The bestselling book in the store, even though we were out of it until the middle of the month, is R. Crumb's awesome Book of Genesis. We've got a bunch in stock right now, but it's going fast.

In the Valley of the Kings, by Terrence Holt (Norton)
Holt’s story collection is quite unlike any other you’ll read this year—he challenges the reader to figure out what the hell is going on, and his honed sense of Lovecraftian menace encourages the reader to figure it out quickly, before something terrible befalls.

As 2009 draws to a close, we’ve been given the formidable task of culling the finest literature from the year. As always, it was tough picking out the best from a bevy of books published in the last 12 months. But who won? In the fiction category, it was Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. As for nonfiction, the always reliable Dave Eggers topped the list with his Hurricane Katrina-centric book, Zeitoun.

Hands down, the best book I read all year was Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by CUNY professor Morris Dickstein. This fresh take on literature, film, photography and music exhibits Dickstein’s mastery of the Depression era’s cultural lodestones.

Fifty years ago, Bernard Malamud won the National Book Award for his story collection The Magic Barrel. There are echoes of that book's casual mastery and patience in Mueenuddin's debut collection, which was a finalist for the same award this year. Only Mueenuddin's debut doesn't unfold in the Jewish enclaves of Brooklyn, but rather the mud-clapped floors of servant quarters in rural Pakistan. His characters, like Malamud's, are often stuck in an old order, even as the world tilts on and Pakistan's feudal society begins to crumble.

I particularly enjoyed Nell Irvin Painter’s “The History of White People” (Norton). In the wake of the boatloads of literature about Americans of non-European origin—much of it absolutely necessary, some of it heaved onboard by earnest opportunists and explorers of exotic perceptions—Painter’s meticulously researched yet eminently readable tome arrives on the scene not a minute too early. Of course, no one need tell me that the assignments of race, especially the supposedly innate characteristics based on skin color and facial features, are mostly mean-spirited constructs serving the human lust for power. Nevertheless, I was held spellbound for four hundred pages as the author, a Princeton professor, follows the historical shifts from pre-racial Greek civilization all the way to Anglo-American definitions of whiteness and the economically driven propaganda of Caucasian superiority.

But equally compelling were a trio of small books — B.H. Fairchild’s poetry collection USHER, Lydia Millet’s short story collection Love in Infant Monkeys, and Ted Kooser’s brief memoir Lights on a Ground of Darkness — that each in its own way reordered my inner world. What connects all of these books, including “Imperial” and “Columbine,” is the depth of their observation, their tendency to nuance and detail, the way they have of slowing down the moment so that we can see it fresh.

SOMEWHERE TOWARDS THE END, by Diana Athill (Norton, $24.95). In this account of growing old, Athill's easygoing prose and startling honesty are riveting, for whither she has gone many of us will go as well.

These 14 gritty stories are a revelation, funny and risky, often marinated in meth and alcohol abuse. The weather is punishing, the characters working-class, the trucks hard-used, and the money tight. But instead of a country song, Campbell has plucked literature from her rural Michigan surroundings. "Yard Man" will roll you into a fist, and "The Trespasser" does more in 13 paragraphs than many a novel accomplishes in 300 pages.

This book was a finalist for the National Book Awards and is starting to turn up in many "Best of the Year" lists, for good reason. It's a mesmerizing read about a way of life that is now almost extinct. Set mostly in rural Punjab and the city of Lahore, these interwoven stories, which take place over several decades, explore the lives of both rich and poor under Pakistan's rigid, almost feudal class structure. All the characters are related to, or dependent on, a wealthy landowner who is only vaguely aware of what happens to them as they live out their lives in the "other rooms" on his land and in his homes. Every room has its secret story, every character a vibrant, sometimes tragic life.

A fabulous work of history, The Discovery of France, by Graham Robb.

THE WISDOM OF WHORES: It lifts the lid on the world of AIDS research and policy. I thought it was terrific. NAMING NATURE: A smart, thoughtful, incredibly engaging look at the science of taxonomy - all but forgotten in our rush to molecular biology and yet completely essential in trying to impose a sense of order on the craziness of life. Yoon has a gift for making nature beautiful and the scientists who study it both passionate and occasionally hilarious. A great read.

Marilyn Chin's outrageous and provocative debut novel tells the coming of age story about raucous twin sisters Moonie and Mei Ling -- known as the "double happiness" Chinese food delivery girls -- who are determined to transform themselves into accomplished women. United in their desire to blossom into somebodies, the Wong girls fearlessly assert their intellect and sexuality, while wrestling with the influence and continuity of their Chinese heritage.

My favorite book published this year was also one of the most disillusioning. R. Crumb's "Book of Genesis" combines the fire-and-brimstone flavor of Jack Chick's fundamentalist tracts with peerless artistry and painstaking attention to historical detail and produces a straightforward but incredibly immersive retelling of the first book of the Old Testament. "The Bible doesn't need to be satirised," Crumb has said. "It's already so crazy." In relying on Robert Alter's (very thoughtful) translation, though, Crumb casts doubt on my longtime admiration for Eve, who in some renderings chose to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree because the serpent convinced her that it was "desired to make one wise."

