My Reading Year

After reading my New Year's Resolution post, one of my readers asked me more specifically about which 28 books I read in 2017, so this post is for him (and the rest of you too).

(As an aside: I love getting reader requests for blog posts. If you have something you want me to write about, please comment or email me at mindbodyandscroll [at] yahoo.com.)

It's easy to see what I read this year as I keep track on goodreads. I love this site as I can see what my other reader friends are reading and I can also keep track of books I want to read as well. In my list of books at the bottom of this post I've linked to my (very short) reviews on the site. Although in fairness, they are not so much reviews as my thoughts on each book.

Some stats on my year:

• 28 books equated to 7,668 pages. 
• I gave 14% of the books five stars, 53% four stars, 29% three stars and 4% one star (this was only one book: The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman. I cannot recommend it.)
• The list was almost evenly split between fiction and non-fiction, although non-fiction edged ahead at 54% .  
• The longest book I read was A Little Life and the shortest: Why Yoga Works.
• Eight books (29%) were for my book group (in the list below I have marked these with an asterisk).
• I know personally the authors of five books I read this year (18%). And hopefully I will be meeting the author of one more book in April when she visits London! 
• Six of the books (21%) were independently published. 

It's really hard to pick a favorite book of the year, but I probably should. The winner in this case is Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.

And two books I read were related to research for my novel. One was written by a psychic profiler and one by a shaman. (Have I mentioned that my novel is a cross between chick lit and Gothic horror?)

And now, for the full list (in the order I read them):

1. Ark Baby* by Liz Jensen

2. A Thousand Cuts: A Spike Sanguinetti Novel by Thomas Mogford

3. Swimming Home* by Deborah Levy

4. The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes

5. Hidden Figures* by Margot Lee Shetterly

6. The Reluctant Shaman by Kay Cordell Whitaker

7. March* by Geraldine Brooks

8.  A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

9.  Why Yoga Works by Cinnamon Kennedy

10. Tales from Suburbia by Claire Buss

11. Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

12. Instant Mom by Nia Vardalos

13. The Line of Beauty* by Alan Hollinghurst

14. The Lives and Loves of a He Devil by Graham Norton

15. The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman* by Denis Theriault

16. The Rose Thief by Claire Buss

17. The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin

18. An Angel on Her Shoulder by Dan Alatorre

19. Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

20. A Walk in the Woods* by Bill Bryson

21. Don't Kiss Them Goodbye by Allison DuBois

22. A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark

23. The Town Below the Ground by Jan-Andrew Henderson

24. The One Thing by Gary Keller

25. Alias Grace* by Margaret Atwood

26. Escape the Cubicle by Sukhi Jutla

27. Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n Roll and a Tiara by Beverly Diehl

28. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

*A Northern Line Book Group book

What did you read in 2017? What would you recommend?

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