Your Top Five for 2006

This topic is stolen from LouisBranning who has his favourites listed on his profile.

Can't tell you yet; I've still got a whole month left to read!

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
The Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat

I would have to say my favorites were
The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Boy in the striped pajamas by John Boyne
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
A Lesson before Dying by Ernest Gaines

Saturday by Ian McEwan
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J.Gaines
Remember Me by Trezza Azzopardi
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
Digging to America by Anne Tyler

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
In the Palace of Repose by Holly Phillips

Great lists so far, everyone, please keep it up.

Small Island by Andrea Levy*disregard the mad touchstone
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
1599: A Year in the life of Shakespeare by James Shapiro
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Dirt Music by Tim Winton

Lots of stuff appearing on touchstones which I haven't entered.!

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver + The Confusion + The System of the World)
All fun and games until somebody loses an eye by Christopher Brookmyre
Coloring Outside the Lines by Roger Schank
and one kept in reserve, just in case I find another before the end of the month

Are these supposed to be all books published in 2006, or just read in 2006?

By the way, the NY Times has just released online its 10 best books of 2006, but you have to be registered with them to see it, I think. They list:

Fiction
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
The Lay of the Land (touchstone not loading) by Richard Ford
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Nonfiction
Falling through the Earth by Danielle Trussoni
The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Places In Between by Rory Steward

I'm not really sure what you mean about it turning into one big advertisement.... Obviously when people tell others what books they really liked, it's an advertisement in a way. But as long as it's individuals talking about their favourite books and not publishing companies promoting specific books, I don't see what the problem is. How should this thread have been different?

I was originally planning to wait until the end of the month to list my favourite books of the year, but then I realized that I'll already have difficulty deciding so I might as well not make it even harder :). (I'm also limiting it to fiction and excluding re-reads so that it will be easier.)

I'm assuming it's books read in 2006 rather than books published in 2006. Since I like to buy the books I read, but only in paperback, it's otherwise unlikely that I'd be able to list any.

So, my top 5 are:

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Beacon at Alexandria by Gillian Bradshaw
Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Breaking of Northwall by Paul O. Williams

Out of the books I've read in 2006, the favorites that first come to mind are:

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie
Two Lives by Vikram Seth
Varieties of Exile by Mavis Gallant
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
Them by Francine du Plessix Gray

rebeccanyc, du Plessix Gray's Them: A Memoir of Parents is on my list too, and Two Lives was just as good, both wonderful biography/memoirs. And thanks for posting the NYTimes 10-Best list.

The best books I've read in 2006 are:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Night by Elie Wiesel
Sunwing by Kenneth Oppel
Vimy by Pierre Berton
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

So far...
The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry
Moon Dust by Andrew Smith
(non-fiction)
You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here But It Helps by Tom Holt
Sea Glass by Anita Shreve
How I Paid For College by Marc Acito

It might change before the year is out, though!

Several familiar writers chosen from above--Pamuk, Ghosh, Oe, Messud, Grossman, Ford, Atwood, McEwan.

Anyway two favorite non-fiction books.

American Theocracy--Kevin Phillips
Objectivity and liberal scholarship--Noam Chomsky

Fiction.

Chapel Road--Louis Paul Boon
Conversation in the Cathedral--Mario Vargas Llosa
The prone gunman--Jean Patrick Manchette
World Light--Halldor Laxness
The stone that the builder refused--Madison Smartt Bell

and for honorable mention.

Christie Malry's own double entry--B. S. Johnson

MrKris, it is on amazon. ISBN 0811209547

Ho hum--Ever hear of a book going out of print? Not everyone buys their books through Amazon. Go to half.com (e-bay related) there are at least 7 different people selling the book from $10 and up. One could also try addall a database for professional book sellers all over the world--which includes here too. Beyond that you might be surprised what you might find scavenging through old book barns and used book stores and library sales--some of which is relatively cheap.

Overnight, I realized there were lots of other books I consider right up there in the top, so I'm now breaking this down into fiction and nonfiction.

Fiction

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie
Varieties of Exile by Mavis Gallant
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
The March by E.L. Doctorow

At the beginning of the year, I was finishing Proust's In Search of Lost Time so I didn't read as much other fiction, but I would put some parts of that in the top five.

