For 2017, I set a goal of 60 books to read and it looks like I am going to fall short of that with about ~43 or 44. With that being said, I feel like I read some really impactful, mind-expanding books this year.

As I do every year, I am going to blog about it and pick my favorites. Best Book of 2017 is at the bottom so that you can read all the others first. Heh.

My Top Disappointments

A disappointment is a book that I expected to be good but did not turn out to be. Does not mean that it sucked - if a book sucks then I would not finish it.

The Gene by Siddartha Mukherjee. This book was the author’s highly anticipated follow up after the cancer book - the “Emperor of All Maladies”. Unlike its predecessor, it lacks a coherent narrative and does not make a dry history all that interesting.

The Singapore Story by Lee Kuan Yew. This is the Singapore founder’s autobiography. It is a generally straightforward and name-dense recounting of a history.

Nine-Fox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. This sci-fi story is not as good as some of the other books that I read. It was chock full of weird names that I easily lost track of and forgot. Characters show up who I did not care for and the book’s supposedly vicious anti-hero seemed not so much.

My Favorite Hate-Read of 2017

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan. This is the third book of the Crazy Rich Asians series and the worst of the three. If the first is too ADHD then this one gets stuck in the mud. It goes back to the least interesting characters in the story and follows them to the end. In my opinion, the second book is the best by far but sadly those plot threads get short shrift here. But it is still Kevin Kwan and it is still hectic and insane.

My Top “I think only I would like this book” Book

The Crocodile by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I’m a big Dostoevsky fan but I have never read his short stories. This one has the right mix of intellectual absurdity that shines despite its antiquated language. It is about a guy who gets eaten by a crocodile, somehow is still alive inside it, but handles it all with the aplomb of a societal satire that speaks through the ages.

Top Sci-Fi

The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin is a charming, well-told story that stitches together an amazing universe to explore. It is set in a universe where there are certain people with amazing rock-related powers. I’ll leave it at that.

This award-winning book outshines Collapsing Universe, the much anticipated book by John Scalzi which to me reads more like a throat-clearer than anything, really.

Top Business Book

None. I was going to say Principles but I found that book too discombobulated to say anything really interesting. I was glad when it was done.

The One Device by Brian Mitchell is a nice journalism piece that talks about how the iPhone was created. I loved reading it as a history despite the fact that it is obviously overly padded in content.

Top Science Book

Emperor of All Maladies which is written by the same guy who wrote “The Gene”. This book is everything that the Gene was not - entertaining, emotional, very well written and thoroughly researched. It is as educational about the nature of cancer as any other. I recommend it to anyone.

Top Murder Mystery Book

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama. It has all a Japanese murder mystery fan can ask for - amazing characters, a mysterious case, and a brilliant twist. The less I say about this book the better except this one thing: I was in the underground Dunhua mall when the twist hit me and all I could do was stand there in the crowd shocked frozen. It is a slow burn of slow burns but oh oh oh so good.

My Favorite Short Story of 2017

“Hell is the Absence of God” is the penultimate story in Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life. I was inspired to read this book after watching Arrival, which is based on another short story within this book. I enjoyed that one just fine but this one blew me away.

Thought Provoking Book of the Year

Sapiens by Harari would be a good recommendation except for that it sorta goes off the reservation at the end. I am not quite sure what is going on at the end with all the stuff about how we as a humans species are transcending the stars and our own genetic programming and such. But the stuff about happiness and what it means to be in a community was profoundly interesting - the sort of stuff that changes your life philosophy. It certainly seemed to have done so for Mark Zuckerberg.

Runner up Best Book of the Year

Watership Down is a book that we Americans almost all read when we are in high school. I remember seeing this book’s cover in many people’s backpacks as I was coming back home. At that time, I did not remember much about the book except that it was about rabbits and there was some interesting stuff about Woundwort.

I ended up listening to this book again as an audiobook and tremendously enjoyed it. I wrote it about it earlier in this blog. I shortly thereafter read the sequel and while that was fine, it does not match up to the original tale. With all that being said, I loved being back in the world.

Best Book of the Year

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen Platt is the best book of the year. I finished it a few months ago but I have not been able to forget about it. This thrilling, thought provoking book about a violent time in China’s 5,000 year history introduced me to a super interesting period in which the Qing Dynasty saved itself from overthrow by the Taiping Rebellion and in the process ruined itself for the next 50 years. I recommend it to everyone.