Temeraire!

Peter Jackson has optioned Naomi Novik's delightful Patrick O'Brian-meets-Anne McCaffrey Napoleonic Wars-with-dragons Temeraire.

That book gets my vote for purest light reading pleasure in 2006 (and it probably would knock out some candidates from previous years, too), it is pretty much exactly the perfect fantasy novel. Here's my rave from when I read it in January--I went to extreme measures to get hold of it pre-publication, it arrived and I managed to resist its allure while I frenziedly wrote a talk on Boswell and Johnson and the particular detail, then I read it on Amtrak from Boston to New Haven on my way to the Boswell conference. I had almost finished it by the time I had to get off the train, and I remember thinking what a good thing it was that I still had another hour before dinner because if I'd had to put the book aside before finishing it I would not have been very good company at the restaurant....