Most memorable books you read in 2017

A few Most Memorables, admittedly somewhat random:

I Am A Story, by Dan Yaccarino. Using bold, simple images, this picture book tells the story of stories - showing how, through the years and challenges and changes, stories persist and thrive. It was just the book I needed to start off this year, which has been exceptionally trying in many ways.

11/22/63 and It, by Stephen King. I'd been rather nonplussed by other King titles (particularly the much-vaunted Dark Tower series, which lost me after the first book.) So it was odd that two of the better books I read this year were written by him. Maybe I just like his doorstops better than his average-length books.

Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire. Both exploring and subverting portal fantasy tropes, these stories employ a memorable yet readable storyteller/omniscient style to tell two rather dark tales of children finding their way and themselves in other worlds - only to be forced back to Earth, often for reasons they cannot understand. I want to track down more by this author, and I'm eagerly awaiting the third Wayward Children book, Beneath a Sugar Sky. (Closely related, if more humorous, would be D. C. Pierson's YA Chosen One subversion Crap Kingdom, which explores what would happen if an average, awkward teen were named Chosen One of a kingdom that leaves a lot to be desired... and walked away.)

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero. This is one of the most bizarre stories I've read, this year or any other, a sort of Lovecraftian spoof on Scooby-Doo that frequently breaks the fourth wall.

Unf*ck Your Habitat, by Rachel Hoffman. This cleaning and organization book is the first one I've read that isn't aimed at Martha Stewart clones; it's for anyone with problems keeping organized, including those with depression or physical limitations. I never would've thought I'd give a five-star rating to a book on cleaning, but there it is.

Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?, by Frans de Waal. A great examination of animal intelligence, not to mention the lengths some people go to in order to deny acknowledging intelligence and awareness in non-human animals.

Hands down the most memorable book of this year for me was The Girl Who Drank The Moon. Argh, I can't even type out the title without getting a little bit choked up! It's one of the most gorgeous books I have ever read, including adult books.

And then there's a rash of books that are memorable because they were so hyped and yet I found them so underwhelming. Won't name them here, but I'm side-eyeing them right now...

Book that will stay with me the longest: I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. I don't think this really needs explaining.

Holy Shit I Actually Read This Award 2017: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I started this book the first time YEARS ago. 2012, 2013ish. It was on my Goodreads Reading list for years and I never touched it. With 10 hour of flying ahead and a few books under my belt already, I figured, why not give it another go? So glad I finally did.

Favorite Comic (Cause I read a toooon of comics): Monstress Vol 2 by Marjorie M Liu. Seriously, if you like comics at all and aren't reading Monstress, you NEED to fix that. Give yourself a Black Friday treat and get this comic. Start with Vol 1. Unparalleled art and story.

Maggie Maxwell said:

Favorite Comic (Cause I read a toooon of comics): Monstress Vol 2 by Marjorie M Liu. Seriously, if you like comics at all and aren't reading Monstress, you NEED to fix that. Give yourself a Black Friday treat and get this comic. Start with Vol 1. Unparalleled art and story.

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For those of us on budgets (especially at a time of year when budgets are under stress), both Vol 1 and Vol 2 of Monstress appear to be available via the digital lending service Hoopla, if your library system deals with them.

A great thread topic! I've been looking for stuff to add to my already impossible stack of to-reads.

Best book for me was Olive Kitteridge. I had no idea I'd like it as much as I did. Connected short stories more than a novel, it revealed some painful truths about life and growing old. It opened my eyes to some of the stuff my parents and grandparents are or were going through, and what might be in store for me.

Count me in as having a lot more memorables that were underwhelming. I seemed to have picked up a lot of them this year for some reason.

Favorite fiction of the year was Kate Griffin's Matthew Swift series, starting with A Madness of Angels. It's urban fantasy set in London, and it's gorgeously written: somehow she makes the underside of London's squalor and grittiness beautiful, and despite the frequent darkness of the plot, there's also much humor and a certain lightness and innocence that leavens it. Just wonderful.

Favorite non-fiction is Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy. Wonderfully written book about the young--usually early twenties-ish--women who came to Washington (first from the Seven Sisters colleges and later from all over the country) to work on breaking enemy codes during the war--and how their work likely shortened the war. Much of the information discussed in the book, including letters and memoirs, is just recently declassified; what's wonderful is that the author was able to interview many of these women (now in their nineties.)

The Nightingale - Kristen Hannah was the most memorable book for me this past year.

The Brothers Karamazov. Five of the main characters are drama queens turned up to 11. Perhaps necessary to deliver the depths of psychology and pathos that are the heart of the book.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Yeah, The Brothers Karamazov is my all time favorite book. Besides its incredible profundity, I find it astounding the way the melodrama serves to make the quiet, gentle, decent Alyosha the most memorable character in the book.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

My memorable books this year:

The Venetians- Colin Thurbon
Sceptical Essays- Bertrand Russell
Akira Vol. 1- Katsuhiro Otomo
Under the Volcano- Malcolm Lowry
Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf- Edward Albee
The Island of Doctor Moreau- H.G Wells
American Gods- Neil Gaiman
Cat on a Top Tin Roof- Tennessee Williams
Accidental Death of an Anarchist- Dario Fo
Steve Jobs- Walter Issacson
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead- Tom Stoppard
The Book Thief- Markus Zusak

It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis - Too timely for comfort, even though it was written in 1935. Served as inspiration for my own political satire.

