcress File (Len Deighton)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Robert Heinlein)

Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)

*** -banned book in UK!