Verso: Best Books of 2017 (some of which were published previously but were still “favourites of the year”)

Fiction

• Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone – James Baldwin
• The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq – Hassan Blasim
• The Gift – Barbara Browning
• Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
• The Debutante and Other Stories – Leonora Carrington
• The Vet’s Daughter – Barbara Comyns
• Segu – Maryse Conde
• The Doll’s Alphabet – Camilla Grudova
• The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist – Emile Habiby
• Darker With the Lights On – David Hayden
• Hot Milk – Deborah Levy
• Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado
• Evening Primrose: a heart-wrenching novel for our times – Kopano Matlwa
• First Love – Gwendoline Riley
• Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney
• Love Story – Erich Segal
• We That Are Young – Preti Taneja
• Attrib. and other stories – Eley Williams
• The Hoke Moseley Detective Series – Charles Willeford
• The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

Nonfiction

• Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising – Gilbert Achcar
• After Kathy Acker – Chris Kraus
• Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them – Edited by Rhian Jones and Eli Davies
• Cosmic Society: Towards a Sociology of the Universe – Peter Dickens and James Ormrod
• The Greeks and the Irrational – E.R. Dodds
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
• Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? – Mark Fisher
• No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity – Sarah Haley
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself – Harriet Ann Jacobs
• Spheres of Existence: Selected Writings – C.L.R. James
• Hell’s Destruction: An Exploration of Christ’s Descent to the Dead – Catherine Ella Laufer
• Your Silence Will Not Protect You – Audre Lorde
• Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel – Carl Safina
• Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States – James C. Scott
• The Black Pacific: Anti-Colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections – Robbie Shilliam
• Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital – William Clare Roberts
• Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism – Steve Wright

Memoir

• Living for Change: An Autobiography – Grace Lee Boggs
• Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration – David Wojnarowicz

Library Journal: 10 Best Books of 2017

1. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me – Sherman Alexie
2. Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century – Jessica Bruder
3. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body – Roxane Gay
4. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI – David Grann
5. Ginny Moon – Benjamin Ludwig
6. The Ninth Hour – Alice McDermott
7. Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption – Benjamin Rachlin
8. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
9. Lucky Boy – Shanthi Sekaran
10. Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie

Entropy: Best Books of 2017, divided into fiction and nonfiction (numbered but “in no particular order”)

Fiction

1. Isadora – Amelia Gray
2. The Book of Joan – Lidia Yuknavitch
3. Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
4. Exit West – Mohsin Hamid
5. Sour Heart – Jenny Zhang
6. The Changeling – Victor LaValle
7. The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington – Leonora Carrington
8. Down Below – Leonora Carrington
9. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
10. Motherest – Kristen Iskandrian
11. No One Can Pronounce My Name – Rakesh Satyal
12. The Dark Dark – Samantha Hunt
13. The Red Barn – Nat Baldwin
14. Silk Flowers – Meghan Lamb
15. The Disintegrations – Alistair McCartney
16. The Protester Has Been Released – Janet Sarbanes
17. Sorry to Disrupt the Peace – Patty Yumi Cottrell
18. The Golden House – Salman Rushdie
19. Made for Love – Alissa Nutting
20. The Complete Ballet: A Fictional Essay in Five Acts – John Haskell
21. Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado
22. Homesick for Another World – Ottessa Moshfegh
23. Tales of Falling and Flying – Ben Loory
24. Sonata in K – Karen An-hwei Lee
25. Enfermario – Gabriela Torres Olivares
26. The Secret Room – Kazim Ali
27. The Ladies – Sara Veglahn
28. The Idiot – Elif Batuman
29. The Leavers – Lisa Ko
30. Genevieves – Henry Hoke
31. Frontier – Can Xue
32. Assisted Living – Gary Lutz
33. The Grip of It – Jac Jemc
34. The Golden Cockerel & Other Writings – Juan Rulfo
35. Not One Day – Anne Garréta
36. An Occasional History – Laura Davenport
37. The Truth About Me – Louise Marburg
38. The Week – Joanna Ruocco
39. Houses of Ravicka – Renee Gladman
40. New People – Danzy Senna
41. Before Everything – Victoria Redel
42. Wait Till You See Me Dance – Deb Olin Unferth
43. Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
44. The World Goes On – László Krasznahorkai
45. Stephen Florida – Gabe Habash
46. Empty Set – Verónica Gerber Bicecci
47. My Heart Hemmed In – Marie NDiaye
48. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
49. Buckskin Cocaine – Erika T. Wurth
50. Man’s Wars and Wickedness: A Book of Proposed Remedies and Extreme Formulations for Curing Hositlity, Rivalry, and Ill-Will – Amanda Ackerman & Harold Abramowitz
51. Large Animals – Jess Arndt
52. Is God Is – Aleshea Harris
53. Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
54. Modern Love – Constance DeJong
55. Things We Lost in the Fire – Mariana Enriquez
56. Notes of a Crocodile – Qiu Miaojin
57. Ice: 50th Anniversary Edition – Anna Kavan
58. Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing 1977-1997 – Edited by Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian
59. The Passion of Woo & Isolde – Jennifer Tseng
60. A Small Revolution – Jimin Han

Nonfiction

1. Afterglow (a dog memoir) – Eileen Myles
2. After Kathy Acker – Chris Kraus
3. 300 Arguments – Sarah Manguso
4. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us – Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
5. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body – Roxane Gay
6. Sunshine State – Sarah Gerard
7. Why Poetry – Matthew Zapruder
8. Irradiated Cities – Mariko Nagai
9. The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition – Fernando Pessoa
10. Of Sphere – Karla Kelsey
11. Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit – Aisha Sabatini Sloan
12. Autumn – Karl Ove Knausgaard
13. Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life – Yiyun Li
14. Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide – Charles Foster
15. You, Me, and the Violence – Catherine Taylor
16. We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy – Ta-Nehisi Coates
17. The Misfit’s Manifesto – Lidia Yuknavitch
18. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story – Edwidge Danticat
19. Swallow the Fish – Gabrielle Civil
20. Blind Spot – Teju Cole
21. like a solid to a shadow – Janice Lobo Sapigao
22. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds – adrienne maree brown
23. Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen – various authors
24. Final Fantasy V – Chris Kohler
25. Book of Mutter – Kate Zambreno
26. Dying – Cory Taylor
27. Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow Life – Chelsea Martin
28. The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1: 1940-1956 – Sylvia Plath
29. Living a Feminist Life – Sara Ahmed
30. Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics – Selah Saterstrom
31. Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation – Kyo Maclear
32. From Our Hearts to Yours: New Narrative as Contemporary Practice – Edited by Rob Halpern and Robin Tremblay-McGaw
33. The Sarah Book – Scott McClanahan
34. Long Shot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter – Craig Hodges
35. A Woman Is a Woman Until She Is a Mother – Anna Prushinskaya
36. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. – Samantha Irby
37. No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need – Naomi Klein
38. How to Keep You Alive – Ella Longpre
39. Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News – Kevin Young
40. A TransPacific Poetics – Edited by Lisa Samuels and Sawako Nakayasu

Entertainment Weekly: 10 Best Books of 2017

1. Exit West – Mohsin Hamid
2. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
3. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI – David Grann
4. Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
5. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
6. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters – Emil Ferris
7. Goodbye, Vitamin – Rachel Khong
8. The Power – Naomi Alderman
9. The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
10. The Rules Do Not Apply – Ariel Levy

Chicago Tribune: 10 Best Books of 2017

Fiction

1. Stay with Me – Ayobami Adebayo
2. Electric Arches – Eve L. Ewing
3. Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado
4. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
5. Autumn – Ali Smith

Nonfiction

1. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us – Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
2. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia – Masha Gessen
3. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. – Samantha Irby
4. Priestdaddy – Patricia Lockwood
5. Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City – Julia Wertz

John Freeman: 22 Best Fiction Books of 2017 (as published by The Boston Globe)

