Best Books of 2006

In the spirit of High Fidelity, here's my Top 5 all-time best books of 2006 (in order):
1. What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers
Eggers stuns again with an astounding tale of children surviving the civil war in Sudan. Valentino is as compelling a child narrator as any from Charles Dickens.
2. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
New Yorker staff writer Lawrence Wright makes the world of Islamic fundamentalists frighteningly understandable for American readers, with additional insights on the U.S. intelligence community. A must-read for anyone who cares about the global war on terror.
3. What Jesus Meant by Garry Wills
A refreshing and much-needed intellectual approach to the New Testament Gospels. Wills refutes literalists and argues for a Christianity that is a compassionate religion of the heart.
4. Severance: Stories by Robert Olen Butler
Beautiful prose-poems on the unlikely theme of decapitation. Moving, gruesome and thoughtful.
5. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Haddon takes the life of a semi-dysfunctional British family and infuses itwith drama and redemption. This was the very different second novel from the author of best-seller Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I can't wait to read what he writes next.

Honorable Mentions:
Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis
A poor black kid from inner city Memphis attends a wealthy evangelical Christian high school. He gets adopted by a white family and becomes the most sought after football prospect in the state. With meaningful thoughts on the business of sports, the evolution of the NFL and the nature of familial love. (Whew!)
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields
Shields unpacks the life of the reclusive (and still living) Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird. Paints a great you-are-there picture of the New York literary scene for southern writers in the 1960s.

Three great books I read in 2006 that were not written in 2006:
Kafka on the Shore (2005) by Haruki Murakami
Simultaneously trippy and realistic, this is a grand adventure story where a boy named Kafka saves the world from evil incarnate that takes the form of the guy Johnnie Walker liquor bottle.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998) by Philip Gourevitch
Gourevitch explains the unexplainable: the 1994 genocide in Africa.
Harbor (2004) by Lorraine Adams
A former Washington Post reporter writes a first novel about Algerian immigrants in the U.S. today.