It's now been five years that I've been keeping track of every book I read and every movie I watch, with the goal of more books than movies over the course of the year. Reading, particularly, has developed into my most serious hobby (perhaps unless following college football counts as a hobby). The books I read are a big part of who I am, so I see this annual list as not only a record of what I've been doing with my time over the year, but also a record of what I'm interested in and what I value - especially when you rank the books.

Here is the list of the books that I read from start to finish this year, ranked in the order in which I liked them (the order - especially in the middle - is somewhat mooshy, but the first three are firm, and there is a huge gap between #1 and #2, and between #3 and #4).

1. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (8/6/09). I stand by my assessment that not only is Gone With the Wind the best book I read in 2009, it's the best book I've ever read. Thoroughly engrossing, meticulously written, expertly paced, and filled with vibrant - if not particularly virutous - characters, this is without a doubt a true masterpiece in literature. I'm not going to go around like some Southerners apparently do putting Gone With the Wind next to the Bible on the coffee table, but reading this book is an experience I will carry with me for years and years to come. I will certainly re-read it many times, and for a guy like me, who is loath to re-read anything, that's the highest compliment I can pay.

2. The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi (3/12/09). The second-best book I read this year is completely different. Elizabeth Warren is a professor at Harvard Law School whom I never had or even met, but I wish I had known her. This book, co-written with her daughter, is a very thoughtful exploration of the dynamics of modern family economics, focusing particularly on the benefits and drawbacks of having two wage-earners in the family. Though published in 2003, when I read it in early 2009, it related and almost predicted chillingly well the financial crisis of late 2008. I recommend it to any family.

3. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (10/11/09). If Gone With the Wind brought the Civil War alive to me through fictitious characters set in real situations, Team of Rivals brought it to life through pure scholarly research and history. Cast as a "group biography" of Lincoln and several of his cabinet members, its themes dealt with how Lincoln rose to power and how he maintained himself and the country during the war by listening to everyone's different views and then striking - and sticking to - his own course. I gained a lot of important insights about the people and events of that era.

4. Scalia Dissents ed. Kevin A. Ring (9/2/09). Most lawyers (and many others) know that Antonin Scalia is widely regarded as the best writer on the Supreme Court, and that he often disagrees with his colleagues on hot-button cases. This book is a collection of some of his most famous and most passionate dissenting opinions - which, as it turns out, are some of his most well-known opinions of any stripe. Scalia had me laughing at points and nearly always agreeing with him (he's that persuasive), but the downer was that when you read only his dissents, you come away with a sense that the majority opinons he's opposing are leading the country down the toilet.

5. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1/31/09). This 1868 novel is widely regarded as the very first English-language detective novel. It's the story of an aristocratic girl who receives and loses a precious diamond amid mysterious circumstances. It ranks highly on this list because of its intriguing characters, plot twists, and (I must admit) the fabulous voice readings by several different actors in the audiobook version I listened to -the only audiobook I've ever heard with more than one voice.

6. Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (10/12/09). One of two plays I read this year, and one of two books I started and finished on the same day. It's a short and poignant story about a Catholic prep school dealing with why we believe things and why we doubt things. The central question, of course, is never resolved - allowing us to decide if we believe it or doubt it. I look forward to seeing the movie version.

7. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (3/3/09). I'm surprised I ranked this book as highly as I did. Upon finishing it, I declared that I wasn't convinced by Gladwell's arguments and that this book falls far short of the high bar he set with his other books, which I loved. But, as I also admitted at the time, he's such a good writer, I really enjoyed reading the book, and I'd recommend it.

8. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (8/24/09). So I wanted to read a graphic novel before I died. I had heard that this was widely regarded as one of the best of the genre, so I checked it out. Shelly and I engaged in the age-old argument: "You're reading a comic book?" "No, it's a graphic novel!" But when it comes down to it, I really enjoyed the experience. The pictures - call them what you want - added to the story in a way that text alone could never do. I can see how this was one of the most influential superhero stories in modern times - even "The Incredibles" owes a lot to it.

