books of 2017

I have to warn you, my husband left for a one-year work assignment in Washington D.C. at the end of the summer, so the list gets a little long!  ; )

What I read in 2017:

January

Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin. I was really late to the party on this one, but after I saw the terrific film “Lincoln” with Daniel Day Lewis, I vowed to get right on it. I just looked—that film came out in 2012. Better late than never; this is a fascinating read.

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood. Along with many others I’m sure, one of my book clubs decided to reread this in light of the current political situation. Still interesting and of course chilling, but it didn’t really feel like so much of a commentary on current events, given that so much of what is distressing about today has occurred without any coercion at all.

The Time In Between – Maria Duenas. My first book club bailout of the year. The story just didn’t grab me. At the meeting when other readers said that it really did pick up around THE 350 PAGE MARK, I felt justified in my decision. No time for that nonsense.

February

In the Unlikely Event – Judy Blume. For the other book club. This was a really good read. I have loved Judy’s young adult writing all my life (read Everything I Needed To Know About Being A Girl I Learned From Judy Blume and then we can talk about Forever making the rounds on the volleyball bus) but I wasn’t crazy about her previous adult novel. This was a really engaging story about a New Jersey community terrorized in the 1950s by a series of plane crashes.

The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick. Oh my word this book was terrible. Whoever took this idea and translated it into the Amazon series deserves some kind of award for making silk purses. I am addicted to the show (please come back) and wanted to read the foundation. Trust me, don’t bother. Just terrible and terribly racist to boot.

A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman. I don’t have to tell you because you read it too. This was an entertaining, warm and funny book with engaging characters. A light read that should make at least a couple of good movies.

Family Life – Akhil Sharma. Ok, David Sedaris, I read this on your recommendation but I found it way too depressing and demoralizing. I guess David has more tolerance for all the horrible things that can happen to an Indian immigrant to the U.S. I don’t even remember the specifics—I think I blocked them out.

March

The Little Red Chairs – Edna O’Brien. This was over the violence line for me, though I did finish it. A doctor shows up in a small Irish village and stirs up quiet life there. But then he turns out to be a notorious war criminal and bad things ensue. Well written, but read with caution if you’re squeamish about violence like me.

Dead Wake – The Last Crossing of the Lusitania – Erik Larson. Oh, Erik Larson, how the book clubs love you. As with many of his previous books, I would recommend about half of this one. He writes half a straight non-fiction on the subject at hand, which I found informative and interesting, and half a slight dramatization of the lives of some of the people involved, which I found a little too dramatic and clever.

April

The Portable Veblen – Elizabeth McKenzie. A winner! This was a quirky, well written novel with interesting characters and a great title. The main character, a young woman named Veblen, is named after an economist named Thorstein Veblen. Unsurprisingly, she had an unusual upbringing and we follow her attempts to negotiate grown-up life and love. And there’s a squirrel. Read it!

1984 – George Orwell. Another book club review of classics with modern implications? But see the earlier review of The Handmaid’s Tale—like that one, the plot of this dystopian story revolves around control and coercion, whereas I feel like the maniacal pursuit of mindless happiness and the rejection of knowledge and ideas at the center of Fahrenheit 451 speak more to our time.

May

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr. I enjoyed this novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths cross in Paris in World War II. The story is gripping and creatively told. This is a keeper.

Commonwealth – Ann Patchett. Every year’s list should include something by Ann Patchett. Read this family story for the memorable characters and beautiful prose. And then go back and reread her earlier novels.

The Sandcastle Girls – Chris Bohjalian. This is another one of those that I remember having read, but I can’t recall a thing about it. Even the synopsis on Amazon isn’t unsticking any memories. I guess it didn’t make much of an impression.

Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right – Arlie Hochschild. In yet another attempt by a self-described liberal writer to understand a red state point of view, Hochshild made an interesting choice to narrow her focus to a single issue, environmental threats, in southern Louisiana. As with many other narratives like this, she lays out the ways that the community seemingly votes against their own interests, and examines why this makes sense from their point of view. But ultimately I felt like she failed to push back against some of the nonsense, either in person with her interviewees or later in the book’s analysis. If you are a podcast listener, there’s an interesting discussion about the book in the September 22, 2017 episode of Trumpcast. Search for the title “Strangers in Their Own Land.”

June

Sisterland – Curtis Sittenfeld. I really enjoyed this novel about the complicated relationship between twin sisters with a mild form of ESP. It makes me think of last year’s The Girls from Corona del Mar which also dealt with women’s friendships over time. I see Curtis Sittenfeld has a number of other novels I look forward to checking out.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka. Two grown daughters deal with their widower father and his completely inappropriate new love interest. Some of the characters and situations were pretty over the top, but this novel had some funny and poignant moments. I particularly liked the final scene.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War – Robert Gordon. This was an interesting book that I used to substitute for the economics classes I didn’t take in college. I want to know more about how our present day economic situation fits into the bigger picture.

July

Five Came Back – A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War – Mark Harris. A fascinating account of arguably five of the most important and influential directors in Hollywood and how they joined the war effort in the early 1940s. Also a great documentary series on Netflix narrated by five contemporary movie directors. If you love films  of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, don’t miss either the book or the movie.

Nobody’s Fool – Richard Russo. I had been meaning to read this one for a long time (probably since the 1995 movie) and I was not disappointed. I love Russo’s writing, and he’s particularly funny and sharp in the story of small town life. The movie starring Paul Newman as Sully is also terrific.

August

Life After Life – Kate Atkinson. I’m not even sure how to describe this one. An English girl is born on a snowy night in 1910. You follow along for a while and then the timeline goes haywire. I don’t want to tell you anything else and spoil it. Just go read it. I LOVED this one.

The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen. In the midst of the anniversaries of the Vietnam war era, this novel was a really interesting portrait of a North Vietnamese undercover agent who flees to the U.S. after the fall of the South Vietnamese government where he’s been embedded. So complicated—I had to constantly remind myself who the characters were really working for. There’s some heavy sledding there, especially at the end.

A Wrinkle in Time – Madeline L’Engle. I actually didn’t read this one as a kid and I think I may have come to it too late, given how much other dystopian fantasy has come along since. The good news is that since I’m not so attached to the book, I can look forward to seeing the movie.

Brown Girl Dreaming – Jacqueline Woodson. A lovely narrative of a young girl’s experience told in verse. Very approachable poetry to share with the young people in your life.

September

Everybody’s Fool – Richard Russo. The sequel to Nobody’s Fool from above. A continuation of the stories of several of the characters. As good as the first book.

My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew – Abigail Pohgrebin. This has become a bit of a genre—I’m calling it a Calendar book. Sometimes I like them but sometimes they get too gimmicky. This one was ok; I liked the information about the holidays, but the author, an incredibly well connected young woman in Manahttan, got a little too name-droppy for my taste.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith. I had read this many years ago from the Pulitzer Prize list so I was happy to have it come up again as a book club choice. Such a slice of life from just after the turn of the 20^th century in Brooklyn.

The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah. Another story from WWII France. I didn’t think this was as good as All the Light We Cannot See—there were some plot points that didn’t completely make sense and the author made some of her characters really too good to be true.

The Four Tendencies – Gretchen Rubin. The latest from my friend Gretchen (I got to meet and talk with her at a meet-up in LA this fall). This book goes into her personality framework, which I find very interesting and useful. You can take the quiz at GretchenRubin.com if you want to find out more! (Gretchen and I are both Upholders.)

The First Love Story: Adam, Eve, and Us – Bruce Feiler. Continuing in his vein of Biblically related non-fiction, this book looks at the ways the story from Genesis weaves through our literature and culture. Feiler is always interesting.

