2017 Year in Books

Like all good book lovers, I’m impressed by and mortified by my book list for the past year.

If you’re looking for a list of the books I read, you can skip ahead to the bottom. This post gets longish. 

I’ve seen a lot of year-end lists and reactions to and from others about the things that they’d been reading. It led me to wonder what my book list might look like. It’s not something I’ve ever tracked. I never really thought about it. I’d read books then put them away. And, since I’m not part of any sort of book club, I don’t do a lot of reacting to the things I’ve read. I don’t even really think deeply about it either, once I’m done reading. I probably don’t think too deeply about things while I’m reading them if I’m being honest.

Still, though, I wanted to take a look at what I’d read and think about what that might have meant for me in 2017. Also, what it could mean for me in 2018.

Pulling the list together wasn’t easy. I never tracked it before, like I said. So, I had to pull lists from digital libraries I borrowed from and Kindle. I don’t think my digital libraries tracked what I was reading for the first few months of the year – the list seems pretty light. And, of course, a digital trail doesn’t track the books I physically read. That’s probably not that many, actually. I tend to do a lot of Kindle, phone, and iPad reading. So, let’s just say there’s four or five books that are lost in my terrible, terrible memory, never to be considered again.

So what did I notice when looking over my 2017 Year in Books? My book habits seemed to be a reaction to the world outside and my feelings about it. I began the year, a man on fire, as it were. While the world, it seemed, was grappling with a Donald Trump presidency and what that might mean, I went to the library bookshelves. Of the books I read in the early part of the year, The Fire Next Time is the book that will stick with me most and deepest. I’m sure I’ll come back to this book again and again. It broadens our understanding about how it might have felt to live through and think about a troubling point in America’s history and also to consider how far we haven’t come in the more than 50 years since the book was published.

There was only so much reflection on the current state of affairs I could do without driving myself crazy, so I found myself delving into other places. Crime Fiction is great for the this. Especially Crime Fiction set in places that aren’t here. Tana French delivers brilliant characterization set against bleak murder plots. In Ireland. So, it’s far away. Her books have saved my sanity more than once the last couple of years.

In the middle of the year, it looks like I was trying to uncover something. The Lost City of the Monkey God, The Lost City of Z, and 1491 were all about uncovering pre-Columbian history and the problems that lie therein. Killers of the Flower Moon was about uncovering injustices from long ago that reverberate today. Maybe I wanted to know how we got here and what it was that we lost along the way.

I read Norse Mythology because, well, Neil Gaiman wrote it. He writes, I read. This is a hard and fast nerd rule. Interestingly enough, I read it the same way I imagine a lot of other people read it – as an extended Marvel Comics prequel.

As an aside, it did get me thinking about Latin American mythology and how difficult they are to uncover. It’s not as prevalent here in America as European myths, obviously. It left me wondering where the definitive set of Latin American myths might live. I’d like to read it.

And, that dovetailed into my next reading foray, Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles series. I was, at first, resistant to the setting. Here was another proto-European fantasy setting after I had just come to the conclusion that I wished I could read and learn more about Latin American mythology. My resistance was short-lived, though, because the story is amazing. Stories within stories within stories; others hinted at that are left untold; some might be uncovered; some could be lost forever. And, the use of magic is more intuitive than in other stories – it’s based, mostly, on the transfer of energy. It just makes sense.

I came across the Kingkiller Chronicles in a work meeting. A colleague was fangirling about the series and the message boards she stalks. “That’s great,” I thought. The tipping point for me was when she revealed she had thought about who she would cast in the live-action adaptation. Always respect someone’s fandom. If someone loves something enough to take the time to think through their fantasy cast, there’s probably something to it.

That led to more fantasy/sci-fi with some brief dips into bios as I tried to escape a never-ending, scream cycle of disheartening news.

2018 starts the way 2017 finished, with some more fantasy. Another colleague geeked out about a fantasy series and author, and I’ve started in on some works by N.K. Jemison. I also looked to close out some books I started in 2017 but never finished. And, let me tell you, that list is long. Like every good lit major, I bought and set aside as many books as I read. The list of books I have but didn’t read is what disappoints me most about my 2017 Year in Books.

For 2018, though, I’m going to do a better job of tracking what I’ve read and of thinking more critically about those books. I’ve set up my Goodreads account and am already tracking my progress. I’m looking to read more books and do greater things this year.

Let’s hope there’s more books in my read pile than are in my not-read pile come 2019.

2017 Year in Books List

The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

They Can’t Kill Us All
Wesley Lowrey

The Book of Unknown Americans
Cristina Henriquez

This Is How You Lose Her
Junot Diaz

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
Antonio Garcia Martinez

News of the World
Paulette Jiles

The Likeness
Tana French

The Lost City of the Monkey God
Douglas Preston

Faithful Place
Tana French

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
David Grann

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann

Norse Mythology
Neil Gaiman

1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann

The Name of the Wind: Kingkiller Chronicle Book 1
Patrick Rothfuss

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Malcolm Gladwell

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Erik Larson

The Wise Man’s Fear: Kingkiller Chronicle, Book 2
Patrick Rothfuss

Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Walter Isaacson

The Slow Regard of Silent Things: Kingkiller Chronicle, Book 2.5
Patrick Rothfuss

Men Without Women
Haruki Murakami

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
Marie Kondo

Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson

Artemis
Andy Weir