Why am I doing a Valentine's Day post on January 31st? Two reasons:
to give you time to order any of the items you might want for your sweetheart on February 14th
to give you time to call this list to the attention of someone who might be ordering a gift for you!
Whether you're the giver or the receiver, this should be a great place to start...
1. Book Paper Rose Bouquet:
2. Library Love Charm Bracelet:
3. Shakespeare Quote Chocolates:
4. Heart Book Light:
5. Secret Garden Charm:
6. “Love is Patient” Calligraphy Art Print:
7. “As You Wish” Engraved Bracelet:(Princess Bride)
8. The Book of Love: Daily Quotes for Lovers:
9. Marble Heart Bookend Set:
10. "We Loved with a Love" Cufflinks:
11. Library Bookshelves Tie:
12. What I Love About You Book:
I sure hope you enjoy going through these "Tops for Books Lovers" lists (such as calendars and Christmas village accessories) as much as we enjoy compiling them. Many thanks to my assistant, Tara, who is a book lover and an excellent gift giver and therefore the perfect person to help dig up unique items that you might not hear about anywhere else. We always have a blast choosing our favorites and passing them along to you. Whether you celebrate with gifts or cards or just simple "I love you"s, here's wishing you a Happy (getting ready for) Valentine's Day! Please note that this post contains affiliate links; clicking on them and making purchases generates affiliate commissions for the author. Which gift on this list would you most like to receive? Let us know in the comments below!
It’s that time again,
when I like to look back at the books I read in the previous year and rank my
favorites into two top ten lists, one for fiction and one for nonfiction.
Considering how much reading I do (more than 100 books last year!) this has not been an easy task,
but I have finally managed to whittle it all down to my top choices, and here
they are. First, however, a bit of explanation…
HOW I DECIDE
You’ve been told not to
judge a book by its cover, but once you’re finished reading it, how do you judge it? In other words, what is
it that makes you consider one book to be merely good and another to be
great?If you were to compile a list of
your top ten reads from the past year, what criteria would you use to rank them?
Fiction
There are a number of
ways to evaluate and rank fiction, all of which are perfectly valid. I’ve
been asking around, and here are some of the answers I’ve gotten:
I judge a novel…
“By the emotional
experience it gives me.” “By how unpredictable it
is.”
“By how well it’s
crafted.” “By the quality of the
setup and then the delivery.” “By what the experts
say.” “By comparison within
its genre and then in relation to other genres.” “By the artistry of the
language.” “By the depth of its theme.” “By how close it comes
to reaching its own goals.”
That last answer is
mine. I tend to judge fiction by how close it comes to reaching its own goals. For
example, if I were to compare:
a humorous novel that
gives me memorable characters and
a compelling story and makes me laugh my head
off
with
a critically-acclaimed novel
that has important themes and beautiful
language but leaves me feeling uninvested and unmoved,
then the humorous novel
wins.It may not be as “important” of a
work, but because it has fully reached its own goals, it has come closer to fulfilling
its promise to me as a reader and is thus, to my mind, the “better” book.Not everyone judges novels this way, but I
thought I’d explain my approach just in case you were wondering how I come up
with my list of favorites.
Forget the Dishes
Beyond that, to me the
single most important criteria for any work of fiction is that it should keep
me glued to its pages, that it should offer up some element that forces me to keep reading. That element can be anything from a
fascinating protagonist (The Wrong Side of Goodbye) to the primary plot
questions that I simply must have answered (The Gifting Trilogy) to great
pacing that sweeps me into its momentum (Map of Fates) to such esoteric things
as the “feel” of a place or people and my desire to remain with them rather
than return to reality (The Yada Yada Prayer Group) and more. In other words,
any number of things might rise up from a story, grab my hand, and pull me
fully into its world despite the demands of real life. But whatever the reasons,
if I can’t put a book down, to me that’s a great book–whether it’s a fine and
complex piece of literature or a simple young adult action adventure.
NONFICTION
I demand a lot from the
nonfiction I read as well, though my criteria for judging isn’t quite as
defined.For example, I declared a tie between
my two favorites for the year, but I loved them for very different reasons.
