Top 10 Books I Meant to Read in 2017

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and Bookish, which is shutting down so today is the last Top Ten Tuesday. They'll continue on That Artsy Reader Girl, but I don't know yet if I'll be following it there.

At any rate, this week's topic is the top 10 books we meant to read in 2017 and totally plan to get to in 2018! Here are mine:

1. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
It was on my TBR Pile Challenge last year, so I really should have read it. But now it's on my challenge list for this year too, so if I manage not to read it again I'm going to completely give up on ever doing so.

2. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
I was first attracted by the cover, but everyone I know who has read it has loved it.

3. From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Her first book, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, was fantastic and I'm sure this one is too.

4. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
I've heard lots of great things about this book!

5. The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley
At some point last year I bought the audiobook from Audible and then forgot about it until about a week ago.

6. Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I've read all of her other books and thought I'd read this one over the summer and now I'm surprised to find that I still haven't read it.

7. Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
This looks fascinating and I told a coworker about it, who immediately read it and really liked it.

8. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
I realize this wasn't even published until late November, but I was all over it the moment I heard about it and really thought I'd read it right away.

9. Paradox Bound by Peter Clines
His other two books were great, so I thought I'd snatch this one up the moment it got published, but here I am months later, still having not read it.

10. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
I have no excuse with this one. I received a galley back in the early spring, thought it looked good, and then decided to give it away because I didn't think I'd get to it. I've only heard good things about it since then! I even bought it for a friend for Christmas, but somehow have still managed not to read it myself.

Have you read any of these? Which should I make my priority?

Top 10 Books I'm Looking Forward To in 2018

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. (But not for long! The site is shutting down in January.) This week is all about 2018 books. I've barely begun looking at what's coming out in 2018, but there are a few I've been anticipating and I just checked out some lists in order to compose this post and now I have a TON more. Here are the top 10 books I'm excited about, by month:

1. Red Clocks by Leni Zumas (January)
A feminist dystopia in which women have lost all their reproductive rights. Let's hope it's not a harbinger of what's actually to come in 2018.

2. Tempest by Beverly Jenkins (January)
Third in her Old West series, I'm particularly excited about this one because it's about a character from the last book becoming a mail order bride! And I hear it begins with her shooting her new husband. Excellent!

3. So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (January)
I follow Ijeoma Oluo on Twitter and I'm always interested in what she has to say.

4. A Princess in Theory by Alissa Cole (February)
In this contemporary romance by the author of An Extraordinary Union, a young woman receives an email from a Nigerian prince saying that he is supposed to marry her. Of course, she ignores it because it's just a scam BUT IT'S NOT. (Fun fact: that amazing dress on the cover is by Adorned by Nicole, from where Alyssa Cole purchases lots of her conference dresses.)

5. I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (February)
This memoir about a woman's obsession with unsolved crimes is very intriguing! I'm hoping it will be a little like The Fact of a Body.

6. The Radical Element (A Tyranny of Petticoats #2), edited by Jessica Spotswood (March)
"An anthology of revolution and resistance"? Yes, please! (Spotswood is also co-editor of Toil & Trouble: 16 Tales of Women and Witchcraft, which will be out in August, and which I'm also looking forward to.)

7. The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Mallory Ortberg (March)
She wrote great posts at The Toast. Does she also have a talent for short stories? There's only one way to find out.

8. All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson (April)
I have no idea what this is even about, but it doesn't matter. Peter Swanson!!!

9. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave by Zora Neale Hurston (May)
A previously unreleased true story of the last known survivor of the slave trade. Huston interviewed him in Alabama in 1931 and I don't know why we're only getting it now, but it's absolutely going on my To Read list for 2018.

10. The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls by Jessica Spotswood (June)
Her books are all amazing!

After combing through some lists of forthcoming books, it was hard to keep it just to 10. These are the ones I'm most likely to read, I think.

Are there any books coming out in 2018 that you're excited about?