Alexander McCall Smith chooses SEVEN DAYS IN THE ART WORLD. William Dalrymple chooses IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS. Christopher Brookmyre chooses THE ABYSSINIAN PROOF. Janice Galloway chooses MURIEL SPARK: THE BIOGRAPHY.

A beautiful embodiment of what is to me a central principle of great nonfiction: it’s not remotely about what it purports to be about.

Appearing five months after the writer's death and clocking in at 1,200-odd pages, THE COMPLETE STORIES OF J. G. BALLARD thus resembles a commemorative slab or a gravestone. Its scale is appropriate to Ballard's career-long engrossment in impossibly steep heights, dreadfully vast distances, and terrible immensity. One early story, "The Concentration City," opens with snatches of conversation overheard on Millionth Street in an infinitely extending town—a kind of nightmare omnipolis from which its hero cannot escape. In "The Drowned Giant," which deserves a place in any anthology of 20th-century stories, the corpse of a colossus washes up on a beach to be prodded at, scrambled over, and finally picked clean of its flesh. Rendered with a surgeon's cool precision, lit by a mad scientist's visionary passion, these and many of the other 96 stories are vertiginously tall tales.

In POSING BEAUTY: African American Images From the 1890s to the Present (Norton, $49.95), Willis makes a monumental contribution to contemporary American culture by presenting a definitive history of black beauty.

Diane Ackerman’s Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day would make a perfect Christmas gift for the nature lover on your list. Her writing is thought-provoking, lyrical, and beautiful. There are underlying themes of change and suffering, but her focus is truly joy. Joy in being alive. Joy in being a part of this immense universe.

Silber’s generous stories often encompass the sweep of a lifetime and engage ideas such as love, faith, and fate with a truly global perspective. And the search for the connections between and among stories becomes an engaging puzzle. Her first ring of stories was a National Book Awards and Story Prize finalist. "The Size of the World" is just as good.

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown) and THE FACE ON YOUR PLATE by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Norton). Both of these important, compelling books address the horrors of factory farming and the need for us to change our dietary choices, but each approaches the topic from a different angle. They are must-reads.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Bloomsbury, £14.99) is an astonishing collection of short stories by the new star of the South Asian fiction, Daniyal Mueenuddin. The author's humane and humourous appreciation of rural life, seen from the point of view of the landlord, depicts a world familiar from "Sketches from a Huntsman's Album," but with the action transposed from the Russia steppe to the Pakistani Punjab. Like Turgenev, Mueenuddin creates a world peopled by rural folk, generously sketched with a wonderful freshness and lightness.

Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of linked stories, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders” (Norton), set in contemporary Pakistan. These are beautifully limpid and luminous, reminiscent of early Naipaul, and range across society with enviable ease.

A remarkable debut by a Punjabi writer who has gained plaudits from Mohsin Hamid and Salman Rushdie. A small book that reveals, in every detail, the extent to which life in Pakistan is dictated as much by whom you know as what you do.

A facsimile and translation of the personal volume in which Carl Jung recorded and illuminated his own visions.

This entertaining history emphasizes the sociological forces that have shaped the music.

The son of a Pakistani civil servant and an American writer, Daniyal Mueenuddin grew up in Lahore and Wisconsin, trained as a lawyer in the U.S. and then returned to rural Pakistan to run his family's farm. He writes — in an unadorned, mesmerizing style — with both a deep understanding of Pakistani culture and an appreciation for what Western audiences know, or don't know, about life in a country that features far more prominently in the news than on the fiction shelf. The eight stories that make up his debut collection are marked by conflict and corruption — he's especially attuned to the subtle power struggles that can infect a household — but in this bleak environment, it's the little victories that keep his characters hopeful.

Contemporary Pakistan is a place where one man may bed down in a wooden crate and another in a mansion, where women of all classes must seek the protection of men, where there’s stealing and then there’s stealing. The eight stories in this impressive debut collection capture it all with remarkably clear-eyed compassion.

Bookstores are overflowing with memoirs about childhood, adolescence, the romantic misadventures of early adulthood and the trials of parenting. But what does life look like from the tenth decade? Most of us do hope to find out, but are otherwise reluctant to think about it. This memoir is a heartening answer to the questions many are afraid to ask. Athill, a British editor, has led an unconventional life with unexpected results and harbors no expectations of an afterlife, yet the generosity, dignity, frankness and, yes, wisdom she has attained in her 90-some years are qualities everyone can aspire to in their own old age. You won't find the usual "inspirational" self-help nostrums in this slim book, but rather eloquent, honest, long-view ruminations on the meaning of love, sex, work, family and art. Athill doesn't preach; she doesn't have to. Just spending a few hours in her company is endlessly enlightening.

Somewhere Towards the End, by Diana Athill (Norton; $24.95). Reflections on life as a nonagenarian.

“The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard’’ is an indispensable volume of 98 short works by the late writer best known for his autobiographical novel “Empire of the Sun.’’ In stories such as “The Subliminal Man’’ Ballard depicts the individual confronting a reality - earthbound or astral - that has cracked just enough to let reason evaporate. Ballard once observed that his writing, although often labeled science fiction, is set not in the future “but in a kind of visionary present.’’ Now here it is, in these pages and before our eyes.

