Amazon Names Best Books for the First Half of 2009

(From Publishers Marketplace)

Not waiting for the end-of-year list season, Amazon is highlight an eclectic selection of their "best books of 2009...so far." The Top 10 overall comprise:

Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Fordlandia by Greg Grandin
The City & The City by China Mieville
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
The Gamble by Thomas Ricks
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
and even Starbucks pick Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad, and one-time Borders "make book" The Lost City of Z by David Grann

Separate lists offer top tens for fiction, nonfiction, children's and "hidden gems." And each list appends 5 forthcoming fall favorites, including:

Fiction
Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain
Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo

Nonfiction
The Big Burn by Timothy Egan
American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson
Hope for Animals and Their World by Jane Goodall
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser
The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons

Best of 2009 so far