The best books you read in 2017?

[southeastdweller]

So as another year is coming to an end, I've been thinking about all the books I've read in 2017. These were my stand-out reads of the year:

1. Keeping On Keeping On - Alan Bennett
2. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
3. Swing Time - Zadie Smith
4. One Good Turn – Kate Atkinson
5. Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney
6. The Silence Between Breaths - Cath Staincliffe

What have been your favourite books this year?

Into The Water - Paula Hawkins
The Breakdown - BA Paris
The Brain - David Eagleman
Everybody's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too - Jomny Sun

I think the reason I liked Do Not Say We Have Nothing is that it's almost a puzzle. The author introduces a variety of characters and the individual stories and the way they all fit together is a really good recent history of China with characters you care about. It's beautifully plotted and written.
Brazzaville Beach is an amazing book. The plot and the heroine are both unique.

Really liked The Power too.
Couldn't get into The Essex Serpent at all, weird, I really wanted to like it.
I read a brilliant trilogy starting with Daughter of smoke and bone by Laini Taylor.
Also a trilogy by Pierce Brown starting with Red Rising.

Thanks, mmack.

I've had a great reading year, really enjoyed so many of them , the standouts are as follows (i have no idea how long this list will end up):

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The Nix by Nathan Hill
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
Rush Oh by Shirley Barrett
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

I think I've read in region of 75 books, I was keeping track on the 50 books thread but I got lazy about posting. Of the 75, about 60 were from the library and the majority of the rest were audiobooks. In 2018 my aim is to read the books I already own.

Brazzaville Beach is in my top 10 of all time. I think I need to re-read it this year.

My favourites were mostly non-fiction.

Standouts:

1. Weatherland, Alexandra Harris
2. Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, Christopher de Hamel
3. Born a Crime, Trevor Noah.

Honourable mentions to:

1.. Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova

1. The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians: George III's Extraordinary Experiment in Domestic Happiness, Janice Hadlow
2. Built on Bones, Brenna Hassett

Not such a great year for fiction, but I added three to my list of "books I'll go back to".

1. Realms of Glory, Catherine Fox. The third and weakest part of her trilogy, but I love her characters and the trilogy has already become a favourite re-read.
2. Provincial Daughter, R M Dashwood. Real-life daughter of E M Delafield, she writes about a housewife in the 1950s. Far too derivative of her mother's style, but I love her mother's style so I enjoy it anyway.
3. The Land of Green Ginger, Winifred Holtby.

I loved Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa.

My top books of the year:

Fiction:
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
The Power - Naomi Alderman
The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell
A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles

Non-fiction:
The Dark Net - Jamie Bartlett
The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls
Einstein: his Life and Universe - Walter Isaacson

Fiction

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Winter by Ali Smith
Autumn by Ali SMith
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Non Fiction

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
I am, I am, I am by Maggie O'Farrell
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
The Wild Other by Clover Stroud
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life by Samantha Ellis
Born to run by Bruce Springsteen

It was a good reading year for me this year, for non fiction more than fiction. I'm hoping for some good books at Christmas to get 2018 off to a good start. Will be making notes from this thread....

I’ve got that Springsteen book to read, glad it’s good.

I’ve not been that impressed with William Boyd before but might have to look up Brazzaville Beach!

So hard to whittle it down to just a few, I've read some fantastic books this year. I’ll have to try and look back next year at these choices and see if these books have stayed with me.

Fiction.
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.
The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
Winter by Ali Smith

Non Fiction
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
Meadowland: The Private Life of an English field by John Lewis-Stemple

Honourable mentions to Carol Anne Duffy's The Bees for the perfection of the final line of the title poem.
Bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.
I roll it round and round in my head when I am out in my garden now. A simple line in a poem has brought me lifelong joy, so thank you to Carol for that.
and
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles which was just an absolute magnificently crazy and splendidly eye-coveringly tremendous couple of hours read. I know it’s a tradgegy for poor old Oedipus, but for the reader (and I bet the viewer of the actual play) it’s brilliant.

That’s lovely scribblygum. I have a similar one - whenever I go into the garden and it’s buzzing, I always think “bee-loud glade” from Yeats. Such a wonderful phrased.

*phrase

Ooh, if we're doing oddly resonant poems about bees, I love the one by Peter Redgrove whichends:

A gentleman's library/In which to browse
That is full of Virgil/Who has retired
Who has finished with all/Heroes larger than beesize.

Satsuki I love that poem! Especially the line “for peace comes dropping slow”.

Here are mine:

Into the Air by Jon Krakauer (read it twice I enjoyed it so much!!)
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
A Little Life
Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
A trip to the Stars by Nicholas Christopher
The Magcian's Assistant by Ann Patchett

Lincoln in the Bardo
His Bloody Project
The Handmaid's Tale

are the ones I enjoyed the most. Honourable mention to Eleanor Oliphant, but it wasn't quite well written enough to make the top of my list.

Thank you Satsuki and bibiomania. Two new poems fro me to look up when the bees have returned to my garden.

Yes I love it too, tara

That’s a good line, biblio I like that. I might look out for the Duffy collection next time I’m in the library. I’ve had a break from poetry but I need to go back.

Some of my favourites are Sylvia Plath’s bee poems, but only if you want to be unsettled. “I have simply ordered a box of maniacs”. I always find “Wintering” quite inspiring though.

I have quite a few.

Stand out but book was:
Lincoln the Bardo - George Saunders

Best series find was:
The Shardlake series - CJ Sansom

Others:
Essex Serpent
His Bloody Project
The Lesser Bohemians
All the light we cannot see
The Underground Railroad
4,3,2,1
Elmet
If this is a man / The Truce - Primo Levi

Been a bit dry in the last few months though!

Shardlake gets everybody in the end

My favourite reads this year were:

Daisy in Chains - Sharon Bolton
I Let You Go - Clare MacKintosh
When She was Bad - Tammy Cohen
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer

No idea when they were published

I don't know what my favourite books are but I'm posting because I want to steal some of these recommendations and I don't want to lose the thread.

Sadly this year I've re-read a lot of old favourites and can't think off the top of my head what I've read that was new to me.

I read alot of children's books (student) and the best books i've read this year were:

A Monster Calls
Tom's Midnight Garden
The Wind in the Willows

I miss Shardlake and Jack so much. :(

I see I'm in a minority in thinking Lincoln in the Bardo wasn't as good or clever as its writer thought it was.