This year's best reading

Carrie Brown

Two of the best books I read in 2017 were novels I probably never would have read but for a literary discussion group at my local library. I connected with the group in mid-summer when I noticed they would be discussing Jon Clinch's novel Finn at their next meeting. I had read the book years previously and I wanted to hear what others said about it. I ended up staying with the group until coming south in November, and two of the books we talked about during this period were The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson and Lamb in Love by Carrie Brown. Both novels made a good impression.

Jackson's novel tells of a divorce lawyer, someone who views her calling as breaking up families, discovering she has two siblings she doesn't know she has and finding herself in the position of struggling to bring a family together. Brown writes about a middle-aged postmaster who falls in love for the first time in his life and seems to do everything wrong, yet somehow manages to do everything right.

Other notable novels read this year (none of them actually published in 2017) included Tracy Chevalier's The Last Runaway, about a young Quaker woman who settles in Ohio in the mid-1800s and becomes involved in the Underground Railroad while falling in love with a man trying to round up runaway slaves; Marilynn Robinson's Gilead, about a dying pastor's attempt to explain himself to his very young son; and Anthony Trollope's Cousin Henry, about a lost will and characters who take moral stands for less than moral reasons.

Which is the best of these? I'd say Lamb in Love, with The Last Runaway a close second.

Michael Korda

That said, I must admit the most fun I had reading this year was with Old Boys, a spy novel by Charles McCarry. Not far behind is Crosstalk by Connie Willis, which I reviewed here just a few days ago. For pure pleasure reading, it would be hard to beat these two books.

As for nonfiction reading, I had a good time with biographies in 2017. The best was Michael Korda's Clouds of Glory about Robert E. Lee, but Coolidge by Amity Shlaes, Mr. Strangelove by Ed Sikov (about actor Peters Sellers) and Ike's Bluff (about the Eisenhower presidency) were also first-rate.

Other nonfiction works that impressed me were The Road to Character by David Brooks, Sanctuary of Trees by Gene Logsdon, Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett and The Better Angels of Ourselves by Steven Pinker.