2017 Reading in Review

It's hard to believe that 2017 is ending tonight!  [This has been a wonderful year personally, but it has also been a most difficult year for our country and I am very glad to see it end. I'm hopeful that much will change for the good in 2018.  I know that I plan to work hard at making that happen.] Okay, so politics aside, back to reading!  It's been a great year for reading for me, although my numbers appear somewhat low.  I am blaming that on the fact that I read four of the Outlander series books this past fall and each one of them is over one thousand pages.  So, just to put it out there, I think that they should each count as two books read! But that's not how this works.

My stats? I read forty-five books this year, with seven of them being non-fiction.  That in itself must be a record for me! So, as I do each year, I will begin with my favorite books and break it down to number one.  This year I will also share my favorite non-fiction separately.

I begin with my favorite sixteen books:

Freeman-Leonard Pitts, Jr.
The Golden Age-Joan London
Soul Catcher-Michael White
Mississippi Blood-Greg Isles
Practical Magic-Alice Hoffman
The Women in the Castle-Jessica Shattuck
Anything Is Possible-Elizabeth Strout
Memory-Philipe Grimbert
Lilac Girls-Martha Hall Kelly
Exit West-Mohsin Hamid
Redemption Road-John Hart
Days Without End-Sebastian Barry
Evicted-Matthew Desmond
Outlander series-Diana Gabaldon (this stands for four books)
New of the World-Paulette Jiles
The Alice Network-Kate Quinn

Two of these books are mysteries, and one is non-fiction. Authors are equally divided as eight men and eight women.

To break the list down further, my top favorite eight books were:

 Practical Magic-Alice Hoffman
The Women in the Castle-Jessica Shattuck

Anything Is Possible-Elizabeth Strout

Memory-Philipe Grimbert

Lilac Girls-Martha Hall Kelly

Redemption Road-John Hart

Days Without End-Sebastian Barry

New of the World-Paulette Jiles

It's interesting that Elizabeth Strout's book My Name Is Lucy Barton was on my list last year. Good author!

And now it gets harder-the top four:

Anything Is Possible-Elizabeth Strout

Memory-Philipe Grimbert

Days Without End-Sebastian Barry

New of the World-Paulette Jiles

I have to say that now it is between Memory and Days Without End.

And I have to go with Memory by Philipe Grimbert. It's not a new book, but something about this story touches me each time I read it. And here's the crazy thing...I just looked at last year's top book and it was Memory. So perhaps it should not be on the list. So by default, I guess Days Without End wins! Maybe I won't read Memory next year, so I don't have this issue!

My two favorite non-fiction books that I read this year were Evicted and Just Mercy.  I highly recommend them.

So there you have it.  I hope this list of favorite books helps with your reading.  I always love to see what books are rated highly by other readers.  I hope you do, also!