2017: My Year in Books

Any year you can read a lot of books is a good one. In 2017 I read a little of everything, good and bad, old and new, fiction and nonfiction. Even the bad ones were good, although some were better than others. 

Here is the basic list, roughly in the order that I read them.

1. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
2. Debt: the First 5000 Years , David Graeber
3. Hillbilly Elegy, J. W. Vance
4. Foundation, Issac Asimov
5. Moonbeam,  Michael Chabon
6. The Merchant from Venice, William Shakespeare
7. Will of the World, Stephen Greenblatt
8. The Introvert Advantage,  Marti Olsen Laney 
9. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Harkins Marukami
10. Hit Makers: The Science Of Popularity in an Age of Distraction, Derek Thompson
11. The Science of Mindfulness:  A Research-Based Path to Well-Being, Ronald Siegel
12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
13. On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder
14. Nine Stories,J.D. Salinger
15. Thank You For Being Late, Thomas Friedman
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
17. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides 
18. Immunity, Eula Biss
19. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
20. An American Sickness, Elizabeth Rosenthal
21. The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols
22. Mariette in Ecstasy, Ron Hansen
23. How to Read and Understand Shakespeare, Marc Conner
24. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,  Jon Ronson
25. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
26. Richard II, William Shakespeare
27. Strangers in Their Own Land, Arlie, Russel Hochschild
28. The Aeneid,  Publius Virgilus Maro
29. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
30. Stein on Writing,  Sol Stein
31. A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
32. Private Empire: Exxon/Mobile and American Power, Steve Coll
33. Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward
34. State of Affairs, Esther Perelli
35. Loving, Henry Green
36. A Colony in a Nation, Chris Hayes
37. When in French: Love in a Second Language, Lauren Collins
38. The Making of Donald Trump, David Kay Johnston

Among the nominees for the best books of the year were Richard II, The Aeneid, Loving, Immunity, and Moonbeam. There are no winners here. To be nominated is to be honored.

I especially want to recommend Mariette in Ecstasy, the story of a Catholic postulate whose divine visions upend the quiet life in a turn-of-the-twentieth-century convent in upstate New York. Roughly based on the life of St. Therese of Lisieux, it is in many ways more a long poem than a novel, and is very beautifully written. Also Loving, a fine book by an almost completely forgotten British writer named Henry Green. Green might be the finest writer of dialogue I have ever found. His ability to produce a conversation between two people that appears to be about one thing but is actually about something else unsaid is nothing short of amazing. There were a few disappointments. Hillbilly Elegy, a bestseller, was supposed to be an insider’s account of Trump’s America, but was nothing of the sort. I found it banal and it contained nothing I didn’t know already. Its answer to poverty in America? Let the Army make you a real man, then go to Yale Law School and work the alumni network. Wow. Never would have thought of that myself.

Surprisingly, I was also disappointed by A Moveable Feast. Although one of the best book titles of all time, this book was very uneven. At times it was a very interesting view into Ernest Hemingway’s inner life. Other times it was arrogant drivel. I wished for more.

A final special word goes to the standout Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. Although this book had a rather bleak ending, it was the first Japanese contemporary fiction work I think I have read, and was well-told. It is a fascinating look into the Japanese life, doing what fiction does best — taking me to a distant place, into the mind of someone in a very different culture, living an existence that I never would have dreamed up myself. Hard to do better than that.

I am looking forward to 2018. May it bring many reading pleasures to you.