Merry Christmas! With the end of the year approaching I thought I would put together one of those ever-popular “best-of” lists for your consideration.

Following are my top five books that I’ve either read or re-read in 2009, and that I thought may be of interest to readers of The Cimmerian. If you’re looking for a few ideas for those book gift cards in your stocking, I highly recommend any of the following for purchase.

They make for pretty grim reading, but hey, The Cimmerian has always been less about “caroling out in the snow” and more of the “scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories” bent when it comes to the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

Best non-fiction
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu at Okinawa, E.B. Sledge

This one was a bit of a stretch to include here at The Cimmerian, but I suspect more than a few visitors to this Web site have reading habits that include non-fiction. I myself am quite interested in World War II, and this year had the pleasure of reading one of the best books on the subject I’ve yet encountered.

With the Old Breed has been called the finest World War II memoir of an enlisted man. Sledge served as a private first class rifleman/mortarman at the small, savage, bloody battle of Peleliu and the much larger battle on Okinawa. John Keegan, author of the wonderful The Face of Battle, calls it “One of the most important personal accounts of war that I have ever read. I believe that it will become a classic, and will be read and cited as long as the Pacific campaign is remembered.”

You often hear the term “the good war” in reference to the second World War, but With the Old Breed (published in 1981) shattered those myths long before Saving Private Ryan was credited with doing so. The prose is plain and rather artless, but that renders the stories it tells all the more visceral and real. The savagery of these battles were beyond barbaric: With the Old Breed includes descriptions of U.S. soldiers prying the teeth out of dead (and occasionally, still living) Japanese soldiers, and Japanese soldiers mutilating U.S. Marines in horrible fashion that I won’t describe here. It’s a must-read if you want to learn more about the small-scale infantrymen who won the war, and their grim, yard-by-yard struggle with death in some of the worst island battles in the Pacific.

Best book by or about J.R.R. Tolkien
The Children of Hurin, J.R.R. Tolkien

I reviewed The Children of Hurin here at The Cimmerian back in May. If you haven’t yet made acquaintances with the dragon Glaurung, Morgoth, Túrin Turambar, or the black blade Gurthang, make The Children of Hurin a priority in 2010. You won’t be disappointed.

Just brace yourself: The grim battles of Minas Tirith and Helm’s Deep are small potatoes in comparison to The Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Imagine magnificent elf-lords in gleaming armor and high white helms, doughty dwarves blasted with dragon fire, and Balrogs engaging in single combat. I guarantee you’ll never forget it, or the descriptions of the Hill of the Slain. Michael Moorcock and his disciples might be a trifle surprised to learn that Tolkien isn’t all about happy endings or coddling the reader with fairy tales.

Best heroic fantasy
The Iliad (audio book), translated by Robert Fitzgerald, read by George Guidall

Regardless of historicity of The Iliad—wholly factual, entirely fiction, or (most likely) some mythologized in-between territory—Robert Fitzgerald’s translation, as read by George Guidall, is fantas-tic.

My impression is that many fantasy fans avoid The Iliad because they fear it will prove too dry and stuffy, one of the dreaded “classics” so revered in academia and avoided outside the classroom. This is a mistake. If you’re a lover of bronze-age battles and the clash of spear and shield, The Iliad is a must-read.

Who would have thought that a near 3,000-year-old poem would contain some of the greatest depictions of hand-to-hand combat ever put to the printed page? When re-reading The Iliad this year, I was shocked and enthralled by its scenes of carnage, which, without exaggeration, equal or surpass the gory combats of George R.R. Martin and Bernard Cornwell.

Best Arthurian fiction
The Life of Sir Aglovale De Galis, Clemence Housman.

I finally got around to The Life of Sir Aglovale De Galis this year and found it to be a terrific addition to the legends of King Arthur’s court. It’s not an easy read as its prose style is rather archaic (it was originally published in 1905, and inspired by Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur), but it’s worth the effort.

Aglovale is a minor, undistinguished knight from the Arthurian stories. But in Housman’s hands he becomes a glass through which we, the reader, view the round table darkly. Arthur founded Camelot upon the institution of chivalry, but his knights—and most notably Launcelot, the greatest knight of all—frequently failed to uphold truth, its most cherished quality. Sir Aglovale chooses to walk this difficult path, accepting the anguish and unpopularity that accompany him on his lonely journey. In so doing he displays bravery of the rarest kind, that which is unseen and unrewarded.

Best Robert E. Howard-esque tale
The Sea Wolf, Jack London

In these days of fat, epic fantasy and a dearth of swords and sorcery, it’s difficult to find Howard-like writers: Those that write lean and mean stories that combine action and adventure, and also seek to engage the reader on a deeper, even philosophic, basis. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you’re discouraged by what you see around you in the chain bookstores, don’t be afraid to look back at Howard’s influences. London was one of his favorite writers and with books like The Sea Wolf it’s easy to see why.

While not exactly like Conan, Kull, or any of Howard’s other characters, protagonist Wolf Larsen is many ways a Howardian hero. He’s possessed of an animal vitality and strength beyond the ken of humankind. He’s also smart, ruthless, and savage, a throwback to a barbaric age, superior to the (somewhat) civilized men of his rough crew. Though he’s not a likeable character and often resorts to bullying and intimidation, we can’t help but admire his Nietzschean will to power.

Larsen is captain of the Ghost, a sealing schooner on which he metes out life and death like a grim, merciless god. We’re told his story through the eyes of Humphrey Van Weydon, an unwilling passenger who joins the crew after he survives a shipwreck and is taken aboard. When we’re introduced to Van Weydon he’s bookish and weak, lacking self-sufficiency and knowledge of how the world really works. But under Larsen’s brutal, chafing hand he becomes a Man.