the best of 2006

I'd like to pick up on Trevor's post below and extend it by asking:

Which one or three works of alternative prose you encountered this past year most startled and/or delighted and/or influenced and/or infected you, and, in a sentence or three, why?

Note the works in question don't necessarily have to have been published in 2006. You just have to have engaged with them then—and not necessarily for the first time.

I'm naturally as leery as the rest of you when it comes to the simplicity and sucker's game of lists, yet think this one might serve us all well, both by bringing to our attention works that might otherwise be overlooked, and by generating a resource for readers and writers searching for texts The New York Times Book Review would like to pretend don't exist.