I read them on my computer or downloaded them to my Palm Pilot and read (or listened to) them while I was commuting.  I noticed that I’ve got less patience with stories I read in electronic format.  If I’m sitting down with a book, I’ll generally give a story more of a chance.  But with stories in electronic format, if they haven’t grabbed me by the first paragraph, I’m likely to discard them and move on to the next one.

I didn’t read any original anthologies last year.  I just got my hands on Eclipse 3, The New Space Opera 2 and The Apex Book of World SF and am looking forward to reading them this year.

Here are my ten favorite short stories I read in 2009 (several of them were published a few years ago).

Death and Suffrage
Dale Bailey
The dead have risen and are voting democrat.  Funny and moving.

Shoggoths in Bloom
Elizabeth Bear
Winner of the 2009 Hugo for best novelette.  An interesting and thoughtful blend of Cthulhu mythos and race relations.

The Tale of Junko and Sayuri
Peter S. Beagle
A slow-paced, but carefully drawn tale of mythical creatures in ancient Japan.

Exhalation
Ted Chiang
Along with Greg Egan, Ted Chiang is my favorite short story writer.  I don’t think there is anyone else that compares with the sheer granduer of Egan’s and Chiang’s ideas.  Exhalation won the 2009 Hugo for best short story.  It’s a bit drier and slower than some of Chiang’s other stories, but still contains some remarkable ideas.

Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast
Eugie Foster
Manages to successfully pack a whole range of interesting world-building ideas into a short story.

A Study in Emerald
Neil Gaiman
Sherlock Holmes versus Cthulhu.  What’s not to love?

Orange
Neil Gaiman
A quirky, fun story in an unusual format.

Article of Faith
Mike Resnick
A robot wants to know why he is excluded from the church’s congregation.

The Death of Che Guevara
Lewis Shiner
A thoughtful alternate world history story speculating on what might have happened if Che didn’t die in Bolivia.  I loved it, but I suspect that if you’re not familiar with Che’s history, a lot of the story might be lost on you.

From Babel’s Fallen Glory We Fled
Michael Swanwick
A well-crafted story with interesting aliens and technology.

My favorite non-fiction books of 2009:

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
Jake Adelstein
Not the best written book ever, but the subject material is fascinating.  An American reporter got a job as a crime reporter in Japan and ended up breaking a story about the yakuza paying for liver transplants in the US.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Dan Ariely
One of the books that followed in the wake of the success of Freakonomics.  Fascinating stuff.

Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
Why some people succeed and others don’t.  Lots of interesting stuff in here.

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
Tim Harford
Another freaky behavioural book.

Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
Christian Lander
The funniest book I read this year.  Lots of telling observations in here.

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
The book that opened up a new publishing niche.  Examines why do people do what they do.

The Last Lecture
Randy Pausch & Jeffrey Zaslow
Randy Pausch shot to fame when he gave a lecture about how to live a good life.  He was a professor of computer science and had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He died last year

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
John Scalzi
The collected amusing and insightful blog rantings of science fiction writer John Scalzi.

Born on a Blue Day
Daniel Tammet
Tammet is an autistic savant who experiences numbers in a different way from most people.  Details some of his accomplishments such as reciting pi to more than 22,000 decimal places and learning to speak Icelandic in less than a week.

Booklife
Jeff VanderMeer
I’ve read lots of books on writing and this is one of the best.  There are plenty of writing books that give advice about how to write, but this book focuses on how to be a writer.

I also enjoyed Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan, where he talks about some of Japan’s disappearing traditions and Paul Theroux’s Riding the Iron Rooster, his travel book about riding the trains in China.

My favorite fiction books of the year:

Before They Are Hanged
Joe Abercrombie
I loved The Blade Itself and thought the sequel was just as good.  Crippled torturer Inquisitor Glokta is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz
The tale of an overweight nerd from the Dominican Republic who wants to be the next Tolkien.  Surprisingly for a novel infused with genre references it won the Pulitzer.  A funny, sad and wonderful book.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Jeff Lindsay
Everyone’s latest favorite serial killer.  Although I really enjoyed the book, I actually prefer the TV series.  For once, I think the plot changes the series made were for the better.

A Feast For Crows
George R. R. Martin
Gritty, epic fantasy from the master of gritty, epic fantasy.  Book four of the increasingly-delayed Song of Fire & Ice series.

Watchmen
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
One of the most influential works of fiction of the last 25 years.  I saw the movie first, loved it and so decided to read the graphic novel.  Brilliant stuff.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Brian Selznick
A wonderful children’s book filled with beautiful illustrations and a moving story.

The Arrival
Shaun Tan
A graphic novel that manages to say so much with pictures alone.

Blindsight
Peter Watts
A brilliant first contact novel.  Not an easy book to read, but filled with fascinating ideas about the nature of consciousness, evolution and alien communication.

