Another byline

I wrote a review of the new Refrigerator album Bottles of Make Up for the current issue of the CityPaper.

Top Ten Albums of 2006

My list of the top 10 albums released in 2006 as submitted to the CityPaper for their year-end poll:

1. The Hold Steady -- Boys and Girls in America
2. Neko Case -- Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
3. Art Brut -- Bang Bang Rock & Roll
4. Yo La Tengo -- I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
5. The Pernice Brothers -- Live a Little
6. The Thermals -- The Body The Blood The Machine
7. Beirut -- Gulag Orkestar
8. Cat Power -- The Greatest
9. Lilys -- Everything Wrong is Imaginary
10. TV on the Radio -- Return to Cookie Mountain

My picks can also be found here, between Ashlea Halpern's and Brian Howard's. Looking at my list now, I might move some things around, maybe even replace one of the albums entirely, but the ballots have already been submitted, the votes counted, and the results published, so I'll just leave well enough alone.

The Year in Letters

Books I read in 2006:

Wrecking Crew, John Albert
Ball Four, Jim Bouton
JPod, Douglas Coupland
How to Be Alone, Jonathan Franzen
The Dissident, Nell Freudenberger
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, Ken Kalfus
Sarah, JT LeRoy
Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
The Last of Her Kind, Sigrid Nunez
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl
Decoding the Universe, Charles Seife
The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin
A Man without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut
Not Even Wrong, Peter Woit

Just started:

The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud

Recently purchased, revisiting intermittently:

They Call Me Naughty Lola -- Personal Ads from the London Review of Books, edited by David Rose

Notable:

I wrote up Charles Seife's Decoding the Universe for the CityPaper's Favorite Books of 2006 feature, which should run in the 12/28/2006 issue.

Update:

Here's a link to the aforementioned writeup of Decoding the Universe.