(some title touchstones not loading)

Nonfiction

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Two Lives by Vikram Seth
Bound for Canaan by Fergus Bordewich
Them by Francine du Plessix Gray

Oh, my God, there are so many books I haven't read, and I have only maybe another 70 years left to live... I'm having anxiety attacks.

I've read 178 books since January 1st in a wide ranges of subjects and genres.

I am not a literary critic. My main concerns are, "Did I enjoy it?" and "Did I get something out of/learn something from it?"

These books got a "10" (5 on LT scale) from me this year:

Essential Spirituality by Roger Walsh
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman

These books got a "9" (4.5 on LT scale) from me this year:

Hungry Planet by Faith D'Aluisio and Peter Menzel
Urban Shaman by C.E. Murphy
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

I haven't listed old favorites that I've reread this year.

My top five so far are:

Fiction:

Emma and Me by Elizabeth Flock
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard
Beyond Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury
Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko (juvenile fiction)

Non-fiction

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Honorable mention: The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night Time by Mark Haddon

Leave it to librarythingers to figure out a way to get more than five books in the top five! :)

Yes MrsLee: That's why I said 5. If I'd said 20 we would have had everyone's top 35 or so. My own top five choice is slightly arbitrary given the limitations imposed.

Well, I got this down to my top eight, so at least I kept it to single digits ...

The Unconsoled by Ishiguro

We3 by Grant Morrison

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

Everything you know is wrong

Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Wolves eat dogs by Martin Cruz Smith

I'll let you go by Bruce Wagner

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Kayaking the Inside Passage by Robert H. Miller

Kromes, I'm really a huge Bruce Wagner fan and thrilled to see I'll Let You Go, one of his very best novels, on your list. I've got his new one Memorial on the very top of my own list this year, highly recommended.

My five (okay, I know I'm going to be stretching it a bit) favorites of what I've read in 2006:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Secrets by F.M. McPherson
The Mediator series by Meg Cabot (I'm counting all 6 books as one!)
The Guardian's of Time Trilogy by Marianne Curley
Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison
Wolf Who Rules by Wen Spencer (I'm about three chapters from the end but I am just loving this book and know it is going to be a fave!)

I know that tomorrow I might be thinking to myself, "I should have chose this book instead of that one!" but I'm just going to leave it alone.

LouisBranning: I'm dying to get my hands on more Bruce Wagner, but have been a little strapped for cash ... my mother-in-law usually gets me Borders gift certs for Christmas/b-days, and if she comes through I'm definitely pickup the other of his "cell phone" books.

Book of the Year: The Secret River by Kate Grenville
Four more favorites read in 2006 in no particular order:
The White Earth by Andrew McGahan
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
The Accidental by Ali Smith
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Best nonfiction read: Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
Best audio: The History of Love by Nicole Kraus
Best poetry: still deliberating on this one.
Best mystery: Couldn't decide between several older Reginald Hill's, The Naming of the Dead or Jar City.
Best SF/Fantasy:Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
Best book read thus far that doesn't come out until 2007: Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson.

The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro by Antonio Tabucchi

Saturday- Ian McEwan

Everyman- Philip Roth

No Country for Old Men- Cormac McCarthy

Fictions- Jorge Luis Borges

I often feel the same way, mdbenoit!

Girlbomb by Janice Erlbaum
Steve Almond's Which Brings Me To You
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Sheesh, I've read too many books this year to choose only Five. Let me try, anyway:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Terrier (Beka Cooper) by Tamora Pierce
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
From A Buick 8 by Stephen King
Watership Down by Richard Adams

If I were to consider books I reread this year I'd give myself a heart attack trying to decide... so, considering only books I read for the very first time this year:

Zorro by Isabel Allende
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Elfquest by Wendy and Richard Pini (that's an entire series, but oh well. They fit together as one narrative, and they were bloody good!)
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

That's just so far, of course, and I've listed them in the order I read them rather than the order I'd rank them.

