Entertainment | book Writers Pick Best Books of '09 Nick Hornby, Judy Blume, and more weigh in By Kevin Spak Posted Dec 11, 2009 3:40 PM CST Copied "The Financial Lives of Poets" by Jess Walters has "most things that one can reasonably expect from a good novel," says Nick Hornby. It's about the financial crisis yet manages to be "a joy to read." See 5 more photos What was the best book of the year? Salon asked Nick Hornby, Junot Diaz, Curtis Sittenfeld, and other people with better literary credentials than ours what they enjoyed in 2009. Their responses are in the photo gallery. Read These Next No one can fly in or out of El Paso for the next week or so. The world says its final goodbye to Dawson Leery. At least 10 dead in mass shooting in small Canadian town. Nancy Guthrie's camera footage raises an ancillary question: how? Report an error