Year-End Lists

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

[see also 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

• 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 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 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

Publishers Weekly: 10 Best Books of 2017

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

• Ants Among Elephants

  An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
  Sujatha Gidla
• White Tears
  Hari Kunzru
• The Apparitionists

  A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost
  Peter Manseau
• The Color of Law

  A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
  Richard Rothstein
• Extreme Cities

  The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change
  Ashley Dawson
• Fear City

  New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics
  Kim Phillips-Fein
• Ill Will
  Dan Chaon
• In the Distance
  Hernan Diaz
• Grief Cottage
  Gail Godwin
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward

Time Magazine: Best Fiction and Nonfiction Books of 2017

[see also The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020 • The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2019 • Best Books of 2018]

Fiction

1. Sing, Unburied, Sing
   Jesmyn Ward
2. White Tears
   Hari Kunzru
3. Transit
   Rachel Cusk
4. Manhattan Beach
   Jennifer Egan
5. Lincoln in the Bardo
   George Saunders
6. Exit West
   Mohsin Hamid
7. The Changeling
   Victor LaValle
8. The Ninth Hour
   Alice McDermott
9. Days Without End
   Sebastian Barry
10. New People
    Danzy Senna

Nonfiction

1. What Happened
   Hillary Rodham Clinton
2. We Were Eight Years in Power

   An American Tragedy
   Ta-Nehisi Coates
3. Killers of the Flower Moon

   The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
   David Grann
4. Homo Deus

   A Brief History of Tomorrow
   Yuval Harari
5. The Rules Do Not Apply
   Ariel Levy
6. Hunger

   A Memoir of (My) Body
   Roxane Gay
7. Blind Spot
   Teju Cole
8. The Meaning of Michelle

   16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own
   Veronica Chambers
9. The Evangelicals

   The Struggle to Shape America
   Frances FitzGerald
10. The Vanity Fair Diaries

    1983 – 1992
    Tina Brown

Christian Lorentzen: 10 Best Books of 2017, as published by New York Magazine’s Vulture

[see also 2018]

1. So Much Blue
   Percival Everett
2. Priestdaddy
   Patricia Lockwood
3. The Idiot
   Elif Batuman
4. The Schooldays of Jesus
   J.M. Coetzee
5. Sour Heart
   Jenny Zhang
6. The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
   Elizabeth Hardwick
7. Sticky Fingers

   The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
   Joe Hagan
8. Notes on a Foreign Country

   An American Abroad in a Post-American World
   Suzy Hansen
9. Moving Kings
   Joshua Cohen
10. The Invention of Angela Carter

    A Biography
    Edmund Gordon

Christian Science Monitor: 30 Best Books of 2017

[see also 2018]

Fiction

• Dark at the Crossing
  Elliot Ackerman
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• The Hate U Give
  Angie Thomas
• Strange the Dreamer
  Laini Taylor
• The Golden Legend
  Nadeem Aslam
• The Leavers
  Lisa Ko
• Salt Houses
  Hala Alyan
• The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories
  Penelope Lively
• Anything Is Possible
  Elizabeth Strout
• The Essex Serpent
  Sarah Perry
• The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
  Arundhati Roy
• Glass Houses
  Louise Penny
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward

Nonfiction

• The New Odyssey

  The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis
  Patrick Kingsley
• The Souls of China

  The Return of Religion After Mao
  Ian Johnson
• Thunder in the Mountains

  Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War
  Daniel J. Sharfstein
• I Was Told to Come Alone

  My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad
  Souad Mekhennet
• Hue 1968

  A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam
  Mark Bowden
• Sea Power

  The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans
  James Stavridis
• Be Free or Die

  The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls’ Escape from Slavery to Union Hero
  Cate Lineberry
• Reading with Patrick

  A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship
  Michelle Kuo
• Henry David Thoreau

  A Life
  Laura Dassow Walls
• An Odyssey

  A Father, a Son, and an Epic
  Daniel Mendelsohn
• The Future Is History

  How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
  Masha Gessen
• Code Girls

  The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
  Liza Mundy
• The Gourmands’ Way

  Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy
  Justin Spring
• Stanton

  Lincoln’s War Secretary
  Walter Stahr
• Grant
  Ron Chernow
• Lenin

  The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
  Victor Sebestyen
• Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898-1940
  Jed Perl

The New York Times Book Review: 100 Notable Books of 2017

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 100 Notable Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 10 Best Books of 2012 • 100 Notable Books of 2011 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

Fiction & Poetry

• American War
  Omar El Akkad
• Anything Is Possible
  Elizabeth Strout
• Autumn
  Ali Smith
• Bad Dreams and Other Stories
  Tessa Hadley
• Beautiful Animals
  Lawrence Osborne
• The Book of Joan
  Lidia Yuknavitch
• A Boy in Winter
  Rachel Seiffert
• The Changeling
  Victor LaValle
• Christmas Days

  12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days
  Jeanette Winterson
• Dance of the Jakaranda
  Peter Kimani
• The Dark Flood Rises
  Margaret Drabble
• The Dinner Party

  Stories
  Joshua Ferris
• The Essex Serpent
  Sarah Perry
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Fast
  Jorie Graham
• Five-Carat Soul
  James McBride
• Forest Dark
  Nicole Krauss
• 4 3 2 1
  Paul Auster
• Fresh Complaint
  Jeffrey Eugenides
• Future Home of the Living God
  Louise Erdrich
• Giving Godhead
  Dylan Krieger
• History of Wolves
  Emily Fridlund
• Home Fire
  Kamila Shamsie
• Homesick for Another World
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• A Horse Walks into a Bar
  David Grossman
• The Idiot
  Elif Batuman
• Ill Will
  Dan Chaon
• A Kind of Freedom
  Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
• Less
  Andrew Sean Greer
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Manhattan Beach
  Jennifer Egan
• Mrs. Osmond
  John Banville
• My Absolute Darling
  Gabriel Tallent
• New People
  Danzy Senna
• The Ninth Hour
  Alice McDermott
• Pachinko
  Min Jin Lee
• The Power
  Naomi Alderman
• The Refugees
  Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Selection Day
  Aravind Adiga
• A Separation
  Katie Kitamura
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward
• Six Four
  Hideo Yokoyama
• Stay with Me
  Ayobami Adebayo
• The Stone Sky
  N.K. Jemisin
• Ties
  Domenico Starnone
• Transit
  Rachel Cusk
• Waking Lions
  Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
• WHEREAS
  Layli Long Soldier
• White Tears
  Hari Kunzru
• Who Is Rich?
  Matthew Klam

Nonfiction

• Age of Anger

  A History of the Present
  Pankaj Mishra
• American Fire

  Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land
  Monica Hesse
• Animals Strike Curious Poses
  Elena Passarello
• The Blood of Emmett Till
  Timothy B. Tyson
• Born a Crime

  Stories from a South African Childhood
  Trevor Noah
• Bunk

  The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News
  Kevin Young
• Churchill and Orwell

  The Fight for Freedom
  Thomas E. Ricks
• The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
  Elizabeth Hardwick
• A Colony in a Nation
  Chris Hayes
• The Color of Law

  A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
  Richard Rothstein
• The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution

  Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic
  Ganesh Sitaraman
• The Dawn Watch

  Joseph Conrad in a Global World
  Maya Jasanoff
• The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
  Dan Egan
• Destined for War

  Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
  Graham Allison
• Devil’s Bargain

  Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency
  Joshua Green
• The Evangelicals

  The Struggle to Shape America
  Frances FitzGerald
• The Evolution of Beauty

  How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World – and Us
  Richard O. Prum
• Fasting and Feasting

  The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray
  Adam Federman
• Flâneuse

  Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London
  Lauren Elkin
• Friends Divided

  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
  Gordon S. Wood
• The Future Is History

  How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
  Masha Gessen
• Generation Revolution

  On the Front Line Between Tradition and Change in the Middle East
  Rachel Aspden
• The Glass Universe

  How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
  Dava Sobel
• Grant
  Ron Chernow
• Greater Gotham

  A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919
  Mike Wallace
• The Gulf