The Kite Runner
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Fellowship of the Ring
Lucky
The Thirteenth Tale

My top five:

Stuart: a life backwards by Alexander Masters
Istanbul: memories of a city by Orhan Pamuk
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
A Good Man is Hard to Find and other stories by Flannery O'Connor
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

I buy almost exclusively from used bookstores and the like, so I never know about this year's books. Here is a list of my favorites read this year.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Locked Rooms by Laurie King
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Gesundheit! by Patch Adams
Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

Pride and Prejudice
The Great Gatsby
Never Let Me Go
Jonathan Strange

Hmm, that's only four, and I can't think of another to list, so I think I'll hold off in case I read another favorite in December.

Five Tip top reads of 2006 is a challenge but
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell and
Black Swan Green, also David Mitchell
The Observations by Jane Harris
The rights of the reader by Daniel Pennac This should be required reading for anyone who wants to enthuse others with a passion for reading.
Being by Kevin Brooks - read a proof copy of this and it was the best TeenFic or YA novel I read all year. It's due to be published March 2007. Simply Fabulouso!

Haven't bought or read Black Swan Green yet Lizzier but I really like David Mitchell.

I liked Black Swan Green very much too, though it fell a bit short of making my 10-Best list.

harrumph

it made mine. :P

Black Swan Green
The Echo Maker
The Zero
That Amy Hempel collection was killer

huh, I forget what else...

The Kite Runner by Khaled Husseini
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Wisdom of Our Fathers by Tim Russert
Girl with a Pearl Earring By Tracy Chevalier
Talk to the Hand by Lynne Truss

So far (though it may change after December is over), the books I have read in 2006, though they may have been published at any time.

Fiction

The Cybelene Conspiracy by Albert Noyer
A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell
What the Scarecrow Said by Stewart David Ikeda
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder

Runner Up: Demon of the Air by Simon Levack

Non-Fiction

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
The Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey
Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything by Charles Pierce
The Mystery of the Tunguska Fireball by Surendra Verma
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

Runner up: The Great Mortality by John Kelly

My top 5 picks for read books in 2006 (through probably not published this year):

Young Adult Literature:
A Mango Shaped Space by Wendy Mass
The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
Petey by Ben Mikaelsen
Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
Gossamer by Lois Lowry

Fiction:
The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg
The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Hey Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland

Non-Fiction:
The Glass Castle a memoir by Jeannette Walls
Don't Eat This Book! by Morgan Spurlock
*I don't read much non-fiction*

After putting pleasure reading on the backburner while finishing graduate school, I am excitedly jumping back into reading and LT in recalling my top five reads of the year. This is also the year that I discovered that I not merely like, but LOVE reading nonfiction. Without further ado...

Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond
Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
First, Do No Harm by Lisa Belkin
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Black Swan Green is a possibly little more linear than the previous three titles but was the book that made me finally bow down before the genius of David Mitchell

My top 5:

Superstition by David Ambrose
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Book of Flying by Keith Miller
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

This is sad, not sure if I even read ten books this year with moving and all. I saw someone read 178, wow! Maybe when my kids get older!

I'll try to list my favorites.

Time Traveller's Wife
Widow of the South
Memoirs of a Geisha

and my favorite was
Pride and Prejudice

ficusfan: How did you find A Thread of Grace? I've been hesitant to read it since I'm not really into historical fiction.

"ficusfan: How did you find A Thread of Grace? I've been hesitant to read it since I'm not really into historical fiction."

I loved it. I am into Historical Fiction, but am not much interested in events after 1600-1700, so I put this one off for a while. It is set in Italy during WWII. She writes wonderfully and her characters live and breathe, which I knew, but the time period put me off.

She does a great job of writing the setting and the culture into the story and the events of the characters lives. There are 3-4 families that she follows, and various good minor characters who are part of the story. She did about 6 years of research, so although it is a novel it is based on real events.

My local RL fiction book read this, and liked her so much that we then did The Sparrow, which is SF, and also fantastic. I had already read The Sparrow and Children of God, so was able to suggest the first book to the group.

I am sure when she publishes her novel about Lawrence of Arabia which she is now working on, we will read that as well.

