From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2006

It's been a while since I did one of these posts, so thought it was about time to look again at one of my old top 10 book lists.  Today we'll re-visit my 10 favorite books from 2006.  As a reminder, that means books I read in 2006, not necessarily books published that year.

Here's my list from 2006, in alphabetical order by author's last name:
Case Histories - Kate Atkinson
The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Broken for You - Stephanie Kallos
The Highest Tide - Jim Lynch
A Girl Could Stand Up - Leslie Marshall
The Speed of Dark - Elizabeth Moon
His Majesty's Dragon - Naomi Novik
The Myth of You and Me - Leah Stewart
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

How Does This List Hold Up Over Time?

I have to say, this is a pretty good list!  Some of these books have stayed with me more than others, but there certainly are no books on this list that I'm surprised to see on one of my top 10 lists, which has not been the case with all the others that I have re-visited so far.  I at least remember the fact that I liked all of these books, even if I couldn't tell you what some of them are about!  The most memorable for me are probably Case Histories, His Majesty's Dragon, and Never Let Me Go, and the haziest are Broken for You and The Memory Keeper's Daughter.  But I wouldn't have a problem recommending any of them.

Genres


This list has one mystery (Case Histories), one science fiction book (Speed of Dark), one historical fantasy (His Majesty's Dragon), and one historical fiction book (Fingersmith).  The rest are basically contempory fiction.  Never Let Me Go is arguably a genre book but telling you about that could spoil the twist of the book if you haven't read it yet, ha ha.

Popularity

The book on this list that was read by the most people on Goodreads is The Memory Keeper's Daughter, with 521,000 ratings on Goodreads.  I remember it being a best seller that everyone was reading at the time, and I do remember that I really liked it, but as I said above, this was one of the books that I remembered the least from this list - couldn't even tell you the slightest bit what it was about until I looked at the publisher's blurb and it still doesn't really ring a bell! 

The least read on Goodreads by far - perhaps the least read of any of my top 10 entries ever - was A Girl Could Stand Up with only 278 ratings.  That one I could only remember that it was about a young girl with an eccentric family, but I have always remembered how much I loved it and that I was always looking to see if the author had written another book (she never did).

Other Random Stuff

The highest rated of these on Goodreads is His Majesty's Dragon, with a 4.05.  The lowest rated is The Memory Keeper's Daughter with a 3.65.

I believe I still have the paperbacks of all of these on my bookshelves, unless I've lent them to someone. 

The only big award winner on this list is The Speed of Dark, which won the Nebula Award. 

All these authors were on my list for the first time in 2006, though you'll see Kate Atkinson make repeat appearances in subsequent years.  Although I absolutely loved The Myth of You and Me, for some unknown reason I never read a book by Leah Stewart again until this year, when her current book What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw became my first 5 star review of this year and therefore she'll definitely be making an appearance on my 2018 top 10 list! 

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Note that I'll give all these posts the tag "Top 10," so you should be able to click on the label  "Top 10" at the bottom of the post and see all my other Top 10 posts.  And if you just want to see all my old Top 10 lists now without waiting, you can also click through to my Goodreads profile - I have a separate shelf for each of my old lists.