I struggled with my top 10 list this year, especially in regard to rereads. I don't usually reread much but did more so this year and I've never allowed rereads to hit my list in theory, but in fact if it's a reread where I really don't remember much beyond the broadest outlines, I'll usually let it slip through (rereads I remember well never qualify). I decided this year to be strict, however. (Goodbye,
Phineas Finn!) The lists are always at least somewhat arbitrary, anyway.
My top ten is divided into half fiction, half non.
Fiction:
- The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal
- After Me, the Deluge, David Forrest
- The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
- Barnaby Rudge, Charles Dickens
- Wish Her Safe at Home, Stephen Benatar
Nonfiction:
- No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money, David Lough
- Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea, by Richard Henry Dana Jr.
- Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789-1848, Adam Zemoyski
- Austerity Britain, 1945-51, David Kynaston
- They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper, Bruce Robinson
I've decided to give honorary mention to one more fiction book:
The Letter of Marque, by Patrick O'Brian. It's smack in the middle of a series which makes it harder to single out, but I did give it five stars which not everything above got.
I read only three books published in 2017:
Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, by Sally Bedell Smith;
Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, by Jonathan Allen; and
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser. The last made the
NY Times list of top 10 books of 2017. I thought all of these were good enough, but they didn't crack my top ten. Prince Charles is an awfully dull fellow, though.