5 Star Reads in a 1 Star Year: 2017 in Review

Over the past month my writing has limped along, overshadowed by year-end responsibilities, winter holidays, school vacation for my little one, and seasonal elevations in anxiety. Fortunately for my overall mental health, my reading has kept apace.

Just as 2017 was a year, for me, of unprecedented anxiety, fear, and frustration with the outside world, it was a banner year for reading. Not only did I read more books this year than any time in my adult life, I also read broader – by geography, genre, and culture.

As the public discourse became more and more heated and, too often, hateful, I turned again and again to books both as an escape from, but also as an insight into my world. REPRESENTATION is the word that bubbles up when I look at my intentions and my outcomes in my reading year. More than half of the books I read were by people of color. More than half were written by people from countries other than the United States, and many of those written by Americans were written by first generation Americans.

I swear to you I am not an easy grader, so I can tell you with honest awe and genuine excitement that I read 26 five star books in 2017. These are books I would strongly urge each and everyone to read. I’ve grouped them below a bit thematically, with links to my reviews. Congratulations! You’ve got yourself a healthy TBR for the foreseeable future!

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Heartwarming and Life-changing

• My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry – Fredrik Backman
  Fiction from a Swedish writer who has magic in his touch, making darkness sweet but never saccharine
• Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too – Jomny Sun
  A graphic novel full of kindness and honesty, about loneliness and belonging
• When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
  Part memoir part philosophical rumination, “When Breath Becomes Air” discusses Kalanithi’s lifelong fascination with mortality – as a seeker, as a medical professional and, in the end, as a terminal patient

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Immigration, Displacement, and the Wounds of War

• Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie
  The story of intertwined siblings, the constant challenge of anti-Muslim sentiment, and the radicalization of a young Muslim man
• Look – Solmaz Sharif
  A stunning, stark collection of poetry from an Iranian writer and the ravages of a war-torn world
• The Kindness of Enemies – Leila Aboulela
  A complex novel of contemporary Scotland and 1850s Russia in which religious conflict and the multigenerational struggles of immigration and cultural assimilation inform every aspect of life
• The Good Immigrant – edited by Nikesh Shukla
  A collection of stunning and bold essays about the modern immigrant experience
• Exit West – Moshin Hamid
  A gorgeous novel about modern refugees in which Moshin Hamid speaks compellingly about the interconnectedness of the world through blended borders, periodic “asides”, and literal doors through time and space
• The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen
  Framed as a confession, this novel tells the story of a captain in the South Vietnamese army and a communist sleeper agent who is currently imprisoned back in Vietnam

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Wet-My-Pants Funny and Clever

• We are Never Meeting in Real Life – Samantha Irby
  A collection of acerbic, unapologetic, uncommonly witty, and unforgettably good essays
• Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman – Lindy West
  In this eviscerating collection of essays, West speaks from the heart and the funny bone as she takes on fat-shaming, misogyny, rape culture, and internet trolls

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Race and Racism

• We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy – Ta-nehisi Coates
  Essays by one of America’s greatest living writers
• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America – Ibram X. Kendi
  History and analysis of race and racism like you’ve never heard it before
• The Sellout – Paul Beatty
  The razor sharp wit and biting satire in this 2016 Booker Prize Winner will have you snorting and groaning on nearly every page
• The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
  An urgent missive from a world embroiled in a fight for civil rights and justice, Baldwin spoke truth to power; he also spoke truth to the everyman, his readers for decades to come
• March (Volumes 1-3) – John Lewis
  Alternating between Inauguration Day 2009 and the 1960s, John Lewis, along with co-author Andrew Aydin and Illustrator Nate Powell, tell the story of the civil rights movement through three powerful graphic novels

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Dazzling Debuts

• Hum If You Don’t Know the Words – Bianca Marais
  A beautiful first novel during the heat of race rioting and anti-apartheid agitation in South Africa
• What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky – Lesley Nneka Arimah
  Brilliant, fantastical short stories that are modern fairy tales in the very best way
• Marriage of a Thousand Lies – SJ Sindu
  The clever story of a Sri Lankan-American whose life and sexuality challenge the norms of her diaspora community
• Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
  Hard to call anything by this accomplished writer a debut, but this is, in fact, his first novel, and it is, in my opinion, the first of a new art form. This book cracked my heart and my mind wide open.
• Midwinter – Fiona Melrose
  This novel is a pastoral look at family, love, guilt, and manhood, all from an eerily insider view that is, at least at some level, brilliantly contrived.

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Flex Your Feminism

• The Widow Nash – Jamie Harrison
  An historical novel of thrilling intrigue and daring do, in which a woman in the ‘wild west’ takes extreme steps to forge a lift for herself
• The Power – Naomi Alderman
  In this electrifying novel, girls and women slowly awaken their inner power and begin to resist the patriarchies which have dominated the world since time immemorial
• All Grown Up – Jami Attenberg
  This is a character novel which never wanders, never slows, and never loosens its grip

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Life and Love

• The Book of Harlan – Bernice L. McFadden
  Beginning in Macon, Georgia with the whirlwind courtship of his parents, this gorgeously heartbreaking novel develops alongside Harlan – from a spurned youngster being raised by his grandparents to a burgeoning musician in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance to one of the under-acknowledged victims of fascist oppression in Nazi-occupied Europe
• Another Brooklyn – Jacqueline Woodson
  This novel tells the story of a group of inseparable girlfriends growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s, exploring the various iterations of poverty and the complexities of family life for these four young girls coming of age in a time and place of turbulence