USA Today Book of the Year

USA Today names "The Help" as Book of the Year:

Why are we naming Kathryn Stockett's The Help USA TODAY's Book of the Year? Well, you can't stop reading until you've devoured the last word. Its characters jump off the page and into your heart. Most of all, The Help celebrates how kindness can forge bonds between women divided by race. And how can anyone resist the story of a debut novel — rejected by nearly 60 literary agents — that, through word of mouth, has sold more than 1 million copies in hardcover?

Source: Book of the Year: 'The Help' needed no assistance

Announcing our next six books

The votes are in! Now we need to decide the order in which we'll read them:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

hits & misses

These are the books we read in 2009. In reviewing the year, we discussed which books were our favorite and our least favorite. Here are the results:

• Eat, Pray, Love
• The Appeal :(
  
• Infidel ♥ ♥
• The Senator's Wife ♥ ♥
• A Three Dog Life
• Out Stealing Horses
• Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen
• Wonderful Tonight :( :( :( :(
  
• The Tortilla Curtain :( :(
  
• Loving Frank ♥
• Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World ♥

Video promo for The Happiness Project

The nominees are...

We'll select our next five books from the following list this Sunday at our holiday gathering:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Internal Affairs by Connie Dial

The Island by Victoria Hislop

The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows
of Josephine B by Sandra Gulland

The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards

Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding

Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon