The Millions has a nice feature going on where they’ve asked various authors to talk about the book or books that meant the most to them in their 2009 reading experience. The contributors give a range of responses, from Diane Williams’s prose-poem ode for Satan in Goray to William H. Gass’s short essay on the out-of-print Pleasure of Ruins. There are many other contributors including Jonathan Lethem, Deb Olin Unferth and Philip Lopate.

It is sometimes hard to know what books will stick with you from a given year, but amongst the books that meant the most to me in my reading this year were Anne Carson’s gorgeous and surprising Autobiography of Red, Sam Lipsyte’s soon-to-be-hit The Ask (coming next March), and the incomparable E. M. Cioran’s book of philosophical essays The Temptation to Exist.

photo by austinevan.