Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Best of 2017

It is a bit late for this, but I thought I would post it anyway.  These 9 books were my favorite reads of 2017.  A few caveats:  I have listed them in the order I read them, and not attempted to rank them further.  I also gave myself certain limitations - I loved both of the Marilynne Robinson novels I read this year, but decided to choose one, just to not repeat authors.  I also chose not to include books I reread, even though I counted them among my not-quite-50 books of the year.  That eliminated Junot Diaz and Tim O'Brien, who probably would have made the list otherwise.   These decisions are a bit arbitrary, but they may be no more arbitrary than my decision to stop at 9 titles or my decision about what to read next.

Best of 2017

Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,  Jeff Chang
Bellevue, David Oshinsky
Lila, Marilynne Robinson
Thrall, Natasha Trethaway
Otis Redding, An Incomplete Life, Jonathan Gould
The Green Road, Anne Enright
The Bread of Time, Philip Levine

Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan

Three of these titles (Change, Oshinsky, Gould) are non fiction and four are fiction.  The Trethaway is poetry and Levine is an odd combination - he claims it is his memoir, but some of it is fiction.  This probably accurately reflects my reading life - a balance of fiction and non fiction with a too small smattering of poetry.  The list is a microcosm of the 50 Books experience as both serve to make me just a little more self-reflective about my writing.  So thanks for that.

1 comment:

Christopher said...

I thought Lila was much, much stronger than Home.