Books of 2017

It’s that time of year again, time to take stock of the books that I’ve most enjoyed this year. This year, I continued to increase the number of audiobooks in my “reading” diet - I’ve found that dense, non-fiction books are fairly easily consumed in the office, in a similar manner to NPR podcasts. In that way, I’ve gotten through a dozen books, most ordered through Interlibrary Loan, that I might not have otherwise enjoyed. Here are the books that kept me listening or turning the pages in 2016:

1. Tom Perrotta - Mrs. Frederick: My favorite book of the year is Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Frederick. It is a stunner, and it couldn’t be more vital in this social moment. For once the postmodernist literary structure, with multiple narratives and narrators, didn’t bother me that much, as all of the main characters were so compelling: Eve, the newly empty nester; Brendan, her sweet but frat bro-ish son who she’s just sent off to college; Amanda, Eve’s lesbian-curious co-worker; Margo, Eve’s transgender professor and so on. It all comes together beautifully in a shattering finale.

2. Sarah Bakewell - At the Existentialist Cafe: In this exhaustive history of existentialism, Bakewell expertly traces the multiple influences on this complicated philosophical tradition, from Martin Heidegger’s Nazi sympathies to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s anti-fascist activism during the occupation of France. Existentialism lives within Bakewell's pages.

3. Coleson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad: Whitehead’s groundbreaking antebellum era novel considers Cora, a young slave on a plantation in Georgia who joins a fellow slave, Caesar, in an escape that takes them along the Railroad to Charleston, SC. The novel’s main conceit is that the Underground Railroad is an actual railroad, with conductors and engineers and rails running for miles under the Southern landscape. A yarn like this deserves a film treatment.

4. Rob Sheffield - Dreaming the Beatles: The Rolling Stone magazine writer’s latest book makes compelling case for the enduring legacy of The Beatles. In Sheffield’s mind, the Fab Four have had distinct identities for fans even in the decades following their break-up in 1970. Almost fifty years after their demise, Sheffield argues, The Beatles remain as vital for music fans as they did when they were releasing genius albums such as “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

5. Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier: Dave Eggers work frequently explores the different meanings of community, whether it is the family support of his memoir or the stiflingly intrusive social media community in Circle. In his latest, Eggers gives us Josie, a married dentist, who chucks in her practice and her marriage and yanks her two young kids to the wilds of Alaska. At first, it seems that Josie has it all figured out, but then their lives careen out of control and we begin to question Josie’s judgment (and sanity).

6. Ken Ilgunas - Trespassing Across America: Most travel books are only incidentally political. However, the politics of climate change are front and center in Ilgunas’ book. For the project, Ilgunas walked the entire route of the XL Pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, meeting up with the people whose lives will be most affected by the project.

7. Kristin Hannah - The Nightingale: In her debut novel, Kristin Hannah imagines two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, one a conventional wife and mother, and the other a rebellious teenager. The two sisters have radically different responses to Nazi occupation of their hometown in provincial France and yet they somehow come back to the same place in the end.

8. Jane Mayer - Dark Money: Jane Mayer’s latest superbly sourced investigation traces the history of the movement to finance right-wing causes through front groups established by the likes of the Koch brothers. Like Nation on the Take, it shows how big money has perverted policy discussions related to a range of important issues.

9. Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You: This gem of a novel starts with a bang with the disappearance of the teenage daughter of James and Allison Lee’s daughter. There is nothing like a mystery to pull in the reader and Ng makes you keep turning the pages, as she spins out her story of a complex, biracial family living in a small college town.

10. E.J. Huntley - Tony Currie: The Matador: This brilliant biography of Tony Currie, my favorite Leeds player from my youth, was my constant companion in the early part of the year. Currie was part of a group of highly skilled maverick playmakers including Rodney Marsh, Alan Hudson and others who never really got their full due. The only minor problem with Huntley’s book was that front cover picture of Currie in a Sheffield United kit.

Notable Others:

W. Kamau Bell - The Awkward Thoughts of 
Pagan Kennedy - Inventology
Chris Hayes - A Colony in a Nation 
David Hepworth - Never a Dull Moment 
Heather Beth Johnson - The American Dream and the Power of Wealth 
Robert P. Jones - The End of White Christian America
Dean King - The Feud 
William J. Mann - The Wars of the Roosevelts 
Marc Myers - Anatomy of a Song 
Potter and Penniman - Nation on the Take
Ben Ratliff - Every Song Ever 
Linda Tirado - Hand to Mouth
Jeffrey Toobin - American Heiress

Disappointment:

* Ann Patchett - Commonwealth: I’ve always loved Ann Patchett’s work, and this one started out so promisingly, with Patchett’s usual lengthy description of one scene: a baby shower. But for some reason, after that first chapter, Patchett decided to jump whole generations with subsequent chapters. This unusual structural decision made it impossible to develop deep connections with her characters.