Oh dear. I read 160 books last year and I had been determined to read FEWER books. But here I am, having read 176 books! I read so many amazing books this year.
Most of the books I read were e-galleys and ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) courtesy of NetGalley, Edelweiss, Blogging for Books, First to Read, IndieBrag, and Bookish First. These books were ones I requested.
Some were giveaway wins from the publisher on social media or on Goodreads or LibraryThing, and some were giveaways from fellow bloggers. I entered the contest for these books.
Other books were sent me directly from the publisher. These books are often ones I had not even known about. Sometimes I am approached through email and I accept to read it, and sometimes a publisher ships me an ARC directly.
The rest were book club choices and even--yes!--personal choices from my TBR lists, books I borrowed from the local library or purchased.
My 2017 goals included a focus on reading new authors and emerging voices and multicultural books on human rights issues, including racism, immigration, economic class, and LGBT issues.
My life long interest in biographies of women and writers, Polar and Space exploration, and the earth sciences make appearances in my choices, as does my more recent interest in politics and my long term interest in American and British history. I also like to read Michigan and Detroit related books, and Philadelphia settings since we lived there, too.
Sometimes I need to read something completely different and I turn to Science Fiction, mysteries, and Woman's Fiction. And of course, my true love of Literary Fiction and the classics is always evident in my reading.
My favorite books are italicized, which was a hard decision to make since there are so many I truly enjoyed. My decision is 100% personal and not reflective of the quality, importance, or my enjoyment of the other books.
Books which were published this year that I read in 2016 as e-galleys and ARCs are included on my list with an asterisk [*]. My book club selections are marked with an + and books from my personal TBR are marked #.
Stories of Young People Growing Up
The Barrowfields* by Phillip Lewis
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Everything I Never Told You# by Celeste Ng
Daphne by Will Boast [coming out in 2018]
The Futures* by Anna Pitnoiak
The Animators* by Kayla Rae Whitaker
Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon [coming out in 2018]
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin [coming out in 2018]
Another Brooklyn# by Jaqueline Woodson
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
And Then She Was Born by Cristiano Gentilli
Literary Fiction
We Shall Not All Sleep by Estep Nagy
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Edrich
Some Rise by Sin by Philip Caputo
Abide with Me# by Elizabeth Strout
Idaho* by Emily Ruskovich
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk* by Kathleen Rooney
Spaceman of Bohemia* by Jaroslav Kalfar
Books to Restore Your Faith in Humanity
The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Allie and Bea by Catherine Ryan Hyde
To the Stars Through Difficulties by Romalyn Tilghman
The Reminders* by Val Emmich
Classics
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn+ by Betty Smith
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Remains of the Day+ by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Age of Innocence+ by Edith Wharton
Hot-Button Social Topics
This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey
I Can't Breathe by Matt Taibbi
Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo
Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson
Quiet Until the Thaw by Alexandra Fuller
Who's Jim Hines?# by Jean Alicia Elster
Convicted: A Crooked Cop, an Innocent Man, and an Unlikely Journey of Forgiveness and Friendship by Jameel Zookie McGee
Wild Mountain by Nancy Kilgore
Immigration and Refugees
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Exit West# by Moshin Hamid
The Faraway Brothers by Lauren Markham
The Leavers# by Lisa Ko
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
The Boat People [Coming out in 2018] by Sharon Bala
In the Midst of Winter by Isabelle Allende
Resistance Reading
Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times by Carolina De Robertis
Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-hour Workweek
by Rutger Bregman
What We Do Now: Standing Up For Your Values in Trump's America by Dennis Johnson
The Locals by Jonathan Dee
How We Got To Here
Behemoth: A History of the Factory and The Making of the Modern World by Joshua B. Freeman [coming out in 2018]
Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are by Zoe Fraade-Blanar
The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris
State of Fear [Coming out in 2018] by Neel Mukherjee
Things we Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez
The Refugees* by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Upstream# by Mary Oliver
Essays
Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Serious Books That Also Made Me Laugh
The Windfall by Diksha Basu
Tell Me How This Ends Well by David Samuel Levinson
(The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne can fall into this category, too
)
Feminist Novel/Fantasy About Romancing a Frogman
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
Women Who Fought Back
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
The Other Einstein+ by Marie Benedict
My Live, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King
Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
His Eye is on the Sparrow# by Ethel Waters
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank+
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Huber Davis
Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote by Joanna
Neuman
Hidden Figures+ by Margot Lee Shetterly
Victoria and Abdul by Schrani Basu
Flawed Masterpiece
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
Historical Fiction with a Mystery
The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow
The Winter Station [Coming out in 2018] by Jody Shields
Fantasy & Magic
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic# by Alice Hoffman
The Bear and the Nightingale# and The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
Grief Cottage by Gail Goodwin
Re-Tellings
Hook's Tale: Being the Account of an Unjustly Villainized Pirate Written by Himself, by John
Pielmeier
Mr Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker
New Boy by Tracey Chevalier
Nick and Jake by Jonathan Richards
Pepys in Love: Elizabeth's Story by Patrick Delaforce
House of Names by Colm Tobin
Science Fiction
Something Wicked This Way Comes# by Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine+ by Ray Bradbury
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones
The Space Between the Stars by Anne Corlett
Biographies and Memoirs
Mozart's Starling by Lynda Lynn Haupt
A $500 House in Detroit: Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City by Drew Philp
Dimestore: A Writer's Life# by Lee Smith
Promise Me, Dad by Joe Biden
Theft by Finding by David Sedaris
Leading Tones by Leonard Slatkin
The Last Bar in NYC by Brian Michaels
It Takes a School by Jonathan Starr
Mao's Last Dancer+ by Li Cunxin
The Book of Joe by Jeff Wilser
The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker
The Great Nadar by Adam Begley
Renegade: Martin Luther, the Graphic Biography by Andrea Grosso Ciponte
Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties by Arrol Gellner
Books About Exploration
Endurance by Scott Kelly
Ask an Astronaut by Tim Peake
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger
Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition by Paul Watson
Our Earth
The Life and Death of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
The Great Quake by Henry Fountain
Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by Gerald Durrell
Politics and American History
The Gatekeepers by Chris Whipple
Building the Great Society by Joshua Zeitz
The Accidental President by A. J. Baime
Detroit 1967 by Joel Stone
The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall-and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill* by Greg Mitchell
High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic* by Glenn Frankel
Exposés
White Wash by Cary Gillam
American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee
Historical Fiction
River of Ink# by Paul M. M. Cooper
Grace by Paul Lynch
The Good People by Hannah Kent
The World of Tomorrow by Brenden Matthews
The Underworld by Kevin Canty
Golden Hill by Frances Spufford
The Lost Letter# by Mimi Matthews
The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter by Mimi Matthews [publishing in 2018]
The Hidden Thread by Liz Trenow
Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson
Books about Books
The Uncommon Reader+ by Alan Bennett
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence
Books About Writers
Manderley Forever by Tatiania de Rosnay
In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown# by Amy Gary
As I Knew Him, My Dad Rod Serling# by Ann Serling
Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone: A Fifth Dimension Guide to Life#
by Mark Dawidziak
Dickens and Christmas by Lucinda Hawksley
Dickens: Compassion and Contradiction by Karen Kenyon
Charlotte in Love: The Courtship and Marriage of Charlotte Brontë by Brian Wilks
The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein
Over The Hill and Far Away: A Life of Beatrix Potter by Matthew Dennison
A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser
War Novels
Devastation Road Jason Hewitt
Brave Deeds# by David Abrams
Spoils by Brian Van Reet
Woman's Fiction
Only Child by Rhiannon Navin
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay
The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron
The Welcome Home Diner by Peggy Lampman
Hello, Sunshine by Laura Dave
800 Grapes by Laura Dave
A Spool of Blue Thread+ by Anne Tyler
The Heirs by Susan Rieger
The End of Men by Karen Rinaldi
Bridget Jones's Baby by Helen Fielding
The Rosie Project+ by Graeme Simsion
Little Paris Bookstore+ by Nina George
Mysteries, Suspense, and Thrillers
Exposed by Lisa Scottoline
The Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinsborough
The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille
Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs
Dr Sam Johnson, Detector by Lillian de la Torres
Perish From the Earth: A Lincoln and Speed Mystery by Jonathan Putnam
The Breakdown by B. A. Paris
Most of these books received 3 to 5 stars because if I really don't like a book I excuse myself and bow out.
Some of the popular books, including some book club selections, were my least favorites. I did not finish A Man Called Ove or The Little Paris Book Store for book club, I just sped-read to the end. While my book club members were mostly bored or confused by Wharton, I enjoyed Age of Innocence. I learned that most readers want a plot-driven book with characters of pluck and personality. I really try to consider that in my reviews, while also offering my reaction.
I learned several things looking over this list, and I hope to use my insights as I plan and select books for 2018 reading. I miss having more time to write my reviews, but then I worry I might miss reading another amazing book if I cut back. I also now have a huge TBR pile because I am mostly reading upcoming books. We will see if I can cut back in 2018...or read even more books!
To read reviews of any of these books use the Search side bar on the right and type in the book title or author.
Thank you for reading The Literate Quilter this year!
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on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/28397995-nancy
and on Twitter at @NancyAdairB
