Salon chooses its favorite books of the year, looking to those it "propped up next to our bowls of breakfast cereal." The first five are fiction; the others non-fiction:
- "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz
- "Sacred Games" by Vikram Chandra
- "Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris
- "Tree of Smoke" by Denis Johnson