Top Ten Favorite Books of 2017

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. Posting a list of my favorite books of the year before the year is over makes me anxious but I'm powering through it.

I made this list by finding the books I rated 5 stars on Goodreads (minus the 2 re-reads), then sifting through my many, many 4-star books to choose the ones I like most at this very moment. The Because I am fickle. This always makes me second-guess my book ratings. Like, why didn't I give 5 stars to Young Jane Young or Miss Jane or The Power when I keep recommending them to everyone I ever talk to? My ways are a mystery even to me.

Without further ado, I present my top 10 favorite books of the year. The first half are my 5-star reviews, followed by the top 4-star, but within that they're in no particular order. All links go to my reviews.

1. The Wanderers by Meg Howrey

2. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

3. The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

4. Touch by Courtney Maum

5. Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

6. Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

7. The Power by Naomi Alderman

8. Miss Jane by Brad Watson

9. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

10. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Interesting things about this list: 9 of them are written by women; 7 were published in 2017. It looks like 28 of the 95 books I've read this year were published this year, which I think is more newly-published books than usual.

I'd say it was a pretty good reading year!

What are the best books you read this year?

Top Ten Bookish Settings I'd Love To Visit

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. Today we're thinking about book settings we'd love to visit - how fun!

1. Hogwarts
Obviously.

2. Regency England
But I wouldn't want to live there.

3. West Egg, 1920s
I like a good party, and 20s fashion.

4. 19th century Russia
I've been to Russia, but man it's different now!

5. Lyra's Oxford
I just want a daemon, to be honest.

6. The small English villages where Helen Simonson's books take place.
They're so cozy and filled with people I'd love to spend time with.

7. Manningsport, NY
From the Kristin Higgins Blue Heron series, and I don't just want to visit, I want to live there.

8. The cold places: Alaska, Antarctica, etc
I know that's more than one place, but I can't remember which books take place in which settings, I just like the cold climates. Again, I wouldn't want to actually live there.

9. The far future world of The Power where women are in charge
I know it's still oppressive, but as a woman it would be a refreshing change

10. The fictional version of pioneer America

Look, I know that the real Ingalls family weren't the paragon of virtue that Wilder tried to convince us they were, and that they were among those who pushed indigenous people off their land. So I consider her idealistic world a fictional one, and I would like to visit it.

This was hard, because so many of the settings I read about - especially the ones that play such an important part in a story - tend to be either dystopias or set in wartime, and those are places I definitely don't want to ever go to.

What bookish places would you like to visit?

Top Ten Books On My Winter TBR

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. This week is all about our winter TBR lists. And when you've greatly restricted your use of a TBR list as I have, there's nothing more fun than permission to make one.

Here are the books I'm most looking forward to reading this winter:

1. The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

2. A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara

3. Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson

4. The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty

5. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

6. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

7. Longbourn by Jo Baker

8. Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor 

9. In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

10. The Burning Girl by Claire Messud

Some of these are on my 2018 TBR Pile Challenge list which I'll be posting sometime soon, once it's finalized. (Roof Beam Reader is hosting again, so I don't need to do it on my own this year!) I'm hoping to start Sense and Sensibility sometime very soon because I have tickets to see a stage adaptation of it the weekend just before Christmas. My book group at work is reading Allegedly, I think for January. Others are just books I've been wanting to read, some of which just came out recently.

What are your winter reading plans?

Ten Characters Who Would Make Great Leaders

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. Today's topic is 10 characters who would make great leaders.

I think about leadership a lot, and the ways things could be better if, oh, I don't know, someone different had won the U.S. presidential election last year? Or if, in general, women ran the world. Because honestly, I am running out of patience with men and their stupidity and the sexism that so permeates our culture. So here's my list of characters from books who should be running pretty much everything and yes they are all women.

1. Frankie Landau-Banks from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
She's very good at planning, scheming, and plotting, all in secret while maintaining a relationship with the person in charge of the organizing she is undermining. Brilliant.

