Tomorrow night I will post my top 5 books of 2009 in Fiction, Nonfiction and Christian releases. First I want to share books I read this year that were published in previous years that I heartily recommend (Bolded titles are essential reads):

Fiction

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

Nonfiction

Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America by Dudley Clendinen
God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer by Bart Ehrman
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Maus by Art Spiegelman

Christian

The Church and the Homosexual by John J. McNeill
The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg
Here I Stand by John Shelby Spong

Horror

Creepers by John Morrell
Phantoms by Dean Koontz
Lost Boy Lost Girl by Peter Straub
Night in the Lonesome October by Richard Laymon
The Descent by Jeff Long
The Beast House Series by Richard Laymon
Summer of Night by Dan Simmons