Snake Agent
Liz Williams
The first of the Inspector Chan novels.  Blends Eastern mythology (Chinese demons) and modern technology.  Fun stuff.

Saturn Returns
Sean Williams
Fun, exciting, intelligent space opera with plenty of big ideas and cool concepts.

Some other novels I enjoyed were Summer Knight (another of Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels) and Mortal Engines (Philip Reeve).

I’d heard good things about Ian McDonald’s Brasyl and while I enjoyed the book, parts of it disappointed me and I wasn’t entirely convinced by the depiction of Brazil.  I guess I’ve just read enough stories where Tipler’s Omega Point is a major plot device.

I enjoyed Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio (Pu Songling), one of the classic sources of Chinese ghost stories.  After having watched movies like A Chinese Ghost Story, some of the tales in here were a lot of fun.  Some of the other tales were just a little bit odd and not exactly satisfying in terms of story development (Monster appears in town.  Monster eats random villagers.  Monster leaves.  The end).

I also battled my way through Slan, one of the classics of the science fiction.  As a genre, science fiction doesn’t age well.  Especially stories that are all about the ideas.  Modern science fiction stories have built on those ideas and added better writing and more convincing characters.  An example from Slan:

“Her own excitement was submerging in the first formulation of contempt for the clumsly efforts of the assassin.  “You fool,” she said, her child’s voice hot with disdain, yet immensely unchildlike in its stinging logic, “do you actually believe that you can catch a slan in the darkness?”

I read Haruki Murakami’s Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World.  The book is divided into two narratives.  One narrative I didn’t like at all and tended to skim.  The main narrative was a lot more fun and featured that wry sense of humor that infuses Murakami’s work:
“I thought about getting a haircut before the end of the world.  It wasn’t, after all, like I had lots of better things to do with twenty-four hours left.  Taking a bath, getting dressed, and going to the barber shop were about all I could hope for.”

I suspect one of the reasons Murakami is the most popular Japanese author overseas is that his books aren’t very “Japanese” in the sense that he is more influenced by Western literature and most of his cultural references are familiar to Western readers.  I enjoyed Hardboiled Wonderland, but not nearly as much as I liked Norwegian Wood.

Coraline
Beautiful animation and strong characters.  Fun, creepy stuff.

District 9
Aliens, explosions and an interesting plot.  What’s not to love?

Doubt
Great acting and an intriguing storyline.  Ever since I saw The Big Lebowski, Philip Seymour Hoffman has been one of my favorite actors.  He stars again here.

Gran Torino
My favorite movie of the year.  I suspect I liked it a lot more than most people do.  But I’m a sucker for an angry old man redemption story.

Let the Right One In
12-year-old Swedish vampires are a LOT scarier and more memorable than their whining North American adolescent counterparts.

Moon
Slow-paced but thoughtful science fiction.

Up
Features one of the most moving and beautiful montage scenes in any film.

WALL·E
Another Pixar gem.  Amazing how they can do some much with so little dialogue.

Watchmen
Postmodern superheroes.  I really enjoyed the adaption and I think the movie’s ending makes more sense the graphic novel’s.

Zombieland
“Set aside the feverish homeless cannibal I’m living the dream.”
Runs out of steam towards the end and veers in ClicheLand, but before that, it’s a lot of fun.

I also really enjoyed The Informant, Mary and Max, Monsters vs Aliens and Sleep Dealer.  I enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire, but thought it could have been so much better. Ponyo was okay, but disappointing compared to Miyazaki’s other films.

I didn’t see any documentaries that grabbed me in 2009.  Encounters at the End of the World was all right (in his typically eccentric style Werner Herzog goes to Antarctica to try and answer the question of why chimps don’t ride goats), but not nearly as memorable as Grizzly Man.

Films I haven’t seen yet, but suspect I might like: Avatar, A Serious Man, Sherlock Holmes, Gomorrah, Red Cliff, Samson & Delilah, The Brothers Bloom, Up in the Air, The Men Who Stare At Goats.

At the start of the year I was fortunate enough to spend 6 weeks attending Clarion South (a science fiction writing workshop) in Brisbane.  I learned a lot and made some wonderful new friends.  After that I went on to sell two stores to a SFWA-level professional market.  I also had other stories and articles published.

In the middle of the year I spent 3 months backpacking in Asia and Eastern Europe.  I visited my friends in Japan, took the boat to China, the train through Mongolia and then the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia.  Then I spent a while wandering around the Baltics and the rest of Eastern Europe.  I’ve now managed to visit the grand total of 73 countries.

Asia & Eastern Europe 2009:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnILi-REIsw

In November I returned to Melbourne and got myself a job programming for a government department.  I enjoy the work, my co-workers are great, the pay is good and I only work 4 days a week.  So I can’t complain.

I also found an apartment to rent in South Yarra and moved in at the end of the year.