Both are wonderfully written and quite compelling, but The Creative Habit gave
me life-changing advice, encouragement, and inspiration while Packing for Mars
taught me tons of incredibly fascinating things–some of which I didn’t even
know I wanted to know–and presented scientifically complicated concepts in completely
accessible and often humorous ways.
I guess I could say that
I judge nonfiction by a wider range of criteria, such as how hard it is to put
down, how much time I spend thinking about it when I’m not reading it, how it
affects me personally, how compellingly it informs me of something new, how
deeply it “connects” with me, and more. Bottom line, I guess my favorite works
of nonfiction are the ones that stick with me long after I’ve finished reading
them.
And Now, the List
So, without further ado,
here are my favorites of all the books I read in 2017. (Note: Bear in mind, as always,
that these weren't necessarily books that were released last year,
they’re just books that I happened to read last year.)
FAVORITE FICTION
Please note that this post contains affiliate links; clicking on them and making purchases generates affiliate commissions for the author. 1.TIE:
Map of Fates: Conspiracy of Us #2 by Maggie
Hall
The Gifting Trilogy: The Gifting; The Awakening; The Gathering by K.E. Ganshert
2. The Wrong Side of
Goodbye by Michael Connelly
3. Mad Mouse: John
Ceepak #2 by Chris Grabenstein
4. Don’t Ever Get Old
by Daniel Friedman
5. Signals: New and
Selected Stories by Tim Gautreaux
6. The Yada Yada
Prayer Group by Neta Jackson
7. Major Pettigrew’s
Last Stand by Helen Simonson
8. The Curious Charms
of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick
9. 600 Hours of
Edward by Craig Lancaster
10. A Mango Shaped
Space by Wendy Mass
FAVORITE NONFICTION
1.TIE:
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use
It for Life by Twyla Tharp
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
2. Bored and
Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self by
Manoush Zomorodi
3. Deep Work: Rules
for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
4. Searching for
Sunday by Rachel Held Evans
5. Nudge: Improving
Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R.
Sunstein
6. Cuba Beyond the Beach: Stories of Life in Havana by Karen Dubinsky
7. You Are Here:
From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves by
Hiawatha Bray
8. Bad Science:
Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks by Ben Goldacre
9. TIE:
Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at
the Edge of the World by Joan Druett
The
River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
10. The Magnolia
Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines
Nonfiction Honorable Mention
I can’t resist adding one more book here, not because of any salient qualities as a work of nonfiction but just because of the impact it had on my life in 2017. By following the principles set out in this book, I managed to lose 30 pounds, get my diabetes under control, drop some medications, and maintain a completely new and workable lifestyle that’s keeping the weight off and slowly helping me lose even more.For that alone, it’s worth recommending:
The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung
Here's my before and after:
DEC 2016
DEC 2017
Let me know if you give it a try and, if so, how it works for you!
Because of eye issues, I
can only read audibly these days, so you may be interested to know that every
single one of the books on my lists are available not just in print but in
audio versions as well.I love
overdrive, the audiobook resource for my local library, and audible, the
single most-used app on my phone and an entity I simply couldn’t live without.
I highly recommend audible to anyone who enjoys listening to audiobooks! Learn more by clicking on one of these links, below, and get two free audiobooks just for signing up...
One Last Thought
I mentioned above that my most important criteria for fiction is that it forces me to keep reading. This is my primary goal as a writer as
well. Certainly, I try to focus on artistry and craft and pacing and
characterization and theme and spiritual value and so on, but in the end if a
book makes you shrug and go “eh”, if you’re able to put it aside easily without
a single twinge of regret, then it has not hit the mark.
My tagline is “Read Now,
Sleep Later” because my aim as an author
is to keep you up past your bedtime
because you can’t bear to stop reading the stories I’ve written for you.
Whenever that happens, then as far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my job. J
The authors of the books
in these lists have certainly done their jobs, and done them remarkably. I hope
you’ll find my recommendations useful and discover some new and wonderful books
to read.
In the meantime, here’s
a re-post of the little 20-second clip that elaborates on my tagline. Enjoy!
So how do you evaluate the books you read? Finish this sentence in the comments below: I judge a novel by…
