Looking for Holiday Book Suggestions?

Last week was crazy for me and I honestly meant to have this post up sooner. Now it's down to a week before Christmas but books are one of the easiest and best last minute gifts! You're giving the recipient the trip to another world and/or changing their mind by enriching it. Even as a belated Hannukah present, you can't beat a good book. Here are the best books, in my favorite genres, that I've read in 2017. I'll also make some further recommendations. All the links provided go to Goodreads, where you can look under the synopsis for "Get A Copy" which gives you a variety of choices (except for one of my suggestions below) for buying the book. (I realize not all of you are Amazon fans!)

The Best of 2017 Fantasy

In the realm of Fantasy, clearly one of my favorite genres, I can give hearty recommendations to Alice Hoffman's The Rules of Magic, technically a prequel for her book Practical Magic, but which stands on its own and is a better book all around. In the realm of magical realism, Ruth Emmie Lang's Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstances is an impressive and luminous debut novel. And in the realm of Arabic and Persian mythology, S. A. Chakraborty's The City of Brass, is an equally impressive debut novel, first in a trilogy.

Some of the best books I've read in 2017 have actually been new releases in a series of books.  At the top of the list stands N.K. Jemisin's The Stone Sky, which completes The Broken Earth Trilogy. This series, which began with The Fifth Season and continued in The Obelisk Gate, was simply stunning. Jemisin has won back to back Hugo Awards for the first two books. The Stone Sky is so good, I can envision her being the first author to win three times in a row. As a second entry in the Winternight Trilogy,  The Girl in the Tower follows Katherine Arden's impressive debut novel, The Bear and the Nightingale. Both books are adaptations of the Russian folklore surrounding Vasilisa the Wise/Brave and Morozko, or Father Frost/Death. The Winternight Trilogy upends the traditional female gender-confined roles in Russian folklore in a marvelous way, giving us a heroine we meet as a child and follow into young adulthood, watching her embrace her gifts. The Book of Dust is the long-awaited follow-up to Philip Pullman's powerful His Dark Materials trilogy. Set in Lyra's Oxford, the book is a prequel of sorts, giving us new protagonists while featuring an infant Lyra along with Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter. (Please note that this latest Pullman entry is not best suited to children or middle grades. See my review of the book for further information.) The Book of Dust can be read as a standalone, without having read His Dark Materials, but it will be a steep learning curve if you haven't read His Dark Materials.

The Best of 2017 Sci-Fi

There are two series that I found in 2017 that are as different as night and day in terms of accessibility and tone. Both are some of the best sci-fi I've read in recent years. Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy is a series in which you can envision accelerating to lightspeed, away from everything you know, and come to an abrupt halt only to be dropped into a world in which everything from factions to weapons to ships is different. You know what's the same? Human nature and politics, that's what. Formation instinct be damned! Ninefox Gambit and Raven Strategem, the first two books in the trilogy are brilliant, immersive works of science fiction. In contrast to Lee's books, the happy, light tone of Becky Chamber's Wayfarer series seems like a breath of science fiction fresh air. I'm most reminded of the famous single-season series Firefly in tone. There are wonderful characters, lightness, hope, humor, drama, banter and a beautiful difference in scale- the grand and the small, awaiting readers of these first two books of the Wayfarer world, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and A Closed and Common Orbit. (I loved A Closed and Common Orbit so much I named my iPad mini Sidra, people.)

The Best of 2017 Young Adult Books

Angie Thomas's searing The Hate U Give has deservedly received a lot of attention this year. It's the best Young Adult Book I read in 2017 and a good book for any young person to read.

The Best Children's Fiction of 2017

In the chapter reader category, Beth Vrabel's book Caleb and Kit, in which a boy with cystic fibrosis meets a girl living in a child abuse/neglect situation, has stayed with me ever since I read the book in early 2017. A thought-provoking read for children from late elementary through the middle grades. In the picture book category, Isabelle Simler's exquisite The Blue Hour and the 2017 Caldecott Medal Honoree Brendan Wenzel's They All Saw A Cat encourage young children to really look at the world and creatures around them.

Best of 2017 Non-Fiction

Kate Moore's The Radium Girls provides us with the perfect example of why allowing corporations and industries to regulate themselves can be disastrous for human health. This scrupulously documented book shows us exactly how and why OSHA became a necessary federal agency.

Finally, not necessarily books from 2017, but great books to share...

Literary Fiction

Anthony Doerr's exquisite All The Light We Cannot See is still one of the most memorable books I have read in the past decade. I cannot recommend this book enough. The melding of art, science, and history in this book is simply breathtaking.

An Indispensable Duology

If you are looking for a gorgeous boxed set for the fantasy lover in your life, Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows Duology both looks and is a smashing gift. You might want to give this gift box set with a package of waffle mix. Or if the person doesn't have a waffle press, just add cupcakes and tea.

A Terrific Kindle Omnibus

Max Gladstone's The Craft Sequence is one of my favorite series. The first five books are available in a Kindle Omnibus edition that is an absolute steal of a price. It is not often that you can get 1800+ pages of writing of this quality for $12 in any genre.

And that's it for my holiday recommendations. What were your best books of 2017?