Time for The Lesbrarian's rundown of books read in 2006. I'm afraid this will be a post that I, and only I, will care about.

("Um, Jessica? We hate to tell you this, but all your other posts? Guess what?")

Oh shut up why don't you.

I read 130 books, which averages out to one every 67 hours, or 2.8 days. Would have been more but I slowed down significantly in the latter fourth of the year. This is because I moved from Franklin to Wilhelmsplatz, where there are things to see and people to do.

When I say I read 130 books, I mean exactly that. I didn't skim them, or partially read them, or start and then fail to finish.

Some interesting (to me, anyway) notes about the 130 books (numbers might not equal 130 because some titles fall in several categories):

Authors

• 87 authors (89, if you consider that two titles had two authors), including one corporate author, CNN
• Most-read author: Terry Pratchett, with 11 Discworld titles

Levels

• 111 Adult level books
• 2 Children's books
• 17 YA books

Forms

• 12 Graphic Novels
• 28 Nonfiction titles
• 1 novella
• 1 collection of novellas
• 88 novels

Motivation

• I read 83 titles exclusively for the sake of pleasure
• I read 47 titles our of a sense of duty ("I should read more NF/Christian/Romance/etc. to be a better librarian" and/or "I should read these books for my NoveList articles")
• 27 of those 47 dutiful titles turned out to be pleasurable

Nonfiction Genres

• 1 Biography
• 1 canonical (that'd be Kurt Vonnegut's Man Without a Country)
• 5 humor
• 2 on comics (thanks, Scott McCloud!)
• 2 crime
• 1 criticism
• 1 current events
• 4 historical
• 3 instructional
• 8 memoir
• 2 political
• 5 generic popular
• 4 social science
• 1 travel

Fiction Genres

• 1 alternate history (you suck, Eric Flint. I don't care what anyone says.)
• 4 canonical
• 1 chick lit. Blegh.
• 10 Christian
• 17 humor
• 1 crime
• 4 erotica (Yeech Zane yeeeeech)
• 1 fairy tale
• 20 fantasy
• 1 historical
• 9 horror
• 3 mystery
• 22 generic mainstream and/or literary fiction, which is a gay term. I hesitate to use "gay" derogatively (I am half-gay, after all), but really. It's gay.
• 8 romance. They all sucked, except for Hannibal.
• 5 science fiction
• 1 superhero
• 27 suspense and/or thriller
• 2 Westerns

Miscellaneous

• My annual Fat Russian Novel: Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak
• 1 set in Africa; 1 in Britain; 1 in Japan; 1 in Portugal; 2 in Russia
• 11 aimed at African-American audiences; 1 at Chicano audiences
• 1 commedia dell'arte
• 2 dystopias
• 7 gay books
• 2 on grammar
• 7 featuring vampires

Best and Worst

• Best NF: The Committment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family, by Dan Savage
• Worst NF: Flag: An American Biography, by Marc Leepson (dull, dull, dull)
• Best Adult Fiction: Portuguese Irregular Verbs, by Alexander McCall Smith
• Worst Adult Fiction: Gettin' Buck Wild, by Zane
• Best YA: The Burn Journals, by Brent Runyon
• Worst YA: Things Change, by Patrick Jones (I love Patrick Jones the man and the librarian, but I was underwhelmed by his novel. NB, however, that it was merely mediocre, and not actually all that bad.)
• Best NF Graphic Novel (tie): Making Comics, by Scott McCloud --- Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
• Best Fiction Graphic Novel: V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore
• Worst Graphic Novel: The Hedge Knight, by George R. R. Martin. It's a prequel to his Fire and Ice series, and while it was okay, the novels proper are much better.

Here’s a kinda hokey humor piece about new literary terms.

My favorite is litrosexual: Someone who prefers books to sex.

Praise God. Someone finally found a way to describe my sexual orientation.

When other people describe their ideal date, they say things like “moonlit walk on the beach” or “candlelit dinner by the sea” or, if they’re being honest, “steamy raucous sex with a hot woman, two if possible.”

My ideal date consists of quietly curling up on the couch with a good book, two if possible. This is nearly identical to the way I spend my evenings anyway, but the crucial difference here is that, on a date, there would be another person reading on the couch.