9. The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin (11/23/09). A detailed and fascinating look at the Supreme Court from about the appointment of Rehnquist as Chief to the first term with Alito on board. I enjoyed the insider details about many cases I've learned about - and even cited - but I could have done without the blatant editorializing about how Bush v. Gore was an embarassment to all that is just and holy.

10. Free by Chris Anderson (~8/15/09). I was excited to read this book ever since I heard Anderson on an EconTalk podcast. He explores the various ways "free" is used in the modern economy, and how to make free profitable for businesses of all different types. I thought it was more insightful than his previous book, The Long Tail, which was little more than an extended magazine article. And, of course, I got the book in both PDF and audiobook format soon after it was released - for free.

11. Kiln People by David Brin (12/14/09). This was a surprisingly good science fiction novel about a future world where people can make disposable 24-hour clay copies of themselves and then inload the "dittos'" memories. Good sci-fi has an interesting premise like that one, and then deals with it realistically. My only gripe is that it got a little too existential toward the end.

12. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (2/9/09). Short, simple, and interesting. It's clear why this is considered one of the masterpieces of literature. It's just not as gripping as other books may be.

13. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (2/25/09). I probably would have gotten more out of this classic had I read it in text form rather than listened to it on audiobook. But what surprised me - and what came across loud and clear - was how violent the book is. Peter Pan has no compunctions about killing pirates just for fun. I don't think I'll read it to my kids anytime soon.

14. Reading the OED by Ammon Shea (8/19/09). So this guy decided to actually read the Oxford English Dictionary (21,730 pages in 20 volumes) cover to cover in a year. This book documents 1) his experience, and 2) some crazy words he discovered along the way. The latter is more interesting than the former. As Shea puts it, although you can't really add most of these odd words to your vocabulary and start using them every day, there's something reassuring - or in some cases disturbing - about knowing that there actually is a specific word out there for certain things.

15. 1491 by Charles C. Mann (6/29/09). A historical/scientific study of pre-Columbian American Indian populations, arguing that their civilizations were larger, more advanced, more complex, and more ancient than has traditionally been thought. I enjoyed the historical stories, such as the conquest of the Aztecs, more than the anthropological narrative, like the long section discussing the players involved in the research of when the first permanent native civilizations were founded.

16. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson (5/21/09). I couldn't say whether to categorize this quiet and thoughtful novel as a murder mystery or a romance. It's a bit of both, concerning the Japanese-American community in a Washington fishing village around the time of World War II. I don't know how the title relates much to the happenings in the story (except that it's snowing much of the time), but it is a good poetic description of the soft, wistful feeling you get when reading it.

17. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (6/2/09). This book has been on my "to-read" list for nearly twenty years, if not more, and I finally read it for the first time this summer. Given my teenage love for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, it's only natural that I'd want to read up on Adams's other principal creation, a private investigator who is pretty much, as they say in Britain, mad. It was an enjoyable read, but I prefer Hitchhiker's.

18. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (9/5/09). I think I'll make it a goal to read at least one Shakespeare play a year for the rest of my life. You can't go wrong with Shakespeare, even if his works aren't the most compelling things on this list. Having read the play just before Shelly and I went to see it, of course, made the performance more meaningful. Really what I should do is try to see more Shakespeare plays. After all, he didn't mean for them to be just read.

19. Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human by Michael Chorost (5/27/09). This is a fascinating personal memoir of a guy who loses his hearing and then gains it back through a device in his ear called a cochlear implant. He insists throughout (to the point of annoyingness) that he is a cyborg - part human, part robot - because his senses are moderated by a computer. I found it interesting just for the insights it gives into the biological function of hearing as well as the cultural trappings of deafness. For example, he claims that as Yiddish is the best language for rendering insults, American Sign Language is the best language for telling stories.

