Best books read in 2017
I have a list of 125 books that I read last year. Here are the ones I most enjoyed, in order of reading. I've added some brief notes of what I remember about them, but my memories may not be entirely accurate. I have included some novellas, but not short stories.
SFF
M R Carey - Fellside - a very grim tale of life in a women's prison, but worth it for the ending.
Emma Newman - Between Two Thorns (and sequels) - hugely engaging exploration of fairy society which has stagnated in the Victorian era, while the human world has advanced to the modern day.
Naomi Novik - League of Dragons - a satisfying conclusion to the series
Claire Humphrey - Spells of Blood and Kin - Russian magic in Toronto. I'm really hoping she is writing something else, but so far this is the only book of hers that I've been able to find.
Max Gladstone - Three Parts Dead (and sequels) - Um, these are just difficult to describe briefly. I suggest downloading a sample from Amazon.
Jo Walton -The Just City (and sequels) - The goddess Athena decides to set up Plato's republic in the past, on an uninhabited volcanic island. Things do not go according to plan.
Gloria Naylor - Mama Day - Witchcraft in Georgia. Reminded me a lot of Nalo Hopkinson.
Kij Johnson - The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe - Feminist Lovecraftiana, what's not to like?
Foz Meadows - An Accident of Stars (and sequel) - Worldwalking with insurrections, polygamy and dragons.
Charlie Jane Anders - All the Birds in the Sky - Magic and computing twine around each other like strands of DNA
T Kingfisher - Raven and Reindeer - Pen name of Ursula Vernon. A delightful and inventive re-telling of the Snow Queen.
Nicole Kornher-Stace - Archvist Wasp - Mythic storytelling. Amazon says: A postapocalyptic ghosthunter escapes her dire fate by joining the ghost of a supersoldier on his quest to the underworld.
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric's Demon and sequels, set in the world of the Curse of Chalion, where religion is a real force. Penric is a young man possessed of a demon. The first three are quite light in tone, the last two a lot darker and (I think) more interesting.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books - I started doing a re-read, but have got stuck on Mirror Dance, where it all gets a lot more serious.
Alan Garner - The Owl Service - re-read in advance of a visit to the Blackden Trust, who were having an Owl Service day. Story set in a Welsh village in which the spirit of Blodeuedd periodically takes over a young girl to reenact the tragedy of her marriage to Llew Llaw Gyffes. Re-reading it again I was astonished by the density of the narrative, and also the subtle commentary on class and society in the 1960s.
Alan Garner - Strandloper - Spurred on by re-reading The Owl Service I finally made it through this book. It's dense and mystical, and uses both 17th Century nautical and Australian Aboriginal vocabulary. Having read Patrick O'Brian and using the internet I managed to make sense of the former, but it turns out that the Aboriginal language Garner uses was rendered extinct by the massacre of the tribe that he describes in the book. And no, Garner doesn't approve of glossaries.
Martha Wells - the Murderbot Diaries - Murderbot is a SecUnit, a part human, part machine construct that has hacked its own governor module following its accidental massacre of numerous humans, and is trying to come to terms with this by watching the entertainment feeds. Reminiscent of Aliens, with a lot of sardonic humour.
Lila Bowen - Wake of Vultures - Fantasy western set in 19th Century Durango (which is actually Texas, I think). Our hero is born female, but adopts a male persona to become a horse wrangler. He is is cursed with a destiny to defeat the Cannibal Owl, a monster who has been stealing and eating babies. Thoroughly entertaining.
Other fiction
Curtis Sittenfield - Eligible! - modern reworking of Pride and Prejudice, set in middle class America
Elizabeth Wein - Rose under Fire - an American female aviator ends up in Ravensbruck. The author's storytelling genius drags you through an otherwise unbearable narrative.
Patricia Finney - Do we not bleed - New mystery series set in Elizabethan England. Our hero is a female smallpox survivor who is managing to make a living as a lawyer, disguised as her own brother. Shakespeare is coaching her on how to present herself as a man. This led me to re-read the Robert Carey series, of which she has written a number of new ones (as P F Chisholm) while I wasn't watching.
Chris Brookmyre - Black Widow - thriller told from the point of view of a surgeon who may (or may not) have killed her husband
Margaret Atwood - Hagseed - Retelling of the Tempest, set in a men's prison
Jane Harper - The Dry - Australian murder mystery, set in a small farming community during a drought
Anya Ulinich - Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel - graphic novel about a 2nd generation Jewish Russian immigrant woman
Non-Fiction
Christiane Ritter - A woman in the Polar Night - In many ways an odd story of a woman in the 1930s who leaves her children with relatives and spends a year in a hut with her trapper husband, who is himself absent for weeks at a time.
Tim Parks - Italian Ways - The Italian railway system. Much more entertaining than it sounds, and quite revelatory about the Italians.
Edmund Gordon - The Invention of Angela Carter - fascinating biography, relating her life directly to her novels. It made me want to re-read them all.
Paul Cartledge - The Greeks; A portrait of Self and Others - Not sure if this is actually a structuralist analysis. The author demonstrates that the Ancient Greeks did in fact think in a series of binary oppositions.
Michael Scott - Delphi - A description of the significance of Delphi in the Ancient Greek world. It explains the Amphictyonic League!
Rowan Williams - The Tragic Imagination - Brief but dense exploration of the whole of Tragedy, ancient and modern. Has some interesting things to say about Sarah Kane (sheds some light on the Phedres we saw at the Barbican in 2016)
John Stubbs - Donne The Reformed Soul - Fascinating biography, and fitted in with my Patricia Finney reading
Nicholas Hytner - Balancing Acts - brief and lucid description of Hytner's tenure as director of the National Theatre
Edith Hall - Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun - fascinating and very readable analysis of the context of Attic drama. I found out a lot of stuff that I never picked up in my degree.
