2017: A Year in Books

[*DISCLAIMER: If you only read one book this year, if you haven’t read a book since high school English class, if you read somewhere between 1 and 1,000 books this year….it’s all good. I read because I love it but we can certainly be friends if you don’t love it. I’m always happy to share how I make time for it (in short, you do what you love), or to discuss books, or to make recommendations, but please never ever feel the need to apologize to me if you don’t like reading! ]

After thinking about Goodreads for several years, I decided to join at the end of 2016 and to set a reading goal for myself for 2017. In the season of life I am in, life with small children, it felt so satisfying to set a quantifiable goal and reach it. Many things in parenting happen in such tiny iterations, or are not actually measureable, and it felt really healthy for me to be able to track something and work for it in the midst of a pretty busy and chaotic year.

I decided to aim for 50,000 pages, a number that I figured out required me to finish a book every couple of days and would prevent me from being “penalized” by reading longer books. I spent time picking out what to read based on a few bloggers/folks on IG that I trust and utilized the library hold system 90% of the time.  I finished up at 53, 600 pages and 151 books.

On the whole, reading towards a goal number was awesome for the reasons listed above. Goodreads was a fun way to track stats and it was totally satisfying to record each book when I finished. The only negatives I found were that I finished a handful of books I wouldn’t have otherwise, just to get the pages in, and that I tended to prioritize modern day publications because they are easier to read. I also re-read a few series–Narnia, Anne, some HPs– as I do every year. I’ve already decided that my 2018 goal will be different–not numbers-oriented–and plan to do a post about that soon.

So, without further ado…

My favorite authors this year (I read multiple books by all of them):

Chris Cleave, Beatriz Williams, Maggie O’Farrell, L.M. Montgomery, Monica Wood, Paulette Jiles, Gloria Furman (Christian living) and Tana French (mysteries).

 

My favorite books this year:

Fiction (in the order I read them in):

Lonesome Dove: my first Western! Evocative and interesting, there is definitely a reason this one is a classic.

Mischling. A haunting story of Auschwitz that is hard to read but also just a brilliant story of the human condition (the good and the bad).

Everyone Brave is Forgiven. One of several books by Chris Cleave that I loved, a WWII story about some smaller aspects of the war that made it particularly compelling.

Bear Town. I don’t recommend this one across the board (*trigger warnings*) and it took me about 100 pages to get into it but it is beautifully done and tells such a good story.

Pachinko. Did you know about the complex modern history of Korea and Japan? Nope, me neither. I have found myself thinking about this one a lot since the night I stayed up late to finish it.

 

Favorite reread: The Summer Before the War. A small town in England at the start of World War One. Just an incredible story that drew me in.

[Honorable mention: Emily of New Moon series; Dreamland Burning; The Madonnas of Leningrad; Centennial; The Siege].

 

Non-Fiction: The Grace Effect, In the Land of Blue Burqas, Knowing God, Just Mercy and and Treasuring Christ/Missional Motherhood (rifs on the same theme and both are excellent). All of these made me understand grace, faith and mercy more deeply, as well as grieve the brokenness of the world.

[Honorable mention: Divided by Faith; The Year of Living Danishly; When Breath Becomes Air–all fantastic reads that made me think a lot about how I live/the meaning of life/the structures of society and my life, good and bad.]

The biggest stinkers of the year:

–Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (read this because my students love Rick Riordan but nope, not for anyone over the age of 13); The Setting of the Pearl (how to take the exciting and interesting history of Vienna during WWII and make it as boring as watching paint dry), Robinson Crusoe (yikes, have to teach this one in January), The Story Teller (Jodi Picoult is hit or miss for me), One Thousand White Women (ironically, based on substance of the book, seems to have been written by a man who has never spoken to a woman before) , 11/22/63 (not a Stephen King fan I guess), Ben Hur (a blond haired, blue eyed Jesus?! in which every. single. thing. is written about in excruciating detail).