Finally my somewhat obsessive habit of only entering new books into LT after I start reading them pays off! I can actually tell which books I read in 2006. My top 5 would be:

CHATTERTON by Peter Ackroyd
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
The Embarrassment of Riches: an Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age by Simon Schama (I can't help adoring all his books)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

My five favorites I read this year (with what I think is the year they were published):

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 2002
Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 2002
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood 2000
Life of Pi by by Yann Martel 2002
The Deer Pasture by Rick Bass 1985

Apparently I'm running about four to six years behind...

I really liked the Eco book. The format is wonderful but it's a very good story besides.

My top 5 I read this year (after hours of narrowing it down) are:

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Kringle by Tony Abbott
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud

These three stand out for me in 2006 for various reasons

Birds without wings by Louis de Bernieres ( I visited Turkey in 2005)

Children of the day by Sandra Birdsell ( I've visited Manitoba and S. Russia )

Treading Water by Anne DeGrace interesting comparison to the Yangtze River Dam flooding. I visited China in 2006 )

Shattered Sword for being the best book on naval history I've read in awhile and a great advance on what we've understood in the past about the Japanese side of the battle of Midway.

"Le Mans '55" by Chris Hilton for being an excellant account of what is probably the most important motor race ever run. This is not to mention that Hilton also captures the spirit of a time, not just documents a race.

His Majesty's Dragon for taking what looked like a dodgy concept and executing it to great affect.

Altered Carbon for being one of the best hard SF novels I've read in awhile, and for being one of the best cyberpunk novels I've ever read.

When Thunder Rolled for being an unusually forthright personal account of the fears and motivations of a fighter pilot.

dchaikin: you are not running behind. We would miss so much if we never looked to the past for literature. I think only one of my Top 5 was published this year.

Well, since this list is limited to five, I've listed my best read books of 2006 by category on my profile. There's a total of 11 books. Feel free to check them out.

Sean--Fools of fortune is a very good book.

Hmmm... top 5... tough call.

At All Costs by David Weber is the only book I know for sure came out this year, because I was waiting impatiently for it to come out. It certainly didn't disappoint me, but someone who hadn't read the rest of the series (10 previous books, I think) might not be impressed. The series focuses on the career of a female naval officer and the war her nation is fighting, set approximately 2000 years in the future.

Solomon vs. Lord by Paul Levine was a funny and interesting bit of legal fiction, and it inspired me to read, and then buy, the sequels.

I recently discovered Celeste Bradley's Liars' Club series (5 books so far). I like the occasional light romance, and this series combines two of my favorite genres: historical fiction and espionage-type mysteries.

I have made an effort to mix some classics along with my reading, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath.

It is difficult to pick a fifth, but I guess it would be Elaine Cunningham's Starlight and Shadows trilogy. Liriel Baenre is an excellent character; I enjoyed her just as much as Cunningham's Arilyn Moonblade, although there is no one remotwly like Danilo Thann in this series.

I'm sure there will be more but that is what I can think of off the top of my head.

Zoe, Storeetllr, tunarubber -

For everyone who's got Never Let Me Go on their lists, I've got a question...

How naive vs. spoiled were you before you read it? I just finished it this afternoon, and while I liked it, I wasn't blown away like so many others seem to be. I'm wondering if that's because I knew the ending/what was going on before I started reading. Thoughts?

I also knew what was going on before I started reading it, so I don't think that's it. Hmm.... I think some of the main things I liked about it were that it was completely engrossing and, I thought, incredibly sad. Maybe the engrossing-ness wouldn't always be so apparent/important, but I started reading it on a bus and was immediately able to focus on it completely, which is unusual.

Though it was #4 on my list for a reason... I gave it 4.5 stars, while the three books above it all got 5.

furefly98: I think that Ishiguro is given to understatement in his writing. I certainly wasn't blown away, but I was quietly moved.

Yes, I agree with Amanda ~ while I was in the middle of Never Let Me Go, I was half wishing I didn't have to read it (for a book club), but then after I finished it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I want to read it again, because the writing is so good and the story & the characters have levels that I may have missed on the first go-round.

#8 and #61 ~ The Sparrow and Children of God were two of the best novels I've ever read. I've already reread The Sparrow twice, and plan to read it and Children again soon. (After finishing a few "must reads" from the TBR list.)

#61 ~ I avoided Thread of Grace because the premise was so different from the first two, which I adored, plus they were about relatively recent history, which I don't care too much for, but, based on your recommendation, I'm going to read it next year.

My top five

Life of Pi by Yann Martel - I think this is my top favourite of all time. The ending of the story left me breathless. After contemplating the story and the ending, I realy understood the book's parallel with religion and the story and of how believing in religion is a choice - I hope this makes sense. I cried and was captivated - literally couldn't put the book down.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - This time I fell in love with the narrator and his thinking and the story - what an interesting, good and wise man. And the little side story in the novel I feel illustrates the father's character far better than a bunch of letters on faith that he wanted to start writing. I was very moved by this book.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden - I picked this one because of the ending alone. I was smiling for weeks and weeks afterwards. The only downside to the book was that I really believed it was true and only discovered it was fiction half way through the book when I decided to google some of the characters (since he makes references to lists that some of the characters are on and posters and paintings). I didn't apreciate that because I felt the author took steps to paint this as true - but oh well -I guess I am naive sometimes

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - Very touching if somewhat confusing book. The funny thing is that I am Jewish and in 202 I went to Latvia and Lithuania where my relatives are from to see the mass graves of the jews that were murdered there and we found out that one of my relatives had survived the nazi occupation but died in 1967. I really liked the character of Alex as well

A side note is that I recently watched the movie and was outraged at the plot change because it alters the grandfather's character and the ending so drastically - I felt that original story was much more powerful than what the movie made it into.

Cat's eye by Margaret Atwood - excellent portrait of female friendships and power struggles and loss if personal power and just good interesting story - well written too

I'm with you, there, about The Sparrow and Children of God. These two books just blew me away. I'm also planning on reading them again, very soon.

mdbenoit, I'll give a hearty second to Ficusfan's choice of Thread of Grace although I read it either in '04 or '05. Some readers have found it slow going for the first 75 - 100 pages. She has a lot of characters to introduce (and what a wonderful cast, it is!), but your patience will have its reward! It's a somber story; war seems to be a stage where we see both the best and the worst of humankind play upon it.

1. Straight Man (my favorite for the year by far)
2. Complete Hitchhiker's Guide
3. Kitchen
4. Running with scissors
5. The world according to garp

1. Tracks by Louise Erdrich
2. Four Souls ditto
3. The Painted Drum ditto

Erdrich's fictional universe and emotional/social commitment remind me of Faulkner's (number 1 on my Life List). And these three in particular resonate with the weirdness and pain and endurance that can arise in lives lived in very small communities.

4. A Breed Apart: a novel of Wild Bill Hickok, a noir Western by Max McCoy.

5. The End of Faith by Sam Harris. One of the intellectually bravest books I've ever read.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley is just one of my all-time favorite books, so I read it a couple of times this year.

I discovered a new author I like, SF writer John Scalzi, and I read and really liked his books Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and, his newest, The Android's Dream.

It has its share of flaws, but I also enjoyed Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl a lot.

Hmm. That makes five. There are a lot more books that I read that I liked a lot, but mostly they're rereads (well, as is Sunshine) so I'll leave it at that.

wow, this is hard. I read Young Adult mostly this year, and I love them all. Hmm, let's see.
1.The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud has to be on the list, with the emphasize on the third installment; Ptolemy's Gate.
2. Artemis Fowl, specially the last episode, The Lost Colony
3. City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau
4. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
5. Howl's Moving Castle

This is definately a hard choice to make. So let's see:

Fiction
Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
Towelhead by Alicia Erian
Every Visible Thing by Lisa Carey
Last Stop Sunnyside by Pat Capponi

Non-Fiction
Candy by Luke Davies
Plane Insanity by Elliott Hester
Motorworld by Jeremy Clarkson
Go Ask Alice

I recently reread the following and re-evaluated them, moving them up in my list of favorite classics:
My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Night by Elie Wiesel

and a new favorite:
Passing Through Paradise by John Schreiber
(it should be required reading for English teachers)

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boeyn
Miss American Pie by Margaret Sartor

I often post a variation of "favorite books of the year" on my BLOG (see my profile). That being said, I am still composing the post, but my favorite two from a low reading year (less than 10 books):

1. Night Fall
2. Mountains Beyond Mountains

Peace!