2. & 3.  Vivian Carter and Lucy Hernandez from Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
Viv started Moxie, the zine encouraging girls to fight back misogyny in their school. Lucy was part of the catalyst for Viv to start it and one of her strongest supporters. They worked really well together.

4. Jane Young from Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin
A strong capable women who bounces back from being slut-shamed, à la Monica Lewinsky.

5. Elle Burns from An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole
She's intuitive, resourceful, with good judgment, a photographic memory and a passion for justice. Any black woman who do something as risky as going undercover as a slave during the Civil War is clearly not afraid of anything.

6. Willowdean Dickson from Dumplin' by Julie Murphy
A self-confident fat girl who assumes she has as much chance of winning a beauty pageant as anyone else is exactly the sort of role model teenage girls need. In fact, she did inspire many other girls who considered themselves misfits to also enter the pageant. She is thoughtful, introspective, self-assured, and very determined.

7. Ifemelu from Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
As a Nigerian who has also spent years living in America, her perspective on race in America is invaluable. It also helps that she's a fantastic writer and communicator, as we learned from her blog Raceteenth.

8. Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I mean, she volunteered as tribute.

9. Binti from Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Here is a woman who left her planet to attend an elite university, the first of her people to do so. On the way there, she was faced with an incredibly dangerous enemy. She's very brave, but maybe more importantly, she's not afraid to be different, nor is she afraid to those who are different from her. Would make an excellent diplomat.

10. Jin Ling from The Walled City by Ryan Graudin 
Jin disguised herself as a boy to survive, determined to get her sister out of the house of prostitution where she was being held captive, whatever the cost. Really anyone who survives and even thrives in a dystopian setting while remaining a good person is someone who should be in charge of things.

And a shoutout to the entire cast of Beauty Queens by Libba Bray. A group of beauty queen contestants crash on an island and rather than killing each other to survive, they join forces against a common enemy while encouraging each other to be their true selves.

You know, there are so many great female characters who would be fantastic leaders. Just like there are many women in real life who should be in charge.

Top Ten Unique Book Titles

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. This week is all about unique book titles, which is super fun! A lot of book titles are rather samey, using words that aren't very memorable, not to mention trends like all the books with "girl" in the title, which just leads to confusing them all wiht each other. But some really knock it out of the park with creativity. I'm sure there are some great titles out there I'm not remembering now and I'll kick myself later when I think of them, but here are a few that came to mind right away.

1. The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage
I can't seem to make a book list of any sort without this ending up on it.

2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
A classic. But I love it. It's a whole sentence and it's kind of creepy even when you don't know much about the story.

3. We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Carlisle
This is a new memoir and I'm planning to read it, based almost entirely on the title.

4. Nefarious Twit by Tony McMillen
I haven't read this yet, but I think I'd like it. I keep coming across it at the library where I work, because it's in both our regular collection and our local author collection. It's a very satisfying title to say.

5. Normal People Don't Live Like This by Dylan Landis
A great book of short stories that I read based on the title alone. It's also a refrain that goes through my head a lot when I look around at the condition of my house.

6. I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
A book of essays that didn't really live up to the title, but was still ok enough. I really like cake.

7. The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders
A book of essays by Saunders back before he got really well-known with Tenth of December. It's very good!

8. When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
Slightly magical British coming-of-age novel that I kept hearing about on The Readers podcast, and remembered because the title really stands out.

9. Your House Is On Fire, Your Children All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye
Pretty ominous, and it was totally appropriate to the story. A bizarre little book. Great title and a creepy cover.

10. Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Those aren't two words you'd generally think to put together if you're not Andrew Smith, and most of us aren't.

I didn't even get into all the punny romance titles, which I totally love, but I guess they aren't unique since so many of them do employ puns. I can think of some more that are unusual, but in ways that I find annoying because they're just too long or too precious-sounding. Are there any great ones that I forgot?

