2017: The Year in Books

[evelyn_b]

2017 was a long year with some books in it. I took on too many reading challenges and forgot about most of them. 2018 will be less ambitious and better organized (for a while). If you want to see a list of books I read, you'll find it under the cut.



January
1. The Backslider - S. McGrady
2. Partners in Crime - A. Christie
3. The Golden Notebook - D. Lessing
4. The Count of Monte Cristo - A. Dumas
5. Time Recaptured - M. Proust
6. Inferno - D. Alegheri*
7. The House By the River - F. Warden
8. Living With a Wild God - B. Ehrenreich
9. The Hidden Land - P. Dean
10. Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Journey - A. Lansing
11. Murder Up My Sleeve - E. S. Gardner
12. The Murder at the Vicarage - A. Christie
13. The Worst Journey in the World - A. Cherry-Garrard
14. The Art of Fiction in the Heart of Dixie - ed. P. Beidlert
15. The Hunger Games - S. Collins
16. The Last Place on Earth - R. Huntford
17. The Coldest March - S. Solomon

February
18. Pere Goirot - BALZAC
19. The Story of the Lost Child - E. Ferrante
20. Bob Stevenson - R. Wiley
21. Can't Help Falling - K. Isaacs
22. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution - Nicholas Meyer
23. The Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs - B. Costello
24. The Mysterious Mr. Quin - A. Christie
25. The God Delusion - R. Dawkins
26. The Wind in the Willows - K. Grahame
27. Marmion - W. Scott
28. Know the Mother - D. Cooper
29. Conferences Are Murder - V. McDermid
30. Hold Me - C. Milan
31. The Seven Dials Mystery - A. Christie*
32. The Young Visiters - D. Ashford
33. I Capture the Castle - D. Smith
34. The Cricket on the Hearth - C. Dickens.
35. Broken Heartland - The Rise of America's Rural Ghetto - O. G. Davidson
36. True Pretenses - R. Lerner
37. The Heiress Effect - C. Milan
38. Cotillion - G. Heyer

March
39. Blood Red Turns Dollar Green - P. O'Brien
40. The Sittaford Murders - A. Christie
41. Sargasso of Space - A. Norton
42. Island - A. Huxley
43. Giant's Bread - A. Christie
44. Yes and No - L. Tatelbaum
45. United States of Paranoia - J. Walker
46. Vice Versa - M. Garber
47. Vanity Dies Hard - R. Rendell
48. Plain Murder - C. S. Forester
49. Mourned on Sunday - H. Reilly
50. A Confederacy of Dunces
51. The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
52. Best Martin Hewitt Detective Stories - A. Morrison
53. The White Album - J. Didion
54. A Fox Under My Cloak - H. Williamson
55. Galahad at Blandings - P. G. Wodehouse
56. Return of the Continental Op - D. Hammett
57. Peril at End House - A. Christie
58. Among Others - J. Walton
59. Death of an Expert Witness - P. D. James
60. A Burnt-Out Case - G. Greene
61. Lions & Shadows - C. Isherwood

April
62. Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church - E. McLoughlin
63. Body Switch – T. Witek
64. Common Murder – V. McDermid
65. Soul Gardening Spring 2014 – Various
66. Uncle Charlie’s Poems – C. N. Douglas
67. Crime and Punishment – F. Dostoevsky
68. Custer Died for Your Sins – V. Deloria Jr.
69. Cast a Cold Eye – M. McCarthy
70. The Bandersnatch – M. Hardwick
71. A Piece of My Mind – E. Wilson
72. Thus Was Adonis Murdered – S. Caudwell
73. The Thirteen Problems – A. Christie
74. The Symposium – Plato
75. The Gentle Axe – R. N. Morris

May
76. The Making of a Saint - W. S. Maugham
77. Arctic Dreams - B. Lopez
78. Catullus - P. Green
79. What If? - R. Munroe
80. A Girl of the Limberlost - G. Stratton-Porter
81. The Hound of Death - A. Christie
82. Enter Sir John - C. Dane and H. Simpson
83. Clan of the Cave Bear - J. M. Auel
84. Chicago by Gaslight - S. P. Wilson
85. The Moon and Sixpence - W. S. Maugham
86. Fact Detective Mysteries - Fact Detective Magazine
87. Picnic at Hanging Rock -
88. The Unamericans - M. Antopol
89. Lord Edgeware Dies - A Christie
90. AOL Membership Kit and Tour Guide - T. Litchy
91. Red Harvest - D. Hammett
92. English Diction for Foreign Speakers (1935)
93. Alice James: A Biography - J. Strouse
94. The Ladies of Missalonghi - C. McCullough
95. Murder on the Orient Express - A. Christie*
96. Herself Surprised - J. Cary

June
97. Aunt Dimity's Death - N. Atherton
98. Experiments in Patience - G Conoly
99. Chicks in Chainmail - ed. Esther Friedman
100. The War That Killed Achilles - C. Alexamnder
101. Parker Pyne Investigates - A. Christie
102. Eugene Onegin - A. Pushkin
103. Why Didn't They Ask Evans? - A. Christie
104. Daisy Miller & An International Episode - H. James
105. Portnoy's Complaint - P. Roth*
106. A Single Man - C. Isherwood
107. Now and At the Hour of Our Death - S. M. Marques
108. Under the Banner of Heaven - J. Krakauer
109. Copy/Body - M. Captan

July
110. The Listerdale Mystery - A. Christie
111. Generation of Vipers - P. Wylie
112. Murder at the ABA - I. Asimov
113. Wired to the World, Chained to the Home - P. Gerstein
114. Travels With My Aunt - G. Greene
115. Between You, Me, and the Gatepost - P. Boone
116. How To Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass - A. Foley
117. Tenth of December - G. Saunders
118. Murder in 3 Acts - A. Christie
119. Hidden Figures - M. Shetterly
120. Unconditional Surrender - E. Waugh
121. The Disaster Artist - G. Sestero
122. Unfinished Portrait - M. Westmacott
123. The Brass Rainbow - M. Collins

August
123. The Apple in the Dark - C. Lispector
124. When Worlds Collide - P. Wiley
125. Women Sleuths - various
126. One Man Show - M. Innes
127. How To Write with the Skill of a Master and the Genius of a Child -
128. Best Worst American - J. Martinez
129. Less than Angels - B. Pym
130. Deadly Nightshade - E. Daly
131. Doorways in the Sand - R. Zelazny
132. Room at the Top - J. Braine
133. Death in the Air - A. Christie
134. The ABC Murders - A. Christie*
135. Murder in Mesopotamia - A. Christie
136. The Black Spaniel Mystery - B. Cavana
137. Midaq Alley - N. Mahfouz
138. Cards on the Table - A. Christie*
139. Confessions of a Concierge - B. G. Smith
140. Swap Clubs - W. and J. Breedlove
141. A Wonder Book - N. Hawthorne
142. Trumps of Doom - R. Zelazny
143. Sometimes We Walk With Our Nails Out - S. Bartlett
144. Ibn Battuta in Black Africa - eds.
145. Aristotle Detective - M. Doody
146. The Book of Jane - A. Dayton and M. Vanderbilt
147. Musca Domestica - C. Hume*
148. Reality Matters - ed. A. David

September
149. The World That Was Ours - H. Bernstein
150. Trent's Last Case - E. C. Bentley
151. The Angry Amazons - C. Brown
152. Paris in the Twentieth Century - J. Verne
153. The Case of the Constant Suicides - J. D. Carr
154. The Orestia - Aeschylus and R. Fagles
155. Lincoln in the Bardo - G. Saunders
156. Dumb Witness - A Christie*
157. The Boy's Book of Great Detective Stories - various
158. Nine Princes in Amber - R. Zelazny
159. Colonel Jack - D. Defoe
160. Black Warrior Review 27.2 - various
161. Shakespeare's Roman Trilogy - P. Cantor
162. The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum - S. Weinbaum and editors
163. Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength - C. S. Lewis*
164. Eden Springs - L. Kasischke
165. Ooronoko - A. Behn
166. Longitude - D. Sobel
167. Reflections on the Dark Water - M. P. Jones
168. Atlanta Noir - ed. T. Jones
169. Not Either an Experimental Doll - S. Marks
170. The Wound-Dresser's Dream - P. Stainer

October
171. The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless - E. Haywood
172. The Guns of Avalon - R. Zelazny
173. The Anti-Death League - K. Amis
174. The Opening Door - Helen Reilly
175. Follow Me - H. Reilly
176. The Best of Judith Merril - J. Merril
177. Making Money - T. Pratchett
178. Ten Keys to Being A Champion On & Off the Field - A. Fell
179. Restless City - various
180. My Absolute Darling - G. Tallent
181. Birds, Beasts, and Relatives - G. Durrell
182. Death on the Nile - A. Christie

November
183. We Were Eight Years in Power - TN Coates
184. The Three Musketeers - A. Dumas
185. Life's Work - W. Parker
186. Murder in the Mews - A. Christie
187. My Family and Other Animals - G. Durrell
188. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue - J. McWhorter
189. Clean and Decent - L. Wright

December
190. Maigret's Christmas - G. Simenon
191. The Romance of George Villiers - P. Gibbs
192. Moll Flanders - D. Defoe
193. The Cloister Walk - K. Norris
194. The Soul of a New Machine - T. Kidder
195. 2001: A Space Odyssey - A. C. Clark
196. Circus Shoes - N. Streatfield

bold: 99 Novels
italics: Mount TBR Challenge

I read and relinquished 77 books in fulfillment of the Mount TBR Challenge. That is 15 more than the number of books I bought, found on a free book shelf, or was given as gifts in 2017. Maybe this year I'll buy fewer books and use the library more! Maybe not, though. 2018 is the Year of Making No Promises.

126 fiction, 48 non-fiction, 18 other (mostly poetry), give or take some in the middle where I lost count.

A sluggish but well-meaning Reading Wednesday returns next week, when I'll tell you all about how delightful Circus Shoes was (though the eponymous shoes never showed up; they were metaphorical shoes I guess).

Comments

[liadt]

Wow, that's a lot of books!

[evelyn_b]

It's not bad! Some of them are very short books, to be fair.

[osprey_archer]

Do the bolds and italics and so forth Mean Something, or is it all a clever ruse to make us sit there scratching out heads trying to figure out the code?

(I think the bold might be for 99 Novels books? But otherwise I haven't a clue.)

Looking forward to hearing about Circus Shoes! I only ever read one Noel Streatfield and didn't quite get the appeal, but maybe it was the wrong Streatfield.

[evelyn_b]

I guess it's easier to add a note than go through and take out the formatting! Bold is 99 Novels (so you can see how much I neglected it!) italics is Mount TBR - I started keeping track because I was planning on doing a more detailed accounting, then decided not to.

Asterisks are re-reads, but I gave up on that sooner, so it's not consistent.

[thisbluespirit]

LOL, Circus Shoes isn't really called Circus Shoes, that's why! It was called The Circus Is Coming but got altered more recently to tie in with Ballet Shoes and White Boots, despite the fact that it makes no sense at all.

I read and relinquished 77 books in fulfillment of the Mount TBR Challenge. That is 15 more than the number of books I bought, found on a free book shelf, or was given as gifts in 2017.

Copngrats!

Best wishes for the New Year, whatever it brings.

One question - what does the bold type signify?

[evelyn_b]

Thank you! :D Giving away more books than I take in is an accomplishment worth celebrating (with books from the library).

Bold type = 99 Novels. I was planning to do more hairsplitting about what I read and why and what I thought of it, but forgot about it.

I hope your 2018 is full of weird old TV and unexpected appearances by James Maxwell (and any other good thing you're hoping for).

eta: LOL, Circus Shoes isn't really called Circus Shoes, that's why! It was called The Circus Is Coming but got altered more recently to tie in with Ballet Shoes and White Boots, despite the fact that it makes no sense at all.

That explains it! I knew Streatfield had a "shoes" theme because the other books were listed in the front, but kept expecting the Circus Shoes to show up and they never did. Oh, marketing.

[thisbluespirit]

I hope your 2018 is full of weird old TV and unexpected appearances by James Maxwell (and any other good thing you're hoping for).

Aw, thank you! <3

And, aha, and I see from above that the italics are MTBR, which makes sense. I wondered if the bold was 99 Novels.

Giving away more books than I take in is an accomplishment worth celebrating (with books from the library).

Absolutely!

[littlerhymes]

I am particularly impressed at your TBR challenge accomplishment! GOSH!

I look forward to your review of Circus Shoes (sans shoes).

[evelyn_b]

Thanks! :D I have a book-buying problem and a space problem, so I'm trying to find ways to focus on reading books I already own and giving them away! Just saying, "I'm going to do this" in a public place helps a lot.