• Borne – Jeff VanderMeer
• Blameless – Claudio Magris
• The Burning Girl – Claire Messud
• The City Always Wins – Omar Robert Hamilton
• Cockfosters – Helen Simpson
• The End of Eddy – Édouard Louis
• Exit West – Mohsin Hamid
• Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin
• Frontier – Can Xue
• Go, Went, Gone – Jenny Erpenbeck
• Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado
• Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
• House of Names – Colm Toibin
• Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
• The Lonely Hearts Hotel – Heather O’Neill
• The Ministry of Utmost Happiness – Arundhati Roy
• My Cat Yugoslavia – Pajtim Statovci
• Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
• The Power – Naomi Alderman
• Savage Theories – Pola Oloixarac
• Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
• Things We Lost in the Fire – Mariana Enriquez

Kate Tuttle: 19 Best Nonfiction Books of 2017 (as published by The Boston Globe)

• American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land – Monica Hesse
• The Blood of Emmett Till – Timothy B. Tyson
• Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898-1940 – Jed Perl
• The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick – Elizabeth Hardwick
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – Richard Rothstein
• Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast – Megan Marshall
• The Extra Woman: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It – Joanna Scutts
• The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia – Masha Gessen
• Grant – Ron Chernow
• Janesville: An American Story – Amy Goldstein
• The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek – Howard Markel
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI – David Grann
• Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China – Xiaolu Guo
• Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder – Caroline Fraser
• Priestdaddy – Patricia Lockwood
• Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character – Kay Redfield Jamison
• We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy – Ta-Nehisi Coates
• What Happened – Hillary Rodham Clinton
• You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me – Sherman Alexie

Paste Magazine: 45 Best Books of 2017, listed as novels and nonfiction

Novels

1. Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
2. The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley – Hannah Tinti
3. The Leavers – Lisa Ko
4. Exit West – Mohsin Hamid
5. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
6. Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
7. The Lucky Ones – Julianne Pachico
8. Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
9. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
10. Oathbringer – Brandon Sanderson
11. Class – Francesco Pacifico
12. The Destroyers – Christopher Bollen
13. The Power – Naomi Alderman
14. Borne – Jeff VanderMeer
15. The River of Kings – Taylor Brown
16. The Golden Legend – Nadeem Aslam
17. The Stone Sky – N.K. Jemisin
18. The Thirst – Jo Nesbo
19. American War – Omar El Akkad
20. Ill Will – Dan Chaon
21. The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry
22. Waking Gods – Sylvain Neuvel
23. What We Lose – Zinzi Clemmons
24. Universal Harvester – John Darnielle
25. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid

Nonfiction

1. Priestdaddy – Patricia Lockwood
2. The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South – Michael Twitty
3. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia – Masha Gessen
4. We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy – Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. A Disappearance in Damascus: Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War – Deborah Campbell
6. How to Murder Your Life – Cat Marnell
7. Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913 – Daniel Wolff
8. The Blood of Emmett Till – Timothy B. Tyson
9. Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011 – Lizzy Goodman
10. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us – Hanif Abdurraqib
11. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body – Roxane Gay
12. Sunshine State – Sarah Gerard
13. The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between – Abigail Marsh
14. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI – David Grann
15. One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter – Scaachi Koul
16. The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South – John T. Edge
17. Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life – Jonathan Gould
18. Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America – Edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding
19. The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983 – 1992 – Tina Brown
20. Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate – Zoe Quinn

Katy Waldman: 10 Favorite Books of 2017 (as published by Slate)

• Manhattan Beach – Jennifer Egan
• Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney
• What Happened – Hillary Rodham Clinton
• The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (Volume 1) – Philip Pullman
• Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado
• Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
• Priestdaddy – Patricia Lockwood
• The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography – Edmund Gordon
• The Odyssey – Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
• The Idiot – Elif Batuman

Maureen Corrigan: 10 Best Books of 2017 (as aired on NPR’s Fresh Air) [see also 2016, 2015, 2011]

• Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
• Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
• The Ninth Hour – Alice McDermott
• Manhattan Beach – Jennifer Egan
• Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York – Francis Spufford
• Between Them: Remembering My Parents – Richard Ford
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI – David Grann
• What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories – Laura Shapiro
• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter – Erika L. Sánchez
• The Big Book of the Continental Op – Dashiell Hammett