Best Books of 2017 – Nonfiction! I’ve come to expect a certain amount of variety in the books that manage the near-impossible feat of making their way from galley-and-first-reading to finished-copy-and-second-reading to critical appraisal/mauling to cold reconsideration and then ultimately to this year-end list. But even so, the best works of what I think of […]

Best Books of 2017 – Fiction! 2017 was another outstanding year for fiction. Even the mediocre novels were sounder and smarter than in most years, and the terrific novels were correspondingly even more terrific – so much so, in fact, that many of the year’s best novels achieved that status despite committing venial and mortal […]

Worst Books of 2017 – Nonfiction! It’s always tricky, in any given year, to guess the trends of deplorable nonfiction. Back in January, for instance, I assumed that American publishers would kick into overdrive and flood the market with insta-Trump books, but there was only a trickle: that particular tsunami is obviously coming next year […]

Worst Books of 2017 – Fiction! 2017 was in fact an excellent year for so-called literary fiction – so excellent, in fact, that its rising tide floated all (well, most) boats: I noticed that even the year’s second- and third-rate stuff almost always had a certain level of technical soundness that you don’t always find […]

Best Books of 2017 – Biography! I noticed three rough minor trends in American biographies in 2017, and all three were predictable in their own ways, and all three are represented on this year-end list. The first two trends were entirely understandable, since 2017 was the anniversary of both the Russian Revolutions and the kick-off […]

Best Books of 2017 – History! The year 2017 was of course the anniversary of two enormous historical events: Martin Luther’s sparking of what would become the Protestant Revolution and the Russian revolutions of 1917 – and a bumper-crop of books dutifully appeared on both subjects, and quite a few of those books were excellent […]

Best Books of 2017 – Nature & Science! The sub-heading of science- and nature-writing positively filled my reading in 2017. I read a large amount of it across the whole of its spectrum, from data-heavy scientific monographs to emoji-heavy breathless popular guides, and now I encounter the same encouraging frustration I’ve encountered in making many […]

Best Books of 2017 – Historical Fiction! Before my list departs from genre fiction for a few days, I had to call out the gems in my beloved world of historical fiction, where I found so much fantastic reading in 2017. My one disappointment in this regard just this year is the absence of self-published […]