The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas - Another great inspiration. Loved the voice, dialogue, and characterization of teenagers navigating race issues.

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein - Loved the voice, characters, plot twists. Another inspiration when working on a violent, emotional thriller.

Under the Skin, Michel Faber - Disturbing and stunning.

A Song of Stone, Iain Banks - Ditto.

The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin - As awesome as everyone says.

She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb - Why did I wait so long to read this? Because it was an Oprah book I always assumed it was sweet, fluffy women's fiction. It's actually very dark and real.

White Oleander, Janet Fitch - Ditto.

Fingersmith, Sarah Waters - Shocking twists, amazing characters who earn their happy ending.

Peony in Love, Lisa See - Beautiful, bittersweet, fascinating view of traditional Chinese afterlife that stuck with me to the point I had several dreams about it.

The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones, Jack Wolf - Amazing 18th-century voice/style. Loved the eerily hinted-at supernatural and the dark, intense, dangerous yet sympathetic MC. (On a personal note, I also loved that his relationship with his eventual wife resembled that between a character of similar type from a famous fantasy book, with whom I have long been obsessed, and the Mary Sue I once fantasized to be perfect partner.)

Light, M. John Harrison - Gorgeously written, bizarre, disturbing; I loved how the different storylines gradually came together, and the huge scope and age of the universe.

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)
Just finished Safe Passage by Ida Cook. The memoir of two sisters who became opera fans, used that fandom to meet the stars they followed, and through those stars began to rescue Jews (and a few others) from the Holocaust. That was pre-war. During the war, Ida was a night watcher in a shelter. Her descriptions of what really went on in those shelters is by far and away the best I've ever read. The book isn't perfect. Like so many of her era, she starts slow. So the first chapter, while containing some very funny bits, does get a bit slow going. And I disagree strongly with a couple of her statements about post-war audiences. But despite those quibbles, this is a book I'm sure I'll remember.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by AWer Jamie Ford is also memorable. The most emotionally charged book I read this year, it touches a period and a place and a topic that hits me and my family deeply. It's the Romeo and Juliet story of a Chinese boy (through whose eyes we get the whole story) and a Japanese girl, starting just before the infamous Relocation to nearly 35 years later. I've known Japanese internees, and the most moving experience I have ever had in a Christian church was on a Palm Sunday when a Japanese lady, who went through the camps, read the Biblical reading of Jesus being taken away...and she broke down and sobbed. And my mother (an otherwise straight A student) got an F on a paper in high school English when she wrote an essay against the Relocation. And this was in Seattle, where the story of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is set. I'm going to remember this one too.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

The light between oceans - M.L. Stedman - Haunting story and evocative prose.

The skull mantra and - Eliot Pattison - Very well-researched thriller set in Tibet.

Water touching stone - Eliot Pattison - ditto

The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell. Well-researched historical fiction about the Dutch East India company.

The sympathiser - Viet Thanh Nguyen - Funny / sad story about the Vietnam War, from a Vietnamese perspective.

Slow horses - Mick Herron - Clever thriller with "failed" spies put out to pasture.

Mothering Sunday - Graham Swift - Very short romance with a twist, set in 1920s England, á la Downton Abbey.

In the skin of a lion- Michael Ondaatje - Memorable story of migrant labourers in 1930s Toronto.

Háblame, musa, de aquel varón - Dulce Chacón - set in late 1990s in Southern Spain, a story of prejudice, ambition, literature and love. I've never read a story told, very effectively, in the second person singular.

Birdsong- Sebastian Faulkes - a harrowing story about trench warfare in the First World War, though the first part was very slow.

A week in December - Sebastian Faulkes - I'm three quarters of the way through it, and it's excellent. Memorable characters interacting in London 2007. Tension is mounting.....

Fiction: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. My habit of avoiding spoilers was amply rewarded with this one. I'd already read The Two Faces of January and loved her writing style, so now she's got me reading -- and loving -- something I'd never dream of reading on purpose, if that makes sense. I keep saying I won't read any more Ripley books, but I know I'm lying.

Non Fiction: The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I picked it up on a whim at the library while collecting my reserved books, read it that day, and cut back drastically on sugar the next. I still eat a few foods with added sugar (e.g., bagels), but the rest is gone from my diet. I've never had a book affect my life so dramatically before.

This is probably cheating, and it won't be new to most people but 'Oh The Places You'll Go"

I read with my boys and was almost choked up with how pertinent it was. I had never come across it as a girl, only 'green eggs and ham'.

SciSarahTops said:

This is probably cheating, and it won't be new to most people but 'Oh The Places You'll Go"

I read with my boys and was almost choked up with how pertinent it was. I had never come across it as a girl, only 'green eggs and ham'.

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That book was our senior class gift in high school. I still have it, and revisit it now and again.

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

If you want to read a Seuss book that's apropos to our current situation, you might try Horton Hears a Who.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal