2017 reading in review

[Russ Allbery]

So much of my reading energy this year went into endlessly reloading
political web sites and reading essays and poll analysis. This was not
a very good use of that energy, but I did it anyway, and I'm not sure I
could have stopped. It was a very 2017 problem, and I know I'm not
alone — it was an anxious, anger-inducing year for a lot of us. I think
that's also why I read shorter books (although more of them) than in
2016. Most of the year's reading happened in a couple of bursts during
vacations.

My reading goal for last year was to get back to reading award nominees
and previous award winners. The overall quality of my reading rose
towards the end of the year, and I think several books I read in 2017
are likely to be award nominees or winners in 2018, but I still fell
short of that goal. I'm carrying it over to 2018, coupling it with a
goal to read more non-fiction, and calling that a goal to make time and
energy for deeper, more demanding, and more rewarding reading. I want
to sustain that over the year, rather than concentrating all my reading
energy in vacations.

There were no 10 out of 10 books this year, but there were 6 books with
a 9 rating. On the fiction side, two of them were the second and third
books of Julie E. Czerneda's Species Imperative series: [1] Migration
and [2] Regeneration. I recommend the entire series, starting with
[3] Survival, as excellent SF focusing on practicing scientists and on
biology and ecology rather than physics. Czerneda has a slightly
cartoony style that can take a bit to get used to, and I found the
romance subplot unfortunate, but the protagonist was a delight and the
last two books of the series were excellent.

The other fiction books with 9 out of 10 ratings were Becky Chambers's
[4] A Closed and Common Orbit, a sequel to [5] The Long Way to a Small,
Angry Planet that I thought was even better than the original, and
Melina Marchetta's [6] The Piper's Son. Many thanks to [7] Light for
the recommendation of the latter; it's the sort of mainstream literary
fiction that I wouldn't have found without recommendations. It's a
satisfying story about untangling past emotional mistakes and finding
ways to move forward, but all the subtle work done by friendship
networks was what made it special to me.

The two non-fiction books I gave 9 out of 10 ratings this year were
[8] Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths, and
[9] Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. The first was a well-structured
look at how we apply computer science algorithms to everyday life:
short on actionable insight, but long on thoughtful analogies (email
and social media as buffer bloat!) and new ways to view everyday
decisions. The second is a passionate attempt to convince everyone to
get more sleep. Like many projects dear to the author's heart, it
should be taken with a grain of salt, but I found the summary of
current sleep research fascinating.

The last book that I think deserves special mention is [10] The Tiger's
Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera. It lacks the polish of some of the
other books I read, and at times could be a sprawling mess, but of all
the books I read this year, it's the one that most reliably puts a
smile on my face when I remember it. It is completely unabashed about
its emotions and completely in love with its characters and dares the
world to do something about it, and I needed a book like that in 2017.

The [11] full analysis includes some additional personal reading
statistics, probably only of interest to me.

References

   1. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-7564-0260-3.html
   2. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-7564-0345-6.html
   3. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-7564-0180-1.html
   4. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-06-256942-2.html
   5. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-5004-5330-7.html
   6. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-7636-5458-2.html
   7. https://lightreads.dreamwidth.org/
   8. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-62779-037-3.html
   9. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-5011-4433-2.html
  10. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-7653-9254-2.html
  11. https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/year/2017.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>