What were your favorite books of 2017?

[Bookpossum]

I gave the following books five stars:

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Peregrine by J A Baker
The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their craft by Tom Griffiths
Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner
Music and Freedom by Zoe Morrison
Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

[AnotherCat]

Books read are for me like ships passing in fog, visible for a minute while reading them, then disappear into the murk of my mind after :.

But if prodded by another, the fog clears and I can also give 5 stars to Lucky Jim.

I can remember, barely , the book I am currently reading and 5 stars to that too, Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci; am about halfway through.

[Catlady]

My five favorite books of the year are:

• His Bloody Project, by Graeme Macrae Burnet
• Unraveling Oliver, by Liz Nugent
• The Chilbury Ladies Choir, by Jennifer Ryan
• Dead Woman Walking, by Sharon Bolton
• The Fire by Night, by Teresa Messineo

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

Books read are for me like ships passing in fog, visible for a minute while reading them, then disappear into the murk of my mind after :.

That's one of the reasons I built myself a spreadsheet to track my reading with. I used to have between 10 and 20 authors that I would go to over and over and over again because I couldn't remember other authors I really liked.

I also use GoodReads now to track what I read but they don't have enough numbers for me.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

That's one of the reasons I built myself a spreadsheet to track my reading with. I used to have between 10 and 20 authors that I would go to over and over and over again because I couldn't remember other authors I really liked.

I also use GoodReads now to track what I read but they don't have enough numbers for me.

My excel spreadsheet is not QUITE as shiny as your google sheet, but its awfully close

It also taught me more about excel than years of using it for measuring academic metrics.

[piperclassique]

It was a dead tree book. From the Land of Green Ghosts, by Pascal Khoo Thwe. I read it at home, but didn't want to carry it so didn't take it with me on holiday, then I bought a second copy to read while I was away in Myanmar. Apparently it was banned there until quite recently. He doesn't pull any punches about the regime that he lived under.
It's a wonderful book. I brought the second copy home with me and read it again on the flight home.

[CRussel]

My personal favourites from this year (new, not re-reads):

• Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race
• The Gathering Edge (Liaden Universe #20)
• To Fire Called (Nathan Lowell's Seeker's Tales #2)
• The Couturier of Milan (Ava Lee #9)
• Convergence (Foreigner #18)
• Less Than a Treason (Kate Shugak #21)
• Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)

As you'll see, most of these are the latest books in a long running and favourite series. Only one non-fiction, though I could have added one or two more but they were work related. Boring, but necessary. What I haven't shown here are all the books I've re-read and really loved the second (or third, or umpteenth) time around. Those are becoming more and more of my reading.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by piperclassique

It was a dead tree book. From the Land of Green Ghosts, by Pascal Khoo Thwe. I read it at home, but didn't want to carry it so didn't take it with me on holiday, then I bought a second copy to read while I was away in Myanmar. Apparently it was banned there until quite recently. He doesn't pull any punches about the regime that he lived under.
It's a wonderful book. I brought the second copy home with me and read it again on the flight home.

I admit it; I'm tickled. And delighted. Because as I recall, I suggested this to you when you were compiling your list of books for your trip. I had forgotten I had read this as a DTB until you couldn't find it in ebook.

This is why we recommend books!

[pwalker8]

Looking back at the books that I liked this year, a lot of them were not published this year.

Published this year
Fiction
- Lockwood & Co book 5, The Empty Grave - Stroud really is a talented writer.
- Artemis - Andy Weir
Non Fiction
- The Storm before the Storm, by Mike Duncan - Great read on the period of Roman history from the fall of Carthage to the death of Sulla.

Really, I thought the picking were kind of slim this year. Not a whole lot where I was totally wowed. Some favored authors who put out workman like books, but nothing that keep me up reading all night.

I did discover a few writers this year who had been around.
My favorite was Marc Alan Edelheit's Stiger series.

I did pick up several other series that were good enough that I bought the set, but they were all more along the lines of solid workman like, rather than stay up all night reading because I couldn't put it down.

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by piperclassique

It was a dead tree book. From the Land of Green Ghosts, by Pascal Khoo Thwe. I read it at home, but didn't want to carry it so didn't take it with me on holiday, then I bought a second copy to read while I was away in Myanmar. Apparently it was banned there until quite recently. He doesn't pull any punches about the regime that he lived under.
It's a wonderful book. I brought the second copy home with me and read it again on the flight home.

Originally Posted by issybird

I admit it; I'm tickled. And delighted. Because as I recall, I suggested this to you when you were compiling your list of books for your trip. I had forgotten I had read this as a DTB until you couldn't find it in ebook.

This is why we recommend books!

Thanks very much to you both. I hadn't heard of this book, looked it up, and immediately placed an order for it.

[piperclassique]

I admit it; I'm tickled. And delighted. Because as I recall, I suggested this to you when you were compiling your list of books for your trip. I had forgotten I had read this as a DTB until you couldn't find it in ebook.

This is why we recommend books!

You did indeed. And thank you again. Many people suggested books, and although I didn't read all of them, I did read all the samples. It made for an interesting list. The blog is still up if anyone is interested.

[Strether]

I spent a lot of the year re-reading old favorites. I had a hard time finding new books that interested me. A lot of those that did are on CRussel's list: The Gathering Edge, To Fire Called, Convergence (though only the Bren half). And I have him to blame for going way past my budget by reading the first Ada Lee novel and racing through the next eight. My library only had the first four and ran out of interest and/or money so I had to buy the rest. One reviewer called them slick, fast-moving escapism and I think that pretty much nails them.

After vowing never to read another in the Imager series by LE Modesitt, I broke down and read the latest one, Assasin's Price, and was pleasantly surprised. Told from the standpoint of a Rex, rather than an Imager, and no military battles. Plus, Modesitt's writing normally has almost as many quirks as Rafael Nadal's serve, but we didn't get many descriptions of meals or women's dresses as usual. True, everyone inclined their heads at every opportunity, but at least nobody "repaired" anywhere. As in, "He repaired to the sitting room and sat in the chair."--a genteelism the author's unaccountably fond of usually.

Jim

[CRussel]

I'm not really sorry I got you started on the Ava Lee book, they're just such fun. And just to get your new year budget off to a good start, there's a new one due out at the beginning of January.

As for Imager, I know what you mean. But I somehow keep getting the new ones.

[latepaul]

So far I've read 27 books this year. Of those 12 of those were re-reads.

Books I enjoyed in 2017 (8/10 or higher, * are re-reads)

• Harry Potter books 1-3*
• The Ragged Astronauts - Bob Shaw*
• The Blazing World - Margaret Cavendish
• Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang*
• Expecting Someone Taller - Tom Holt*
• Odds On - John Lange (Michael Crichton)
• Lord Foul's Bane - Stephen Donaldson*

Books I read published in 2017:

• Hannah Green and her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence - Michael Marshall Smith (8/10)
• How to Stop Time - Matt Haig (8/10)

[Strether]

Originally Posted by CRussel

I'm not really sorry I got you started on the Ava Lee book, they're just such fun. And just to get your new year budget off to a good start, there's a new one due out at the beginning of January.

Yes, and a new Foreigner book as well. Santa had better come through with Amazon gift cards.

I've started reading Ancillary Justice, meanwhile. Very slow going!

Jim