TV—Josh Bell
A heartbreakingly beautiful and honest drama about small-town life, one of the most moving shows network TV has produced in years, guaranteed to make you tear up at least once an episode.
2. Veronica Mars (UPN/The CW)
3. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)
4. Smith (CBS)
Far too dark and complex for CBS (or its regular viewers), this show was cancelled after three fascinating episodes, but four more can be appreciated on iTunes.
5. 30 Rock (NBC)
6. Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi)
7. Thief (FX)
8. Invasion (ABC)
9. The Closer (TNT)
10. Pepper Dennis (The WB)
Lost in the last gasps of The WB was this odd and charming series highlighting the hitherto unknown comedic chops of Rebecca Romijn.
Books—Sam Sacks
1. Memorial, Bruce Wagner
A scabrous, painful and terribly moving novel about the perils of the acquisitive 21st century. In his familiar milieu of Los Angeles, Wagner somehow fuses pop culture with Vedic mysticism to create an unsparing but ultimately tender family drama. This book is entirely modern but will outlive the modern trends it riffs on.
2. A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945, edited by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova Here are the World War II diaries of Vasily Grossman, author of the epic novel Life and Fate and the preeminent Soviet correspondent on the Eastern Front. Expertly annotated by Beevor, the edition also includes excerpts from Grossman's newspaper stories and one of the first (and best) articles on the Holocaust ever written, "The Treblinka Hell."
3. The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, David Quammen
Quammen is as pithy and engaging as usual in this slim but indelible biography-cum-literary analysis. There will be many books about Darwin as the sesquicentennial of The Origin of Species approaches, and we can only hope they will be nearly as accessible and illuminating as this one.
4. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
5. Written Lives, Javier Marias
6. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
7. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Lawrence Wright
8. Averno, Louise Gluck
9. Gallatin Canyon: Stories, Thomas McGuane
10. An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore
Books—John Freeman
1. The Yacoubian Building, Alaa Al Aswany
2006 was so crowded with megawatt names in American fiction that it was easy to overlook that the best came from overseas. The very best was Al Aswany's hilarious and terribly sad novel, which depicts a cross-section of Egyptian life around the Gulf War as Dickens would.
2. Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury
3. Letters of E.B. White
It's sort of ironic that 2006 should bring two (see below) incredible collections of letters. The letters of E.B. White were reissued this month, featuring a decade more of correspondence with the likes of John Updike and Andy Rooney.
4. The Collected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, edited by Catherine Moorehead
5. The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson
6. In Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters
7. What is the What, Dave Eggers
8. Ooga-Booga, Frederick Seidel
9. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel
This graphic novel centers on two homes: the house where Alison Bechdel grew up, and "Fun Home," the funeral parlor where her father moonlighted, and where she and her brother played among the accoutrements of death.
10. The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, Patrick Cockburn
Theater—Steve Bornfeld
1. Parade, Community College of Southern Nevada
A darker-than-dark musical, Parade tells the ugly story of the rape and murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan in 1913 Atlanta, and the anti-Semitism, judicial corruption and grossly misplaced Confederate pride that led to innocent Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner, swinging from a rope. CCSN was more than up for the challenge, staging a mesmerizing production that hangs on the brilliant lead performance of Joey DeBenedetto as the accused. To watch his mature work, then discover he is a student at Las Vegas Academy, is to be stunned.
2. Private Lives, Nevada Conservatory Theatre at UNLV
3. Into the Woods, Signature Productions
This upside-down Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical from 1987 is a sort of Crash among the fairy-tale set: a collision of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, the Baker and his wife and Jack and the Beanstalk, the characters interacting in a narrative that sends them into the woods and traces what happens when these fanciful folks go about their stories without concern for the consequences of their behavior. Signature Productions turns out a supremely satisfying interpretation thanks to the season's strongest top-to-bottom cast and an unerring sense of staging by director Phil Shelburne.
4. Tattoo Girl, Cockroach Theatre
Naomi Iizuka's one-hour one act is a metaphorical soup of abstract set pieces in which off-kilter characters wander around like colorful targets in a trippy pinball game, entangled in a minor meaning-of-life rumination pockmarked with self-actualization bromides. But the production is spectacularly creative, with a talented cast lining up behind the exquisite direction of John Lorenz. His disciplined guidance—no wasted moves or gestures—pulls strong, sharp performances from the entire cast.
5. Inherit the Wind, Nevada Conservatory Theatre at UNLV
6. This Is Our Youth, New American Theatre Project
7. Adventures of Tom Sawyer, PS Productions
Art—Chuck Twardy
1. Ansel Adams: America, Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art
Adams is a hoary icon of American photography—as the grandiose title suggests—but his work is splendid nonetheless. This show lets the viewer see how Adams developed his keenly detailed aesthetic from early influences by modernist photographers. It was a show many might enter certain of what they would find, only to be pleasantly surprised to find something more rare.
2. Tim Bavington, G-C Arts
3. Cindy Wright, Las Vegas Art Museum
4. Richard Serra: Trajectories & Transversals, G-C Arts
The venerable and irascible sculptor can be equally imposing as a printmaker. This selection of big but gently curving swaths of blacks, some more than 7 feet tall, proved that Serra's simple two-dimensional marks could overwhelm three dimensions.
5. Jack Endewelt, Trifecta Gallery
6. Liza Ryan, G-C Arts
7. Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition: Photographs and Mannerist Prints, Guggenheim Hermitage Museum
8. Adventures in a Temperate Climate, A Retrospective of Paintings by Martin Mull, Las Vegas Art Museum
9. Rubens and His Age: Masterpieces from the Hermitage Museum, Guggenheim Hermitage Museum
This was one the best shows the GHM has staged to date, this show prompted the viewer to draw connections among a group of painters who knew, collaborated with and/or influenced each other.
10. Rock-et Pop, Angela Kallus, Dust