The New York Times Book Review has announced their Top 10 Books of 2009 and three wonderful Random House, Inc. titles have made the list!

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

A Gate at the Stairs by Laurie Moore

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

Be sure these titles are available as your patrons will surely be asking for them! View the full list here.

There’s a great article up on the New York Magazine website about Jonathan Lethem’s forthcoming book, Chronic City. For those who may not know, his most famous book is probably Motherless Brooklyn, and the man is very Brooklyn-centric. He usually writes about Brooklyn. He lives in Brooklyn. I’ve seen him at the Brooklyn Book Festival. And now he is crossing the bridge…to the “weirder” side.

In his interview, he suggests that his inspiration for the derailment came from Woody Allen.

Lethem is encroaching upon Allen’s territory: Chronic City, whose working title was Manhattan, and which Lethem describes as a cross between the famous borough-centric New Yorker cartoon and “the darkest Seinfeld episode ever,” takes place entirely on the Upper East Side. 

Sounds good to me. I also have read an excerpt from this book and can tell you myself that the language he uses is on par with the greatest writers of out time. Check out the article when you get a chance!

-David