Friday, November 10, 2017

The Top 100 Best Books Of 2017 According To Amazon (As Picked By Amazon's Book Editors)

In less than two months, we are going to kiss 2017 an explosive goodbye. For us lovers of the printed word, it marks the beginning of the Great Look Back. It’s the time we sit down, pour a cup of coffee, and look back at the books we’ve read during the past twelve months. Which books made us fall in love? Which books made us laugh like hyenas? Which books stirred our philosophical tendencies? Which books made us realize that there’s much more to life than working ourselves to death just so we can say that we have a thick wallet? Which books made us pity the trees that have been sacrificed for their abominations of a plot? Which books inspired us to pick up a pen and scribble the skeleton of a novel, short story, or poem? Which books encouraged us to pack our bags and travel to god-knows-where destinations?

Alas, we still have two months to go before we can immerse ourselves in that Great Look Back. But the folks over at Amazon beg to differ. It’s early November but they’ve already released their best books of 2017 list. But who can blame them. They are businessmen first, book lovers second. If you have a business to run and that business involves marketing books, profit comes before passion. That’s capitalism for you. I’m not saying it’s wrong. It’s just the way it works.

Amazon, is without a doubt, the biggest mover of books online. With the holidays just around the corner, it's pretty obvious that this early announcement for their best books of 2017 is to encourage people to start purchasing the titles as gifts. There are countless books that are yet to roll out this November and December. It's completely unfair that they are out of consideration for the list. Anyway, whether you consider it as a money-grab or not, it's still interesting to look into the list as chosen by Amazon's book editors. For sure, they've spent a lot of time and resources in mulling over which titles should make it to the list. So if you're looking for more titles to add to your reading pile, the list is worth checking out. Below is the complete list of the best books of 2017 (according to Amazon book editors).

1. The Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
2. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
3. Beartown by Fredrik Backman
4. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
5. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
6. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
7. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
8. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie
9. Sourdough by Robin Sloan
10. The Dry by Jane Harper
11. The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Peterson
12. My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
13. Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
14. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
15. Priestdaddy: A Memoir by Patricia Lockwood
16. Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory
17. 4321 by Paul Auster
18. This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
19. American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse
20. Turtles All The Way Down by John Green
21. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
22. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
23. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
24. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
25. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
26. The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
27. The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak
28. Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny
29. One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel
30. Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
31. Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything by Ulrich Boser
32. Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat by Patricia Williams and Jeannine Amber
33. Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo
34. Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry
35. Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
36. The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
37. Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden
38. Prussian Blue (A Bernie Gunther Novel) by Philip Kerr
39. The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs
40. Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
41. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
42. Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family, and an Inexplicable Crime by Ben Blum
43. The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
44. A Legacy of Spies by John le Carre
45. Hunger: A Memoir of My Body by Roxane Gay
46. Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly
47. Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green
48. Savage Country by Robert Olmstead
49. The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn
50. Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker
51. History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
52. Word by Word by The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
53. Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
54. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
55. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
56. Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land
57. In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown
58. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
59. Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine
60. The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur
61. Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters
62. Human Acts by Han Kang
63. Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
64. The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World by Brad Stone
65. Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes
66. Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter
67. All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
68. Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon by Jeffrey Kluger
69. The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy
70. American War by Omar El Akkad
71. The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
72. One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays by Scaachi Koul
73. Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgman
74. Sycamore by Bryn Chancellor
75. American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road by Nick Bilton
76. When the English Fall by David Williams
77. The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home by Sally Mott Freeman
78. The Floating World by C. Morgan Babst
79. The City of Brass: The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty
80. The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce
81. Sting-Ray Afternoons: A Memoir by Steve Rushin
82. Afterlife by Marcus Sakey
83. An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice by Khizr Khan
84. What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons
85. Trajectory: Stories by Richard Russo
86. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris
87. The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo by Ian Stansel
88. Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta
89. Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee
90. The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson
91. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes by Adam Rutherford and Siddhartha Mukherjee
92. Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
93. White Tears by Hari Kunzru
94. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
95. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
96. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
97. The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992 by Tina Brown
98. In The Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende
99. Void Star by Zachary Mason
100. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz