Season of the Lists

It must be the season of the lists, yeah, because Publishers Weekly has announced their top 10 books of 2009. One business title made their list—Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, released by penguin Press.

The others are:

• The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes, Pantheon Books
• Await Your Reply: A Novel by Dan Chaon, Ballantine Books
• Big Machine: A Novel by Victor LaValle, Spiegel & Grau
• Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey Knopf Publishing Group
• A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan Random House
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin W.W. Norton & Company
• Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer, Pantheon Books
• Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann, Doubleday Books
• Stitches: A Memoirby David Small, W.W. Norton & Company

The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award will be announced today at a gala dinner in London. The shortlist, announced in September, is:

• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed, Penguin Press
• Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World by Stephen Green, Atlantic Monthly Press
• Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation by Nandan Nilekani, Penguin Press
• The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy, PublicAffairs
• Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A Akerlof & Robert J Shiller, Princeton University Press
• In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic by David Wessel, Crown Business

You can find the longlist here if you're interested. We'll let you know the winner when it's been announced.

My personal favorite list so far this year, though, is AbeBooks Top 10 Ghostwritten Books. It has some gems, such as Tennis As I Play It, ghosted by Sinclair Lewis, and the bizarre story of Hedy Lamarr suing her own publisher for the inaccuracies in her own "autobiography," Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman, ghostwritten by pulp novelist Leo Guild.