(Beacon News, Jan. 18, Teresa Budasi)

My favorite of 2008 is the latest novel by Wally Lamb. A decade has passed since Lamb was doubly blessed by Oprah and shot to literary fame. In 1997, the talk show queen chose his first novel, “She’s Come Undone,” as her fourth Oprah’s Book Club selection. His follow-up, “I Know This Much Is True,” was chosen a year later.

So now, 10 years later, comes “The Hour I First Believed,” which supposes the life of a couple trying to put back the pieces of their lives in the wake of the Columbine High School tragedy. Books like this are my favorite kind to read — novels with long, sprawling chapters, where characters are thoughtfully drawn out with multiple, interconnecting story lines — so that’s why it tops my list. It’s a hefty volume, 700-plus pages, and I look forward to every single page turn. (Editor’s note: Sugar Grove resident Greg Zanis, who famously and controversially built and installed crosses near Columbine after the shootings, is mentioned in this fictionalized account.)

So now, 10 years later, comes “The Hour I First Believed,” which supposes the life of a couple trying to put back the pieces of their lives in the wake of the Columbine High School tragedy. Books like this are my favorite kind to read — novels with long, sprawling chapters, where characters are thoughtfully drawn out with multiple, interconnecting story lines — so that’s why it tops my list. It’s a hefty volume, 700-plus pages, and I look forward to every single page turn. (Editor’s note: Sugar Grove resident Greg Zanis, who famously and controversially built and installed crosses near Columbine after the shootings, is mentioned in this fictionalized account.)

I would be remiss if I didn’t give an honorable mention to a nonfiction title I thoroughly enjoyed in 2008: “Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice,” by Maureen McCormick. Anyone who grew up in the ’70s understands the cultural touchstone that is “The Brady Bunch,” so to hear some of McCormick’s behind-the-scenes dish all these years later was a treat — or as Marcia would say, “outta sight.” (It should be mentioned that the memoir is mostly a serious look at the actress’s troubled life, but it was the “Brady Bunch” tales that kept me reading.)

Here are more of our staff’s picks for favorites of the year:

• “Stewart O’Nan’s Songs for the Missing:” Working in the realist tradition of Richard Yates, O’Nan depicts the heartbreaking ramifications of a loved one gone missing, expertly weaving his astute behavioral observations into taut and gripping prose. — Edward Champion
• “Y: The Last Man, Vol. 10” by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra: The imminently satisfying conclusion to one of the best science fiction series of all time — in comics or any other medium. — Josh Elder

• “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery: Even with its tragic ending that left me in tears, I found this to be one of the most life-affirming and, well, elegant books I’ve read in a long time. Lovers of Japanese culture, Paris, disaffected adolescents and all things French will fall in love with this story. — Debra Bruno

• I’m torn between Dennis Lehane‘s splashy and sprawling “The Given Day,” Alan Furst’s atmospheric and sinister “The Spies of Warsaw” and Jim Harrison’s road novel “The English Major — Lehane” because he built a world I believed in; Furst because he built a world that broke my heart, and Harrison because he built a world where an old dog learns new tricks or at least gets that the tricks he knows aren’t the only ones worth knowing. — Randy Michael Signor

• David Hajdu’s “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America” is a model of pop-culture history, a highly readable account — and debunking — of the “scare” of the late 1940s and early 1950s that accused comic books of rotting the minds of American youth and turning them into juvenile delinquents. — Roger K. Miller

• “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: In this deeply heartfelt book, Guernsey mixes history and fiction with a deftness that is best relished with a hot cuppa on a wintry evening. — Vikram Johri

• “Scorsese by Ebert” by Roger Ebert is the story of two masters at work: the writer and the director. Ebert’s chapter “Scorsese Learns From Those Who Went Before Him” is valuable not only for budding filmmakers but wordsmiths as well. — Andrew Herrmann

• “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher” by Kate Summerscale: The details of the crime — the gory murder of a 3-year-old boy in England during 1860 — would be engrossing enough, but Summerscale persuasively argues that this case was both a milestone for the recently minted profession of detective and the inspiration for all of British mystery fiction. — Jeffrey Westhoff

• “Lush Life by Richard Price”: Straddling the line between literary and genre fiction, Price crafted one of the year’s most impressive and entertaining books, a gritty crime story with incandescent prose and razor-sharp dialogue. — David J. Montgomery

• “A Wolf at the Table” by Augusten Burroughs was different than anything the author had ever written, but the departure made this disquieting tale all the more memorable. — Dana Kaye Litoff

• “Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark” isn’t exactly a 9/11 novel, but few works of fiction have done a better job exemplifying the fear, anger and sense of dislocation that now comes with being an American in this terror-struck century. — Mark Athitakis

• Long before the buzz started and Oprah latched on, I was ravished by David Wroblewski’s “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.” Who knew a story about a boy who can’t speak and his dogs, who don’t, could be so riveting? — Kit Reed