Five That Deserved Better

So many books published, so little time to read. Here are five good reads - three nonfiction, two fiction - you should have picked up. By Jenna Schnuer

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It's nearly impossible to keep up with all the books published every year. Heck, we're supposed to be up on all the latest, and, at year's end, we're still surprised at how many good ones we managed to miss. But in an effort to help you catch up a bit, here are five 2006 books that deserved more attention than they received.

Cross-X (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26): Friday Night Lights, schmiday night lights. You can keep your football. Right now, thanks to author Joe Miller, we're wrapped up in the ups and downs of the real-life debate team from Kansas City's Central High School. Miller pulled us into their world and taught us what we need to know to follow along, and now we're obsessed. If we could, we'd show up to every match, air horns a-blazing. On second thought, maybe we'll just stay home and read the book again. The air horns would get us tossed out.

Half of a Yellow Sun (Knopf, $25): There's something magical about an author who can help readers settle into a world completely different than the one they live in, allowing them to concentrate on the story instead of trying to figure out which way is north. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has that magic. Her novel about 1960s Nigeria is intense. It can be harsh. But it never feels like it's taking place ever-so-far away.