Niagara Falls All Over Again – Elizabeth McCracken. I liked this novel about a Vaudeville turned Hollywood pair of comedy actors. I liked McCracken’s earlier novel The Giant’s House even better. Maybe start with that one and if you like it, give this one a try.

October

Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning – Claire Dederer, read by the author. I listened to this one on audio. She’s about my age, so there were certainly some cultural touchpoints we shared. It was a little uneven, but worth it over all.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell. A novel about a Dutchman in Japan in 1799. Great story with suspense and history. It reminded me a little of Shogun by James Clavell, which I loved with a passion when I was about 17. I suspect that this one is a lot better, but I’m not going to reread Shogun and instead leave my memories intact. I’d probably recommend you read this one and leave Clavell on the shelf.

March 1917: On the Brink of War and Revolution – Will Englund. During this one month there was a series of consequential events that led to both the entry of the United States into World War I and the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. I had to keep reminding myself that all this happened over the course of a single month.

A Girl Called Zippy – Haven Kimmel. I have been toting this book around for a very long time. I think Haven Kimmel may have been a personality on public radio in North Carolina when we lived there. The memoir was ok.

A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles. This seems to be another book club favorite and it’s easy to see why. A good story, well written, though I did object a little to the very end. But not so much that I’m not looking forward to reading his other book.

Hillbilly Elegy – J. D. Vance. Rats, I was so disappointed in this one. Partly my fault—I was expecting more of a sociological exploration, whereas this was more of a memoir. But partly because I thought it felt like one of my hated genre of Narcissistic Screw Up memoirs, though it was a variation “My murderously insane Appalachian relatives are so CUTE!” I found some of the reminiscences contradicted each other, I thought there was a lack of internal consistency, and the Kentucky-holler-Appalachian-ness of his relatives seems less convincing given that they had moved to Ohio as young teens. Also I’m just cranky about how popular it is.

Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath – Sigrid Undset. The first novel in a trilogy from Norway written in the 1920s about a Norwegian woman in medieval times. I had never heard of these books until someone on a podcast named them as her all-time favorite book series. I was not disappointed. Such an interesting portrait of life in this period. These books are so popular in Norway that people go on Kristin Lavransdatter tours around the settings.

November

The Dolls’ House – Rumer Godden. Oh, dear, this was a children’s novel by one of my favorite authors recommended by my new best friend Gretchen Rubin, and they really let me down! I’m so glad I didn’t read this book about the lives of a group of dolls belonging to a little English girl when I was a child—one of the dolls gets burned up in a fire! I would have been completely traumatized. But don’t hold it against either Rumer or Gretchen. Go read my favorite Godden, The Greengage Summer, instead.

Happier at Home – Gretchen Rubin. I let Gretchen make it up to me with one of her Calendar books in which she tries different research-based strategies to improve happiness in her home life, with each month focused on a particular area of life.

Department of Speculation – Jenny Offill. A short novel about a marriage. Spare and beautifully written.

The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes. Another short novel, this time about a man remembering a love triangle from his past and the ways these memories bleed forward into the future. It seems that there is a movie coming out that looks really good too.

An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy – Marc Levinson. More econ curriculum. The U.S. experienced a huge and anomalous rate of economic growth between the end of WWII and the 1970s. We’ve come to view this anomaly as “normal” and we’re always talking about how to return to it, which shapes a lot of our political discourse. Interesting examination of the circumstances that led us here.

No One Can Pronounce My Name – Rakesh Satyal. This novel followed the lives of several Indian immigrants in their integration into American society. It was interesting to see how the stories came to intersect, but overall this was just ok.

December

Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wife – Sigrid Undset. Part 2 of the trilogy. See above.

The Burgess Boys – Elizabeth Strout. Another just ok. Adult siblings with an misunderstood family tragedy in their past come together over a crisis in the next generation. The characters were all pretty unlikable and I still don’t understand why the author went with The Burgess BOYS when it seems to be equally about their sister. I guess The Burgess SIBLINGS just doesn’t have the same ring.

Happy reading in 2018!