I couldn’t resist joining in on the fun of all the best-of lists making the rounds: the New York Times Book Review printed its own list, as did the Washington Post. My own reading is pretty varied, but I always seem to be a few years behind: the most recent books I read this year were published in 2004.

2006 was more of a year for me to play catch-up—Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Albert Camus’ The Stranger were among my favorite books this year. They exemplified everything I love about literature: they were thought-provoking, obsessive, and deeply unsettling. Franz Kafka’s The Trial disturbed me on a level no horror novel can reach. Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, while treading a fine line between pretentiousness and genius, obliterated the very idea of what a novel is supposed to be. Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time gave me one of the freshest and most sympathetic heroes I’ve come across in a long time. And then there’s Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell—a charming, adult fantasy that mixes historical and literary figures with a very believable tradition of magic in nineteenth-century England.

But Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is, without a doubt, the best book I read this year. It’s funny, infuriating, tragic, and beautifully-written. Neither too long nor too short, Ishiguro’s novel is, in a word, perfect.