What could be a better setting for a meditation on boredom than an IRS examination facility in Peoria? David Foster Wallace's amazing powers of description are in full effect as he shows a wealth of characters so fully developed that you're sure you've been living inside their heads for years. There are passages of humor that will have you holding your sides and for those of you that love Wallace's digressions, my favorite is a 6 page description of traffic patterns to and from the facility that was so fascinating, I had to read it twice. The inevitable question with a posthumous novel is is it finished in the way that DFW would have wanted? The answer is no because that would be impossible, but there's no doubt that the novel that we get to read has section after section of one of America's most important post-WWII writers at his dazzling best. Is it the most important book of the year? (decade?) (millenium?) For me, on a personal level, as someone who has reread INFINITE JEST every year since it came out, I don't think there could be any denying it.

This book is not for everyone, in fact it's probably not for most people. But, for anyone that's ever wanted to see someone out-Palahniuk Chuck Palahniuk or out-Vollmann William Vollmann, then this novel's meditations on violence is for you. It deals with everything from the Manson Family to September 11th to child sexual abuse. It's both frightening and brilliant.

A fascinating series of snapshots of the pre-recession contemporary art world: an auction at Christie's, a critique at CalArts, Art Basel, the Turner Prize, Artforum Magazine, a visit to Takashi Murakami’s multiple studios and the Venice Biennale. Thornton conducted over 250 interviews spanning 3 years, so there is a lot of information packed into each of the vignettes, but she has a very conversational writing style, so this work, created as ethnography, feels much more like a group of interconnected magazine articles.

You would think a novel told from the perspective of a five-year-old would just be a literary device, but Donoghue never falters as you completely get immersed in the life of a child, from the everyday fascination and frustrations to the horrors stemming from his captivity with his mother in a room. It's one of the best novels of the year, relentlessly pummeling your emotions and making the readjustment to your regular life incredibly difficult.

There are certain books that I reread every year and since 1999 this has been one of them. It’s a huge sprawling novel and to try to describe all of its plot lines would be an exercise in futility, but suffice it to say that in this multigenerational work are contemporary hackers, WWII code breakers, crusty treasure divers, psychotic marines and Japanese mine engineers. There’s plenty of math (which can be skipped if you desire), but the quality of writing, the richness of characters and the complexity of plot make this one of my all-time favorite reads.

Nine Stories may be his greatest work, but this is my favorite of Salinger’s books. The religious themes can be a little heavy-handed, but these two short stories about Franny and Zooey Glass, two young adults trying to recover from being precocious children, are about as well-written as fiction can be.

Though I applauded Powers’ 2006 National Book Award win for Echo Maker, this is still my favorite novel by one of my favorite authors. Corporations have long been treated like individuals under the law and in this book, Powers has done the literary equivalent--a corporation as a living breathing character. One plot line follows the corporation from its humble beginnings in 19th century Boston to a multinational conglomerate, and the other plot line is the painful story of Laura Bodey who is facing a terminal illness. You know how the stories will collide from the beginning, but you enjoy every second of the journey. The history of this fictional corporation is the history of this country, from cute jingles to advertising savvy, from family ownership to shareholder control, and the consequence of the shifts of American capitalism are written horribly on Laura’s life.

Though it won’t necessarily cause you to pick up a Molotov cocktail or an AK-47, this little book will cause you to at least question some of your assumptions about past successes from nonviolence movements. From Gandhi to MLK to the anti-Vietnam movement, there have always been more militant groups working at the same time. These more militant groups through either actual violent acts or through the threat of violence may have done as much to change policy as the nonviolent groups that we feel more comfortable focusing on. Plus as an added bonus, we guarantee an FBI file to be created with every purchase!