My top five this year:

1. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry --
This may be one of my favorite books ever! What wonderful characters and devastating story. Definately takes you to another place and time.

2. The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory --
This may be just glorified chick lit but I was mesmerized by it. I can still see that pretty head with the long black hair roll away and hear the drums. . .

3. Rabbit at Rest by Updike --
I read all the Rabbits recently. What a trip. Incredibly well written ending to a saga of the ultimate American anti-hero.

4. Atonement by Ian McEwan --
My first book by him. I loved the novel within the novel and the 'unreliable narrator'

5. Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe --
I only read this because of its mention in Austen's Northanger Abbey but its great once you get past the fainting and the poetry.

My top five of the year were:

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
The Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson (I know, it's three books and therefore a cheat, but I did read it all at once.)
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner

And my top audiobook of the year was The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins.

Happy new year!

Because I'm obsessive-compulsive, I put all the books mentioned in a spreadsheet and the most mentioned favorite book of 2006 is:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Tied for second place are:

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Kite Runner by Khaled Husseini
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

(Edited for typo and for *seven dirty words bleeped* touchstones)

Okay, now that 2006 is finally over, I can post my list (and yes, it would have been different if I hadn't included my December reading):

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Lamb by Christopher Moore

Honorable mentions go to The Thirteenth Tale and Cloud Atlas.

Ah now. I'm glad I waited until 2007 to post this list. It's different now than it would have been even a week ago!

1. A Far Better Rest by Susanne Alleyn, mentioned in the "Look What I Found in 2006!" thread. Just wonderful.

2. The Preservationist by David Maine was a joy. I loved his evocations of Noah and Noah's wife, not to mention their strange family.

3. The Merchant Princes series by Charles Stross, the third one (The Clan Corporate) having arrived yesterday and been started in 2006, I can claim to have read them all during 2006. Not finished, mind, just read.

4. The Rivers of War by Eric Flint. Alternate history has few better practitioners than Dr. Flint. No disrespect to Dr. Turtledove and his creative ferment, but Flint's command of dialogue is unequalled in the field of alternate history.

5. The Summer Isles by Ian R. McLeod. Superb. That's all, just superb. If you think you hate alternate history, read this book.

Thanks morphidae! I wanted to do that, but didn't have the patience.

In my earlier post, I listed only four favorite books I read in 2006:

Pride and Prejudice
The Great Gatsby
Never Let Me Go
Jonathan Strange

In December, I read one that I can add to that list:

London by Edward Rutherfurd

Honorable mention to The Penelopiad by Atwood.

(edited to add Touchstones and the Hon. Mention)

1. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
2. Montgomery's Children by Richard Perry
3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
4. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
5. A Pentecost of Finches by Robert Siegel

After much deliberation, here are my top 5 books of 2006:

5. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
4. The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
3. A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
2. The Tender Bar, by J.R. Moehringer
1. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

Watchmen by Alan Moore
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Ulysses by James Joyce
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Honorable Mentions: 1984 by George Orwell and Aurelia by Gerard de Nerval

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The Tin Drum by Guenter Grass
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K. Dick

Cyteen by C J Cherryh
Dreadnought by Robert K Massie
Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth by Gitta Sereny
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan -- See
Girls of Tender Age -- Smith
Marley and Me -- Grogan
Twilight Children -- Hayden
The Family That Couldn't Sleep -- Max
The Last of Her Kind -- Nunez
The Kindness of Strangers -- Kittle

My Top Five Books for 2006 would be:
1. For One More Day by Mitch Albom
2. Overture by Yael Goldstein
3. Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson
4. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
5. The Handmaid and the Carpenter By Elizabeth Berg

My wife and I share this account. My top 5 reads this year were:

The Sea by John Banville
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (reread)
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
1776 by David McCullough
Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

Daredevil Vol. 6 by Brian Michael Bendis

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb

Water for Elephants
Rise and Shine
Memory Keeper's Daughter
The Glass Castle
The Tenth Circle

I'm sure I've forgotten some early 06 titles but here's what I read later in the year that I loved.