  The Making of An American Sea
  Jack E. Davis
• Hamlet Globe to Globe

  Two Years, 193,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play
  Dominic Dromgoole
• Henry David Thoreau

  A Life
  Laura Dassow Walls
• The House of Government

  A Saga of the Russian Revolution
  Yuri Slezkine
• The Invention of Angela Carter

  A Biography
  Edmund Gordon
• Janesville

  An American Story
  Amy Goldstein
• Killers of the Flower Moon

  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
  David Grann
• Krazy

  George Herriman, a Life in Black and White
  Michael Tisserand
• Lenin

  The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
  Victor Sebestyen
• Letterman

  The Last Giant of Late Night
  Jason Zinoman
• Locking Up Our Own

  Crime and Punishment in Black America
  James Forman Jr.
• Looking for The Stranger

  Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic
  Alice Kaplan
• The Lost City of the Monkey God

  A True Story
  Douglas Preston
• Nomadland

  Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
  Jessica Bruder
• Notes on a Foreign Country

  An American Abroad in a Post-American World
  Suzy Hansen
• Prairie Fires

  The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
  Caroline Fraser
• Priestdaddy
  Patricia Lockwood
• The Songs We Know Best

  John Ashbery’s Early Life
  Karin Roffman
• Tenements, Towers & Trash

  An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City
  Julia Wertz
• To Siri with Love

  A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines
  Judith Newman
• The Undoing Project

  A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
  Michael Lewis
• We Were Eight Years in Power

  An American Tragedy
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• What Happened
  Hillary Rodham Clinton
• World Without Mind

  The Existential Threat of Big Tech
  Franklin Foer
• You Say to Brick

  The Life of Louis Kahn
  Wendy Lesser

The Guardian: 31 Best Fiction Books of 2017

[see also 2021 • 2020]

• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Reservoir 13
  Jon McGregor
• H(A)PPY
  Nicola Barker
• House of Names
  Colm Tóibín
• Mrs. Osmond
  John Banville
• The Golden House
  Salman Rushdie
• The Sparsholt Affair
  Alan Hollinghurst
• Manhattan Beach
  Jennifer Egan
• The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
  Arundhati Roy
• Birdcage Walk
  Helen Dunmore
• Home Fire
  Kamila Shamsie
• Dunbar
  Edward St. Aubyn
• We That Are Young
  Preti Taneja
• When I Hit You or a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
  Meena Kandasamy
• The End of Eddy
  Édouard Louis
• First Love
  Gwendoline Riley
• Fever Dream
  Samanta Schweblin
• Such Small Hands
  Andrés Barba
• Flights
  Olga Tokarczuk
• The Lie of the Land
  Amanda Craig
• Homegoing
  Yaa Gyasi
• My Absolute Darling
  Gabriel Tallent
• Conversations with Friends
  Sally Rooney
• Spoils
  Brian Van Reet
• The President’s Gardens
  Muhsin Al-Ramli
• Madame Zero

  9 Stories
  Sarah Hall
• Room Little Darker
  June Caldwell
• Attrib. and other stories
  Eley Williams
• Midwinter Break
  Bernard MacLaverty
• Winter
  Ali Smith

O, The Oprah Magazine: 11 Favorite Books of 2017

[see also 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

• We Were Eight Years in Power

  An American Tragedy
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Sour Heart
  Jenny Zhang
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Goodbye, Vitamin
  Rachel Khong
• The Leavers
  Lisa Ko
• The Future Is History

  How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
  Masha Gessen
• Her Body and Other Parties
  Carmen Maria Machado
• There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce
  Morgan Parker
• Future Home of the Living God
  Louise Erdrich
• The Hate U Give
  Angie Thomas

Megan O’Grady: 10 Best Books of 2017, as published by Vogue

• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward
• What We Lose
  Zinzi Clemmons
• Go, Went, Gone
  Jenny Erpenbeck
• The Dawn Watch

  Joseph Conrad in a Global World
  Maya Jasanoff
• The Burning Girl
  Claire Messud
• The Rules Do Not Apply
  Ariel Levy
• The Idiot
  Elif Batuman
• Conversations with Friends
  Sally Rooney
• The Answers
  Catherine Lacey