The first three

First, my official 2006 Book-Itz list

Now the (short) reviews (with the latest read listed first):
1.The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer. Nonfiction.
Packer, of The New Yorker, takes an amazingly ideology-free and thoroughly reported look at the lead-up to the war, the war itself and the occupation. From the epilogue: "I came to believe that those in the positions of highest resposibility for Iraq showed a carelessness about human life that amounted to criminal negligence. Swaddled in abstract ideas, convinced of their own righteousness, incapable of self-criticism, indifferent to accountability, they turned a difficult undertaking into a needlessly deadly one. When things went wrong, they found other people to blame. The Iraq war was always winnable; it still is. For that reason, the recklessness of its authors is all the harder to forgive."

2. Made in Detroit: A South of 8 Mile Memoir by Paul Clemens. Nonfiction.
White boy grows up in Detroit, a lonely road, and thinks he comes out with some racial insights. I learned more about Detroit than about race in America, and though that was interesting, I was hoping for more insight on white people and black people and how they live (or don't live) together.

3. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Fiction.
All the editions of this book were always checked out when I went to borrow it. (See? Baltimore does read.) So I didn't read it till I got it for Christmas. (Thank you, Mom.) It's about clones, but it doesn't matter what it's about because Ishiguro writes like it's effortless and makes it effortless to read. It's got a vague creepiness, and you should read it.