2017 Year in Review: Some Stats and a Recap of Favorite Reads

Happy 2018 to fellow bookworms! :-)

2017 proved to be a phenomenal reading year for me!  I read more books last year than I’ve ever read in one year, which is an achievement in and of itself, but the accomplishment I’m most proud of is that I was able to stick to my commitment of writing a review for every single book I read.  This is no small feat given my usual busy life!  For 2018, I intend to read even more books and will continue to write reviews for every book read as I did this year.

For my 2017 reading challenge on Goodreads, I had set a goal of reading 52 books, with the intention of reading one book a week.  Well, it turns out that I exceeded that number, as I ended up reading 56 books – 4 more than my original goal!  Many of the books I read were published this year (2017), but there were also some older ones in there that I read for challenges and/or book clubs that I really enjoyed.  Majority of the books were 3 stars and above, with only 5 books falling into the 2 star category, so I would say that overall, I definitely had a great year! 

Before I go into my list of favorite reads for 2017, just wanted to share a few stats…

Ratings breakdown:

5 Star Reads:  12

4 to 4.5 Star Reads:  24

3 to 3.5 Star Reads:  15

2 to 2.5 Star Reads:  5

Genre / Category breakdown:

Fiction:  48

-          General Fiction:  24

-          Classics: 4

-          Historical: 13

-          Mystery/Thriller/Suspense: 4

-          Short Stories: 2

-          Young Adult (YA): 1

Non-Fiction: 8

-          General Non-fiction: 4

-          Memoirs: 4

ARCs / Review copies

NetGalley:  16

Edelweiss:  5

Penguin First to Read: 13

Direct from author / publisher:  1

**

Favorite Reads of 2017

Below is my list of favorite reads this year (in no particular order) – all of these books I rated 5 stars:

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

 

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas

All the Best People by Sonja Yoerg

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Lost Letter by Jillian Cantor

Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The following books I rated 4 stars but they were particularly enjoyable reads for me so I figured I would mention them as well (again, in no particular order):

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

The Red Hunter by Lisa Unger

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

Almost Missed You by Jessica Strawser

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

The Little French Bistro by Nina George

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne

The Barrowfields by Phillip Lewis

The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir by Jennifer Ryan

Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker

** Note:  To read my reviews for any of the above books, please click on the name of the book in the sidebar to the right of this blog.  Thanks!**

Review: The Remains of the Day (by Kazuo Ishiguro)

My Rating: 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars

I struggle to write this review because honestly, I'm at a loss for words at the moment.  So perhaps let me backtrack and talk first about why I chose to read this book in the first place.  One of my Goodreads challenges this year is the A to Z Author Challenge where I need to read a book by an author whose (last) name starts with each letter of the alphabet.  The last letter I needed in order to complete this challenge was the letter "I" and after changing my choice a few times, I decided to read a work by an author I had heard plenty about but up to this point hadn’t had the opportunity to experience for myself yet.  Of course, that author is none other than our newly crowned Nobel Laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro.  I’ve known about his masterpiece The Remains of the Day since the 90s and I’m pretty sure I even saw the movie way back when too, but I had never read the book, primarily because it had never been assigned as required reading in any of the literature classes I had taken back then (those were the days where rarely anyone read classics for leisure and so most exposure to classics was through school/classroom setting).  It has been nearly two decades since I’ve been out of the "school" environment and now I can finally say that I’ve read this book – most importantly though, I didn’t just read the book, I actually enjoyed it too!

I’m actually not sure what else I can say about this book that others haven’t already said.  Beautiful, wonderful, brilliant, subtle, multi-layered, philosophical, thought-provoking...these are just some of the words I’ve heard used to describe this book and I absolutely agree with all of them!  Ishiguro is a masterful writer and the way he was able to render the narrative so beautifully, yet subtly, with everything that was not said being equally as important as what was said – very few authors have the ability to utilize language in such a way as to make a story so philosophical and subdued in nature still be so enthralling.  This book definitely left me with much food for thought, so much so in fact that I’m still kind of speechless, hence the rambling nature of this review, as I really don’t know where to start in terms of putting down my thoughts, so I think I will keep it brief and instead just encourage everyone to read this book.  I also think this is a book that needs to be read more than once -- slowly, thoughtfully -- in order to truly understand and appreciate its brilliance.  For me, this was an excellent read with which to end the year (and also complete my challenge) but no doubt I will be coming back to this book again some time in the near future and hopefully at that time, the words won’t escape me again and I will be better able to express the myriad of thoughts going through my mind after finishing this wonderful masterpiece!