Ten Books That Feature Black Female Characters

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is Ten Books That Feature _____ Characters and I decided on black women. All of these books feature black women as main characters and the authors are also black women.

1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
This is one of the best books of 2017. Please read it. The novel was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and it does a great job of telling one story about how police brutality affects lives, and all the ways that it's not a clear-cut issue. The characters are incredibly well crafted, both teens and adults. Amazingly, it's a debut novel.

2. The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
Also a teen novel, this one focuses on immigration issues. There's also a romance. If you like it, you should check out her other novel Everything, Everything which I also really enjoyed.

3. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Vividly detailed historical novel that takes place in 1960s Nigeria. I've read all of Adichie's books, but this one remains my favorite. I also highly recommend Americanah.

4. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
I don't know why these books all have "sun" in the title. This play about a black family in the 1950s who are trying to better their lives. Even though it's a play, it somehow felt richly detailed and I could picture everything as it was happening. Beneatha is a smart, ambitious young woman who wants to become a doctor, and she tries to expand her horizons by trying out different things, which her mother characterizes as "flitting around" by I see more as experimentation and trying to figure out who she is and what she wants to do.

5. An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
In this harrowing story, a woman named Mireille is kidnapped while visiting her parents in Haiti. The story is graphic and real, and we get both her experiences during her captivity and the aftermath and recovery. Roxane Gay is one of the most talented writers out there, and I'm already behind on reading her books.

6. An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole
Ok, totally different. This is a romance about a free black women who goes undercover as a spy during the Civil War. Elle Burns is incredibly smart (she has a photographic memory) but she's also very resourceful and intuitive, and stronger and more mature than most romance heroines.

7. Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins
Another romance! This is the first in a series which takes place in the Old West, so it's after the Civil War but still not a super-friendly time for young black women to be setting out on their own like Eddy Carmichael has done. But I loved how she settled in a new town and started a new life there (which is totally my book catnip for some reason.) I also enjoyed the second in the series, Breathless.

Now I'm going back in time a bit because there are some classics I want to include even though I read them way back before I even considered having a blog.

8. Push by Sapphire
This is the book that the movie Precious is based on. It's very hard to read because of the graphic violence, but that's what people sometimes have to endure, like this teenage girl. It stuck with me for a very long time, and then all those wounds reopened when I saw the movie.

9. The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
A classic in urban fiction, I read this in my early 20s I think, and was so struck by it because everything about this story was so incredibly different from anything I had experienced. The main character, Winter, grows up in the inner city and her dad is a drug kingpin. She gets very caught up in the glitz and glamour and becomes very materialistic, but I think later on she figures out that maybe it's not all worth it. I remember being rather impressed by how driven and focused Winter was in going after what she wanted.

10. Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
There was a period in my 20s when I read everything I could get my hands on by Alice Walker and Toni Morrison and out of all those books, this is the one that sticks with me. It's about a woman caught between African and American culture who ends up being genitally mutilated because that's what women in her tribe do. I felt so terrible for her and so traumatized by what she put herself through.

Top Ten Books On My Fall TBR List

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is the top books we're looking forward to reading this fall.

I only recently began adding books to my To Read shelf on Goodreads again, and I've been exercising a lot of restraint so it's not (yet) out of control as it used to be. Of course in some cases I've just put the books on hold at the library and then frozen the hold, which is basically just adding another list altogether. At any rate, I have grand plans to fly through my To Read list(s) before the end of the year. I still have some things to read for the Community Read committee and my personal reading challenge, but still. I have more than 3 months to do all of this. No problem, right?

Here's what I'm most looking forward to reading this fall:

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Ok, this might put a cramp in my plans to "fly" through my list. This isn't even technically on my list, but I recently made plans with some friends to read it together beginning in October. I just bought my own copy and I really love the cover. I'm excited!

2. Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart
I have a library copy and plan to start it later this week. I adore E. Lockhart and the reviews for this new novel have been pretty great.

