Best 6 Books
This was the hardest list for me since I read 60 or 70 books this year. And I'm not sure if ANY of them were actually published in 2006. I'll put the actual publication date in brackets.
1. Next of Kin, Peter Fouts (1997). This is the story of Washoe, the world's first talking chimpanzee (she speaks American Sign Language, as do many other great apes), and the scientist, Fouts, who spent his career learning from her and her family. Simultaneously hilarious, astonishing, and heartbreaking.
2. Olympos, Dan Simmons (2005). I've mentioned this book, and its predecessor Ilium, several times, and always somewhat inadequately. You can't really put such a book in a nutshell, dealing as it does with Homer, Proust and Shakespeare by throwing together Greek gods, robots, spaceships and monsters. On Mars.
3. Hitching Rides With Buddha, Will Ferguson (1998). Fellow Albertan Ferguson is rapdily becoming one of Canada's best loved writers, and this book shows why- it's a quirky travelogue full of eccentric figures and fascinating places as he hitch-hikes the length of Japan in pursuit of the cherry blossoms.
4. Serpent Catch, Dave Wolverton (1991). I tried reading its sequel first, The Path of the Hero, and found it pretty confusing, not realizing it was numba 2. Read in the correct order, they're great sci-fi fun, with Neanderthals and apemen and mammoths galore.
5. The Boilerplate Rhino, David Quammen (2000). How do you get this gig? Outside Magazine told Quammen to write a monthly column on anything science-related he felt like. This book is a collection of some of the best essays that resulted. Lucky for me there's another one out there.
6. Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson (1998). I love Lost World stories, especially ones that have a unique mechanism for bringing said world into play. Special bonus- Wilson is a Canuck too.

I'm looking forward to reading a book that actually was published in 2006- Vincent Lam's Giller Prize winning Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures.