My Favorite Books of 2006
Fiction
Chris Abani, Becoming Abigail (Akashic)
Chris Adrian, The Children’s Hospital (McSweeney’s)
César Aira, An Episdoe in the Life of a Landscape Painter (New Directions)
Samuel Beckett, The Centenary Edition, 4 volumes (Grove)
Dave Eggers, What is the What (McSweeney’s)
Brian Evanson, The Open Curtain (Coffee House)
Shelia Heti, Ticknor (FSG)
A.M. Homes, This Book Will Save Your Life (Viking)
Laird Hunt, The Exquisite (Coffee House)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Knopf)
Rick Moody, The Diviners (Little, Brown)
Bayo Ojikutu, Free Burning (Three Rivers)
Gisèle Pineau, Devil’s Dance (Bison)
Richard Powers, The Echo Maker (FSG)
Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (Penguin)
Lydie Salvayre, Everyday Life (Dalkey Archive)
Antonio Tabucchi, It’s Getting Later All the Time (New Directions)
Can Xue, Blue Light in the Sky: And Other Stories (New Directions)
Poetry
Daniel Bouchard, The Filaments (Zasterle)
Jenny Boully, [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky)
Steve Davenport, Uncontainable Noise (Pavement Saw)
Nonfiction
Patricia Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip-Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism (Temple)
Anne Danielsen, Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament (Wesleyan)
Lisa Jevis & Andi Zesler, ed., Bitchfest (FSG)
Francesco Orlando, Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination (Yale)
Woodrow Phoenix, Plastic Culture: How Japanese Toys Conquered the World (Kodansha)