3. Hunger by Roxane Gay
She's just an incredibly talented writer, and I've heard from two different friends that this book is amazing. Also, I've already bought a ticket to see her speak in March!

4. Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
New John Green! I don't even know what it's about! It doesn't matter!

5. Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta
A new book by Tom Perrotta is always cause for celebration. And reading.

6. The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
Initially I wasn't thinking I'd necessarily read this, but it's a pretty short book with a compelling premise, and I'm still rather haunted by the last Claire Messud book I read.

7. Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too by Jomny Sun
I don't even remember where I heard about this. It's a graphic novel about a lonely alien sent to observe Earth, and I just now discovered that it's based on the author's Twitter account. Anyhow, it looks so adorable I might die of cute overload.

8. What Happened by Hillary Clinton
At this point I just want to read it because everyone right now is so indignant about the fact that she had the audacity to write it, and honestly is there anything she can do that people won't be upset about?

9. Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
Speaking of unruly women and books that have gotten flak for stupid reasons...

10. We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Carlisle
I think I mostly added this to my list because it's my favorite book title that I've seen in a while. But it also sounded pretty good from the reviews.

There are so many exciting books that didn't even make this list, but these are the ones that I'm the most urgently interested in right now. Which, obviously, could change at any moment.

What are you most looking forward to reading this fall?

Top ten books I read the first year I had my blog

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. I feel like I haven't done one of these in a while! They were on hiatus for a bit, and I've just been very busy/tired/lazy and sometimes the topics haven't appealed to me. This week's topic is a throwback freebie. One of the ideas was Ten Books I Loved During the First Year I Started My Blog. I really like that idea!

These are all books I read in 2007 and loved, in the order that I read them.

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

2. The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler

3. The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

4. Sunshine by Robin McKinley

5. Firmin by Sam Savage

6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

7. The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken

8. A Secret History by Donna Tartt

9. Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett

10. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Fun fact: when I started this blog it was primarily going to be about knitting and librarianship. I hardly posted about books at all! A couple of these were mentioned in passing in posts on other topics, but only one had a full post devoted to it.

The complete list of books I read in 2007 is here. (Thank goodness I was doing that from the very beginning!) What an amazing reading year that was! It was HARD to narrow down this list. There were so many other great books by some of my favorite authors, like Tom Perrotta and Nick Hornby. Wow. The books on the list are not just books I loved, but ones that I still consider favorites, and in most cases really want to read again.

That was a fun trip down memory lane!

Ten Book Recommendations For....

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is "Ten book recommendations for...." and I'm doing mine for people who want uplifting books that are "smart" or "not fluff." We've had some patrons in the library with this request and it's very difficult! Literary fiction tends to be pretty heavy duty. The thing about books is that there has to be some elements of conflict or risk or something to keep one's interest and be worked out, and the ones that tend to be more light-hearted are things like romance, which is absolutely not what these patrons want. Do you know how hard it is to find smart books without tragedy? It's hard! But I've put together a list with some contenders. You'll notice that most (or all?) of them are pretty reliant on humor, which is the only way I know to address this problem.

1. Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

This is my go-to recommendation for this type of request. Or lots of requests, come to think of it. It's the one that I think fits the bill the best. Bernadette is pushed over the edge by an impending family trip to Antarctica and disappears just days before they're scheduled to leave. The whole thing is told through emails, letters, documents, and some narration from her daughter, Bee. Fast-paced, satirical, wacky, and clever.

2. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

This story about a widowed curmudgeon who likes books more than people is filled with humor and literary references. In re-reading my post about it now, I said that it gets a bit dark and sad, but honestly I don't remember that. I remember the uplifting aspects of the story and the humor. Maybe I need to re-read it. But I'm leaving it here for now anyhow because it's really a fantastic book.

3. Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld 

A modern-day retelling of Pride and Prejudice! This is totally chick lit, but since Sittenfeld is considered somewhat literary, people eat this up and still think it's literary (whatever that actually means) and I'm willing to let them keep believing that.

4. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

A retired Major living in a small English village begins a romance with a Pakistani shopkeeper, and must contend with the disapproval of the locals who have never quite accepted her. A major theme is the tension between tradition and change. I really loved this book.

5. The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart

This one is a bit divisive, but I really enjoyed its quirkiness. The main story centers around a couple who haven't dealt with the death of their child, which totally makes it sound like the opposite of what I'm looking for here, but believe me when I say it's not a sad book. The husband is put in charge of the Queen's menagerie at the Tower of London and there's a lot of comedy and little romances and whatnot.

6. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

I read this one so long ago that I don't have a blog post about it. It takes place on the fictional island where the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" was coined, and a statue upon which it has been memorialized (along with its creator) has been losing its letters. As they fall, the town council bans residents from using that letter AND the author drops that letter from the book as well. A very clever, unique book.

7. Bossypants by Tina Fey

Now we're getting into nonfiction, which I think is the easier way to handle this particular request except that I don't read nearly enough of it. Tina Fey is definitely smart and has some things to say about being a woman working in comedy, tells lots of stories from her own life, and of course it's quite funny.

8. At Home by Bill Bryson

Or probably anything by Bill Bryson? I've only read this and A Walk in the Woods (so far), and this is the one that strikes me as more brainy. But it's still easy to read and funny. Basically, he takes a tour through his historical house, exploring the history of each room and the objects within in, as well as the aspects of life most associated with that room. A thoroughly readable history of domestic life.

9. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Another book where you learn a lot, but have fun while doing it. I've read a few of her others, but I think this one is still my favorite. Roach investigates lots of practicalities about life in space, and there's science but not too much for a regular person to understand.

10. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

I mean, life in South Africa under apartheid when you are racially mixed is not a walk in the park, but this is not a depressing book. Noah talks a lot about his everyday life, tells lots of funny stories, and it's filled with admiration for his mom.

Can you think of any books that you think belong on this list? Let me know in the comments. Really, please, please tell me - I need help with this!

Best Books of 2017 So Far

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. Today's list is our favorite books we've read so far in 2017. Yay!

Interestingly, I've only finished about 48 books so far, which means I'm on track to read slightly fewer than usual this year. I definitely feel like I'm reading a little less and taking longer to read each book, but I'm not certain why.

These first two are my only 5-star reads so far this year (I'm very stingy with my 5-star ratings!)

1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I think we can all agree that this book is something special. The issues are timely, the characters are realistic, the story is complex and nuanced and thoughtful, and the audio narration is stellar.

2. The Wanderers by Meg Howrey

Character-driven science fiction about astronauts in a Mars mission simulation. I can't tell you what I loved most about it without giving too much away, but I loved spending time with these characters and the writing was accessible and sophisticated at the same time.

The rest of this list was difficult to compile! The first few were easy, but it got harder to choose after that without falling into the trap of listing the most recent ones because they happen to be more fresh in my mind. I have a lot of 4-star reads, so I went back and read my own reviews and compared them to determine which ones I liked more than others.

3. Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson

I honestly don't know why this author isn't more well known. I'm getting a bit tired of thrillers with twists, but this guy does it so much better than most that I'll read anything he writes. If you like Gillian Flynn, you need to check out Peter Swanson.

4. Miss Jane by Brad Watson

The premise was so unusual, and Watson beautifully crafted it into a very compelling portrait of his main character's life. If you like historical fiction about women, definitely pick this one up.

5. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

Another work of historical fiction, this one felt very cozy to me in that I wanted to move to this town and befriend all of these characters. It's not cozy though, as the looming war and death begins to affect their lives, but it's so much about coming together and supporting one another.

6. If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

This story about a transgender girl trying to fit in has so much heart, and managed to be realistic without being cruel about it. Bonus points for being set in a rural area in the South.

7. Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy

Another teen book that takes place in a rural area, also with an LGBT theme, and also really, really good. I love Ramona.

8. The Painter by Peter Heller

I read this way back in January and had to re-read my blog post to remember how much I liked it. Peter Heller is fantastic at creating complicated characters who feel real.

9. The Wild Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

The final volume in the trilogy that began with The Tea Rose. I loved this series the whole way through. It's a must-read if you like historical fiction.

10. After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Reid is a new favorite author. I love the inventive ways she finds to explore relationships, and her books are so easy and fun to read.

There are so many others I want to cram on here, but I'm sticking with ten!

What are you favorites so far this year?

Top Ten Series I've Been Meaning to Start

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. Today's topic is series we haven't yet read but want to.

1. The Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin

The first book, The Fifth Season, sounded so great when I first heard about it but I wanted to wait for the whole series to be out before starting it. Otherwise I run into that problem where a new book is released but I can't remember what happened in the last book. But I can't wait to finally read this apocalyptic story. N.K. Jemisin is one of very few black women who write science fiction and I hear she's really really good at it.

2. Cormoran Strike by Robert Galbraith

I love J.K. Rowling and I've heard great reviews of her mystery series, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Her style is so friendly and humorous I'll read anything she writes. I've had Cuckoo's Calling on my radar since it came out, but somehow it just never seems quite the right time to start it.

3. The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

I'll be honest: part of the reason I've been wanting to read this series is because of the covers. The series of 4 books is both science fiction and fantasy with fairy tale elements - basically, it's everything. I've been trying to decide if I want to tackle it on audio. I hear it's great, but the books are pretty long and I do prefer shorter audiobooks. It's a conundrum.

4. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

There was a lot of hype when this first came out, but I heard the series was consistently good from beginning to end. I put it off so all the books would be released and then by the time they all were, I had moved on. But every time I see it mentioned I think I should pick it up (someday!)

5. Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

I feel like everyone was reading this series at the same time as Daughter of Smoke and Bone. The first book of this fantasy is Shadow and Bone, which I came really close to reading a couple of times but somehow still haven't.

6. Bill Hodges Trilogy by Stephen King

I've honestly never heard it called that - it's always the Mr. Mercedes series when people talk about it. At any rate, I can't keep up with Stephen King so here I am, having missed this entire mystery series.


These next three I've actually started by reading one book a long, long time ago and then not continuing.

7. The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Speaking of not being able to keep up with Stephen King! I read The Gunslinger back in high school and I think maybe it wasn't as much my sort of thing as King's other books so I didn't keep going. I had in my head that this was a long series, though I just looked it up and there are only 8 books. My vague plan for this series has been that someday Stephen King will die and I will feel very sad, and then I'll remember there's a whole long series of his that I haven't yet read.

8. MadAddam by Margaret Atwood

I read the first book, Oryx and Crake, when it first came out and always meant to get to the second. But, as often happens, I couldn't even remember the first one by then so I just stopped. I've actually been planning to read the whole thing in the next year or so.

9. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Of course I've read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe multiples times. Who hasn't? But it's ridiculous that I never read any other book in the series.

I guess I only have nine. Or, if you count the two series I've read but really want to read again, eleven:

Jessica Darling by Megan McCafferty

For years I've suffered under the delusion that I only ever read the first book and I kept thinking I should finally get around to reading the rest of it. Then I was looking through the little notebook where I've been listing every book I've read since mid-2000 and saw that I've read the whole series. Anyhow, I went to my local bookstore and bought all three books with plans to reread the series sometime in the definite future.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

I loved this series on audiobook! According to my aforementioned book-tracking notebook I read the whole thing a second time, which I didn't remember doing. But kind of. I think I read it in print that time. Anyhow, now that Pullman has announced another series related to that series I want to read it all again in preparation. I think I'll listen to the audio again because it was really wonderful.

Are there any series that you keep meaning to read but haven't? Share in the comments!