My 30 Favourite Books of 2006
THESE are 30 of my favourite books of 2006. What’s on your list?Novels
1. Half of a Yellow Sun / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2. The Law of Dreams / Peter Behrens
3. The Lay of the Land / Richard Ford
4. The Dream Life of Sukhanov / Olga Grushin
5. The Road / Cormac McCarthy
6. After This / Alice McDermott
7. So Many Ways to Begin / Jon McGregor
8. Be Near Me / Andrew O’Hagan
9. The Thirteenth Tale / Diane Setterfield
10. The Night Watch / Sarah Waters
11. Winterwood / Patrick McCabe
Stories12. Moral Disorder and Other Stories / Margaret Atwood
13. All Aunt Hagar’s Children / Edward P. Jones
14. Matters of Life and Death / Bernard MacLaverty
15. The View from Castle Rock / Alice Munro
16. Mothers and Sons / Colm Tóibín
Poetry
17. The Book of Blood / Vicki Feaver
18. Averno / Louise Glück
19. White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems, 1946-2006 / Donald Hall
20. District and Circle / Seamus Heaney
21. After / Jane Hirschfield
22. Swithering / Robin Robertson
Nonfiction23. Flaubert: A Life / Frederick Brown
24. Running for the Hills / Horatio Clare
25. Seminary Boy / John Cornwell
26. The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 / William Dalrymple
27. We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction / Joan Didion
28. In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India / Edward Luce
29. Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond / Pankaj Mishra
30. Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man / Claire Tomalin
posted by Eric Forbes at 6:30 AM
7 Comments:
I'm nearly 3/4 into Be Near Me, and into the bits where the Father is accused of misdemeanor. And, I'm looking for Robin Robertson's Swithering still. Is it here already?
I believe you are enjoying Andrew O'Hagan's Be Near Me. I am afraid Robin Robertson's Swithering is still not here yet. Bookshops should bring in prizewinning books as fast as possible before they run out of steam. Well ....
i am left far behind ...
but my favourite book so far is '1,000 years of good prayers'
Yiyun Li's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2005) is excellent. It was one of my favourite reads of 2005. I base my list on the year the books are published. Look out for her novel!
Hi Eric, I am waiting for the paperback for Half of a Yellow Sun; actually I first discovered Adichie when I read her short story in the New Yorker I think, or some other literary magazine. It was the short story that expanded into the novel I suppose. Bought Purple Hibiscus at a warehouse sale but it's a little disappointing so hopefully Half of a Yellow Sun is as good as the short story suggests!
Hello Janet - I believe the paperback edition of Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) will only be released in either late 2007 or early 2008. Yes - it was first published in the New Yorker and she expanded her story into a full-length novel. Though flawed in many ways, I think Purple Hibiscus is still a successful first novel in several aspects. On the whole, Half of a Yellow Sun is a better novel than Purple Hibiscus.
Finished reading The Inheritance of Loss. It was terrible! Full or tired and over-used tricks.
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