In Gerard Woodward’s remarkable trilogy (August, I’ll go to Bed at Noon and A Curious Earth) alcoholism (and some maternal glue sniffing) is not the unacknowledged elephant in the Jones family’s living room, it’s the unacknowledged elephant rampaging throughout their house and generations, not to mention the homes of near relations, and all the nearby pubs. Woodward’s depiction of a middleclass family riddled by unmitigated addiction is horrifying and hilarious, unsentimental and virtually untouched by medical or recovery jargon.

STITCHES by David Small. An award-winning children’s book illustrator revisits his childhood and how he sought escape from its bleakness in fantasy. DANCING IN THE DARK: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION by Morris Dickstein. The author captures America’s literary, artistic, musical and cinematic high points from the 1929 crash to World War II. DAWN LIGHT by Diane Ackerman. Reflections on human interconnectedness with nature and how forgetting this imperils the planet.

THE BOOK OF GENESIS ILLUSTRATED BY R. CRUMB. An honest, powerful and violent rendering of Genesis by the artist. USHER: POEMS by B.H. Fairchild. Fairchild adopts the voices of the poet Hart Crane; Rasputin's daughter, Maria; and others to evoke a territory between perseverance and despair.

Super-Organism by Bert Hölldobler and EO Wilson. Two of the world’s best-known biologists describe the astonishing social evolution that has led to some insect species, such as ants, bees and termites, forming “super-organisms”. Altruistic collaboration, complex communication and division of labour make the colony act like a living organism of its own.

Stitches: A Memoir by David Small. I've already enthused about this book in a Review Roundup post. It's a lovely tome for a Book Club since you'll end up discussing dysfunctional families and childhood trauma along with what makes a good graphic novel and whether graphic novels, especially ones of this caliber, should be considered literature. (Psst. They should.)

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. This one is already on many year-end lists. And what’s not to like? Don’t expect any of the usual zany R. Crumb antics (other than a Rubenesque Eve). This version keeps close to Robert Alter’s literal translation, but Crumb still finds a way to breathe visual life into a very old story.

Goldstein spent two years photographing and interviewing more than 59 members of an armored battalion. The photographs are stunning and spare, as are the interviews.

"The Book of Genesis Illustrated" by R. Crumb (Norton, $24.95) offers not only the unexpurgated text of the first book of the Bible in its entirety, but also the frank depiction of bare breasts, frontal male nudity, and various random acts of violence. “Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors” is the warning label on the front cover. In other words, it’s absolutely faithful to what is really to be found in Holy Writ and, for that reason alone, it’s going to surprise and shock many unsuspecting readers. But it’s also a work of astute visual exegesis by the iconic artist of the 60s who gave us Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat. Here’s one coffee table book that is actually going to be displayed on the coffee table at holiday parties, and it’s guaranteed to be a conversation-starter.

NEW COLLECTED POEMS, by Evan Boland (W.W. Norton; 320 pages; $18.95 paperback). A career-spanning collection from the Irish poet and Stanford professor. THE GREEK POETS: Homer to the Present (W.W. Norton; 736 pages; $39.95). A mere 3,000 years of Greek verse by more than 200 poets.

Posing Beauty: African American Images From the 1890s to the Present, by Deborah Willis (W.W. Norton; 246 pages; $49.95). A treasure trove of photos of famous and everyday folk.

The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard (W.W. Norton; 1,199 pages; $35). Ninety-eight (!) haunting stories from the author of "Empire of the Sun," who died in April.

Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, by Linda Gordon (W.W. Norton; 536 pages; $35). The photographer behind the famous photographs.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb "As Crumb writes in his introduction, 'the stories of these people, the Hebrews, were something more than just stories. They were the foundation, the source, in writing of religious and political power, handed down by God himself.' Crumb's Book of Genesis, the culmination of 5 years of painstaking work, is a tapestry of masterly detail and storytelling which celebrates the astonishing diversity of the one of our greatest artistic geniuses."

Elizabeth Bishop with an attitude, Addonizio writes poems that are rigorously crafted yet as immediate and exciting as slam poetry.

Dorothea Lang: A Life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon

The best novel I read this year was Rawi Hage's COCKROACH (Hamish Hamilton), which tells the story of an ungrateful immigrant, filled with angst and attitude, in a Montreal which could be Kafka's Prague. It is a dark book, narrated with verve and brilliance. It made me jump for joy. Any writer who borrows a piece of a Capote book title is asking for it, but Daniyal Mueenuddin's IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS, set in worlds of rich and poor, east and west, has such razor sharpness and lyric tenderness that it gets away with it. Anyone writing "you only had to see her disjoint a chicken to know the depths and heights of her carnality" gets my vote.

The list includes Daniyal Mueenuddin, Linda Gordon, and Morris Dickstein,

Cookbook: Clearly your host likes to cook and nothing says Winter like a steamy bowl of soup on a cold day. Scoop up Anna Thomas' new book Love Soup for veggie-based wintery concoctions. ($25)