But don’t be fooled. This scenario makes it seem simple to win the favors of a litrosexual, but complications can ensue. If you ever let slip that you enjoy reading bad books, the litrosexual will drop you like a hot coal.

Speaking of which, it occurs to me now that every person I’ve ever slept with (of which there are, um, hordes. No—droves) was a big fan of Dune, which is hands down the Worst Book Ever. The only reason these liaisons occurred was because I wasn’t yet out of the litrosexual closet.

Hmm. I wonder if litrosexuals can get married in this state?

But now I am a proud litrosexual, and as such, I feel qualified to tell you which books were the best of 2006. Very astute readers, by which I mean Marian, will recall that I have no patience for authorities who try to tell other people which books are good, unless the authority in question is me.

Actually—and dear readers, it pains me so to admit this—it may be that I am not, in fact, the best person to do this list. God knows the NY Times isn’t but my problem is that I don’t read a lot of current books. The problem with dead authors is they’re, you know, dead. Nothing new coming out of them, 'cept for V.C. Andrews.

Some people only read new books. Blows my mind. If you want a book on stem cell research, okay, sure, I see your point, you want something current. But for pleasure reading, who the hell cares when it was written? I can see not wanting a book from the 17th century, but is it really going to kill you to read a book written in 2003?

So I haven’t, um, read very many books published in 2006. Which is going to make my Best of 2006 list kind of tricky. Just humor me, okay?

Eight* Best Books Published in 2006
According to Jessica Kennedy-Rockefeller, the Only Opinion That Matters

(Eight, because I only read 9 books published in 2006, and Stephen King’s Cell just sucked)

The Nymphos of Rocky Flats
Mario Acevedo

Military man turns into vampire in Iraq. Returns home. Investigates fiendish plot by aliens to turn Americans into nymphos.

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
Svetlana Alexievich

Don’t just take my word for it. Sarah Statz Cords of Nonfiction Readers Anonymous liked it, too, and she’s always right. (Speaking of which, her book would be on this list if I’d done more than just skim it. The Real Story: A Guide to Nonfiction Reading Interests was published in 2006, and it rocks.)

So anyway, Voices from Chernobyl was written 20 years after the disaster. It is history at its finest: you get to hear the real stories of real victims told in their own words. This is a profoundly disturbing book.

Fun Home
Alison Bechdel

Not since reading Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Men have I had to consult outside sources just to get through the text. By outside sources, I mean dictionaries, I mean encyclopedias, I mean art criticism. (League and Fun Home are both graphic novels, by the way. But we all know that GNs aren’t real literature.)

Fun Home is an incredibly intelligent book. It is a memoir of Bechdel’s youth, and it focuses on her father, a depressed and closeted homosexual. The artwork is gorgeous and the characters are vivid. Another profoundly disturbing book for ya.

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies
June Casagrande

Not the best grammar book I’ve read—and I’ve read a LOT of them—but one of the funnier ones. Realizing that I am a great big meanie is—forgive the repetition—profoundly disturbing.

Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster
Michael Eric Dyson

Race and Katrina and government fuckups. (That is to say, fuckups (v) performed by the government, and fuckups (n) employed by the government). Profoundly disturbing.

An Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore

You guessed it: Profoundly Disturbing. Why couldn’t Gore have displayed this passion in 2000? This is Gore in his element, talking about something that truly matters to him. The book is about global warming and it has charts and photos galore. It scared the shit out of me, and caused me to amend two of my evil ways: Now I carry around a cloth bag to use at the grocery store instead of plastic bags, and I’ve reconfigured my electronic stuff to not use energy unless it’s actively being used.

The Prop
Pete Hautman

Pete Hautman is one of those unappreciated authors. The man won a YA National Book Award, for crying out loud (for Godless), but nobody knows who he is. He writes great books in all manner of genres. The Prop is a noirish story with a professional card-dealing dame for a hero. It rocks.

Making Comics
Scott McCloud

Who knew art criticism could be laugh out loud funny? McCloud has written an insightful, detailed, glorious how-to guide for people who want to make comix. I’m not one of them, but I was enchanted—remarkable, considering how little tolerance I have for books about things I don’t know how to do, like repairing cars, or cooking food. The book is presented in Graphic Novel format and it is probably my favorite on this list.