20. Big Cotton by Stephen Yafa (~5/5/09). This is one of those books I like so much that focuses on an important but often overlooked or taken-for-granted element of society and history. Yes, we all know the cotton industry was part of the reasons for the Civil War, but this book goes much further than that, to the point of explaining the different weaves of fabric that can be used in denim.

21. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1/21/09). I don't think even Voldemort or Sauron compare with Cathy Trask in terms of the most sheerly evil character I've ever come across in fiction. I caught the Genesis parallels, but besides the fact that they were too few and far between, I can't stomach the Eve figure being the embodiment of evil.

22. The Believing Heart by Bruce C. Hafen (8/16/09). A small but very good treatise about the way faith can work in your life. I should read the subsequent books in the series. I should read more LDS titles. I should re-read this one, because the reason I ranked it so low is primarily because I don't remember (and therefore can't implement) its teachings very well.

23. I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert (11/11/09). Have you ever watched the Colbert Report? This book is the print form of that TV show. I feel the same way about it as I do about the show: every now and then, there were some very hilarious laughs, but overall, it felt like it was merely trying (very hard) to be funny without success.

24. Pure Drivel by Steve Martin (8/29/09). This is the other book I read in one day. Steve Martin is a good author. This collection of short stories is haphazard - some were great, some were meh.

25. Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (8/24/09). I had to go through my own copy of these classic fairy tales with a pen, checking off each story that I felt would be actually appropriate to read to children. I think I selected a minority of them. But what really suprised me about the fairy tales wasn't their violence (I expected that); it was their sheer randomness. For example, the hero of a story may be told by a dwarf on the side of the road that if he picks an apple from a certain tree he will be able to pull a sword out of his ear that can produce a full table of food if waved over your left shoulder. Also, there are just too many tales.

26. Red Prophet by Orson Scott Card (2/23/09). William Henry Harrison as an evil villain? Awesome. But I'm less enthused about finishing this Alvin Maker series than I was when I started last year. I used to be a big Card fan, but the last few books of his I've read have been somewhat disappointing. Maybe I should just re-read Ender's Game.

27. The Great American Bathroom Reader by Mark B. Charlton (8/12/09). It took many, many months and dozens upon dozens of (ahem) sittings to finish this book, a random collection of factoids and trivia to while away the time while you're, um, indisposed. I read each word of it just as it was meant to be read. And I even used a piece of (clean) toiletpaper as a bookmark.

28. Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman (~4/21/09). This was an attempt to infuse Einstein's ideas of physics with poetry and drama, imagining them as dreams had by the bushy-haired genius. It was a nice concept, but I bet it sounded better in theory than it came out.

29. Into Africa by Martin Dugard (7/2/09). Now I know what all the fuss around "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" is about. But I wasn't totally enthralled by either Livingstone's or Stanley's stories.

30. The Good Father by Mark O’Connell (10/21/09). I was looking for a good parenting book as I prepared for my third daughter. The central message here seemed to be that you should exercise your authority over your children as a father, because they need to learn from that. Good advice, I guess, but not exactly what was looking for.

31. The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams (1/10/09). No, not that Robin Williams. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with this book that made me rank it so low. I just read it quickly to get some ideas for designing the layout of my Mission Book. It helped with that. But it's more of a textbook - or at least an instructional book - than a book you actually read.

32. The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford (??). This book was so forgettable that I forgot that I even read it. Even when Shelly independently checked it out from the library months later (I guess it has an intriguing cover), I had to flip through it and recognize some of the passages before I realized - hey, didn't I read this already?

33. The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook (7/16/09). An unconvincing and somewhat patronizing look at why people are less happy now than they used to be, despite our increased prosperity. Frankly, I'm not sure I buy the premise. I'm pretty happy. I'm pretty sure I'm happier than my pioneer ancestors were. Heck, I have a blog and they didn't.