Favorite Reads of 2017

I’ve reviewed 101 books on the Cedar Park Book Blog in the calendar year 2017, counting reviews of book series as one book. Thirteen individual titles, listed below, stand out as favorites of mine. Not all were published in 2017, but all were reviewed on my blog in 2017.

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Pre-eliminated from this list are titles from categories that I don’t read—science fiction, fantasy, thriller, and horror. I also abandon fiction that turns out to have what I consider to be too many scenes of extreme violence. So this list of my favorites is heavy on historical fiction, family sagas, and introspective novels. I was surprised that none of the many mystery novels that I reviewed stood out for me as top choices for the year. I think of myself as loving mysteries, especially historical mysteries, but in selecting favorites I gravitated toward non-mysteries that presented ethical challenges and complex family dynamics. I occasionally review biographies and social histories, and one social/economic history, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, made my list of favorites.

The brief blurbs here do not begin to do justice to these books. Click on the title to go to my full review! Here are my favorite reads of 2017, in alphabetical order by title:

  • Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout. Interconnected short stories about families in a rural Illinois town; sort of a sequel to My Name is Lucy Barton.

  • Barkskins by Annie Proulx. A sweeping three-century saga of two French Canadian families and their relationship to the forests of North America.

  • The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble. Looking at mortality and the environment through the lens of a contemporary British family.

  • Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. An awkward and abused woman in Glasgow faces her demons and seeks to change her life.

  • The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies. Interlocking stories about the experiences of Chinese immigrants in America over the past century.

  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Adventures of a Russian aristocrat under house arrest in a Moscow hotel from 1922 to 1954.

  • The Golden Age by Joan London. Two young polio victims grow up in a convalescent home in Australia in the 1950s.

  • The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos by Dominic Smith. Visiting a painting and its impact on families in the Netherlands (1636-1649), in New York (1957-1958), and in Sydney (2000).

  • Moonglow by Michael Chabon. The fictional biography of a Jewish engineer, recounted by his grandson, touching on key events of the twentieth century.

  • Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf. Two neighbors in their 70s find companionship and tackle difficulties together.

  • Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. The struggles of Korean immigrant families in Japan during the twentieth century.

  • The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon. A huge and detailed nonfiction book, with emphasis on food, housing, sanitation, and consumer goods that have shaped the economy.

  • The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck. Hardscrabble life in Germany in the aftermath of World War II, with reflections on the rise of Hitler.

Eight of the titles that I reviewed in 2017 appeared in the New York Times list of “100 Notable Books of 2017.” This list has some overlap with the above list of my own favorites:

I’m looking forward to many more great books in 2018!