Here Are The 10 Best Books Of 2017!

by Riya Roy · December 28, 2017

Hi guys! Hope you’ve been good to the people around you, and to yourself, especially. 2017 is about to come to a close, and here we are picking our favorite books from this year. In today’s post, we will present you the 10 best books of 2017. From novels to memoirs, we have it all!

10 best books of 2017 that you cannot miss out on

1. Autumn by Ali Smith

“I’m tired of the news. I’m tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren’t, and deals so simplistically with what’s truly appalling. I’m tired of the vitriol. I’m tired of anger. I’m tired of the meanness. I’m tired of selfishness. I’m tired of how we’re doing nothing to stop it. I’m tired of how we’re encourageing it. I’m tired of the violence that’s on it’s way, that’s coming, that hasn’t happened yet. I’m tired of liars. I’m tired of sanctified liars. I’m tired of how those liars have let this happen. I’m tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or did it on purpose. I’m tired of lying governments. I’m tired of people not caring whether they’re being lied to anymore. I’m tired of being made to feel this fearful.”

This is a tale of an extraordinary friendship shared by two neighbors; an elderly songwriter and a gifted child of a single parent. This friendship forms the heart of the novel, which moves back and forth through time. We travel through decades from the ‘60s to Brexit. The book flits around human mind’s eternal dilemma on how to be.

2. So Much Blue by Percival Everett

“And though I missed my lover, I was not sad. I was satisfied. I was different.”

Percival Everett is famous for his satire but in this novel, he keeps his comic talent on a low key. This is the story of a melancholic painter who is middle-aged. Three narrative strands interweave through his life: the reminiscence of an improper and death-haunted youthful journey to war-torn El Salvador; the resonances of his affair with a younger woman in Paris; and cracks in his family life as he works on a secret conceptual magnum opus that he may never finish. This book will break your heart in the most beautiful way.

3. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

“You can love more than one person, she said. That’s arguable. Why is it any different from having more than one friend? You’re friends with me and you also have other friends, does that mean you don’t really value me? I don’t have other friends, I said.”

This book captures the story of an Irish millennial who despises the conventional idea of love, but somehow gets involved in a clandestine relationship with an older man. A wonderful read, it had to be on list of best books of this year.

4. The Answers by Catherine Lacey

“I read somewhere that the first thing you learn when traveling is that you don’t exist–I didn’t want to stop not existing.”

I love this book. It was so difficult for me to choose a quote, because every sentence in this novel is so captivating. For example, “Love is a compromise for only getting to be one person.” Right, right?

The Answers by Catherine Lacey talks about human relations in capitalist end times. You MUST read this.

5. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

“but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.”

This novel is about a couple fleeing a civil war. It talks about how the migrants learn to get used to an improvisatory existence. This novel fuses the real with the surreal to create a true account of the unsteady political fault line of our world.

6. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

“You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”

This is Min Jin Lee’s second novel, and it chronicles the lives of four generations of a traditional Korean family. It explores the concerns behind the idea of identity and belonging and it makes its intentions clear from the very first line: “History has failed us, but no matter.”

7. The Power by Naomi Alderman

“It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t, that she never would. What matters is that she could if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.”

The Power is a riveting story that Naomi Alderman tells in a necessary electric language. The book explores the idea of how power corrupts everyone. According to Alderman, the horrors of history cannot be escaped, and that there will always be people who misuse and abuse power, and that the axis of the universe never tilts toward justice but goes further away from it with time. If you enjoy books that discuss our history, our wars, and our politics, then this is the perfect book for you.

8. The Changeling by Victor LaValle

“Do you know how much harm ‘happily ever after’ has done to mankind? I wish they said something else at the end of those stories instead. ‘They tried to be happy.’ Or ‘Eternal happiness is a fruitless pursuit.”

Deep in the boroughs of NYC we see a couple give birth to their first child. But soon after that the mother feels a strange distance from her son, and questions if this is indeed her son or an imposter. The story questions parenting norms as well as racial prejudices, and it does so, very cleverly.

9. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

“That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the f*ck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”

Paul Beatty seemed unassuming at first, but after he wrote The Sellout, he has catapulted to an instant stardom, and why shouldn’t he be. This novel is a satirical take on slavery and revolves around the life of a man who wants to reintroduce slavery.

10. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”

The narrator of this book is an OCD; someone who is hyper went it comes to being organized, and someone who lives by the same routine for several years and plans to do the same in the days to come. When the narrator falls in love with a local musician, that’s when we understand everything is not fine with her.

This book dives into mental health and creates a very compelling tale around it. Please read this if you want to truly understand what goes inside the head of a person who isn’t fine.

That is all we have on today’s post on the 10 best books of 2017. Did your favorites feature on the list? If not, then let us know about the books you loved most, this year, in the comment section below. Also, tell us why you loved them.

For other 2017 reviews stay glued to this space!

Featured image source: Instagram

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