SFF
M R Carey - Fellside - a very grim tale of life in a women's prison, but worth it for the ending.
Emma Newman - Between Two Thorns (and sequels) - hugely engaging exploration of fairy society which has stagnated in the Victorian era, while the human world has advanced to the modern day.
Naomi Novik - League of Dragons - a satisfying conclusion to the series
Claire Humphrey - Spells of Blood and Kin - Russian magic in Toronto. I'm really hoping she is writing something else, but so far this is the only book of hers that I've been able to find.
Max Gladstone - Three Parts Dead (and sequels) - Um, these are just difficult to describe briefly. I suggest downloading a sample from Amazon.
Jo Walton -The Just City (and sequels) - The goddess Athena decides to set up Plato's republic in the past, on an uninhabited volcanic island. Things do not go according to plan.
Gloria Naylor - Mama Day - Witchcraft in Georgia. Reminded me a lot of Nalo Hopkinson.
Kij Johnson - The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe - Feminist Lovecraftiana, what's not to like?
Foz Meadows - An Accident of Stars (and sequel) - Worldwalking with insurrections, polygamy and dragons.
Charlie Jane Anders - All the Birds in the Sky - Magic and computing twine around each other like strands of DNA
T Kingfisher - Raven and Reindeer - Pen name of Ursula Vernon. A delightful and inventive re-telling of the Snow Queen.
Nicole Kornher-Stace - Archvist Wasp - Mythic storytelling. Amazon says: A postapocalyptic ghosthunter escapes her dire fate by joining the ghost of a supersoldier on his quest to the underworld.
Lois McMaster Bujold - Penric's Demon and sequels, set in the world of the Curse of Chalion, where religion is a real force. Penric is a young man possessed of a demon. The first three are quite light in tone, the last two a lot darker and (I think) more interesting.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books - I started doing a re-read, but have got stuck on Mirror Dance, where it all gets a lot more serious.
Alan Garner - The Owl Service - re-read in advance of a visit to the Blackden Trust, who were having an Owl Service day. Story set in a Welsh village in which the spirit of Blodeuedd periodically takes over a young girl to reenact the tragedy of her marriage to Llew Llaw Gyffes. Re-reading it again I was astonished by the density of the narrative, and also the subtle commentary on class and society in the 1960s.
Alan Garner - Strandloper - Spurred on by re-reading The Owl Service I finally made it through this book. It's dense and mystical, and uses both 17th Century nautical and Australian Aboriginal vocabulary. Having read Patrick O'Brian and using the internet I managed to make sense of the former, but it turns out that the Aboriginal language Garner uses was rendered extinct by the massacre of the tribe that he describes in the book. And no, Garner doesn't approve of glossaries.
Martha Wells - the Murderbot Diaries - Murderbot is a SecUnit, a part human, part machine construct that has hacked its own governor module following its accidental massacre of numerous humans, and is trying to come to terms with this by watching the entertainment feeds. Reminiscent of Aliens, with a lot of sardonic humour.
Lila Bowen - Wake of Vultures - Fantasy western set in 19th Century Durango (which is actually Texas, I think). Our hero is born female, but adopts a male persona to become a horse wrangler. He is is cursed with a destiny to defeat the Cannibal Owl, a monster who has been stealing and eating babies. Thoroughly entertaining.
Other fiction
Curtis Sittenfield - Eligible! - modern reworking of Pride and Prejudice, set in middle class America
Elizabeth Wein - Rose under Fire - an American female aviator ends up in Ravensbruck. The author's storytelling genius drags you through an otherwise unbearable narrative.
Patricia Finney - Do we not bleed - New mystery series set in Elizabethan England. Our hero is a female smallpox survivor who is managing to make a living as a lawyer, disguised as her own brother. Shakespeare is coaching her on how to present herself as a man. This led me to re-read the Robert Carey series, of which she has written a number of new ones (as P F Chisholm) while I wasn't watching.
Chris Brookmyre - Black Widow - thriller told from the point of view of a surgeon who may (or may not) have killed her husband
Margaret Atwood - Hagseed - Retelling of the Tempest, set in a men's prison
Jane Harper - The Dry - Australian murder mystery, set in a small farming community during a drought
Anya Ulinich - Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel - graphic novel about a 2nd generation Jewish Russian immigrant woman
Non-Fiction
Christiane Ritter - A woman in the Polar Night - In many ways an odd story of a woman in the 1930s who leaves her children with relatives and spends a year in a hut with her trapper husband, who is himself absent for weeks at a time.
Tim Parks - Italian Ways - The Italian railway system. Much more entertaining than it sounds, and quite revelatory about the Italians.
Edmund Gordon - The Invention of Angela Carter - fascinating biography, relating her life directly to her novels. It made me want to re-read them all.
Paul Cartledge - The Greeks; A portrait of Self and Others - Not sure if this is actually a structuralist analysis. The author demonstrates that the Ancient Greeks did in fact think in a series of binary oppositions.
Michael Scott - Delphi - A description of the significance of Delphi in the Ancient Greek world. It explains the Amphictyonic League!
Rowan Williams - The Tragic Imagination - Brief but dense exploration of the whole of Tragedy, ancient and modern. Has some interesting things to say about Sarah Kane (sheds some light on the Phedres we saw at the Barbican in 2016)
John Stubbs - Donne The Reformed Soul - Fascinating biography, and fitted in with my Patricia Finney reading
Nicholas Hytner - Balancing Acts - brief and lucid description of Hytner's tenure as director of the National Theatre
Edith Hall - Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun - fascinating and very readable analysis of the context of Attic drama. I found out a lot of stuff that I never picked up in my degree.