new york times book review best books 2017

The New York Times Book Review’s Best Books of 2017 Available in Large Print!

The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to  The New York Times  in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry.

Annually, the editors of The New York Times Book Review choose the year’s top ten books. As a leading publisher of large print, Thorndike Press is proud to carry three of these books for 2017.

“Spellbinding.”  — starred, Booklist “Timely and resonant.”  — Publisher’s Weekly, Top 10 Most-Anticipated Literary Fiction of 2017 “[H]eartbreakingly relevant.”  —Library Journal “It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a roadmap to our future . . . This book blew the top off my head. It’s at once terrifying and, in the end, oddly hopeful.”   — New York Times Book Review

“. . . their stories are deeply affecting, in no small part because of Ward’s brilliant writing and compassionate eye.” — starred, Publishers Weekly “Lyrical yet tough, Ward’s distilled language effectively captures the hard lives, fraught relationships, and spiritual depth of her characters.” — starred, Library Journal “ Sing, Unburied, Sing  is many things: a road novel, a slender epic of three generations and the ghosts that haunt them, and a portrait of what ordinary folk in dire circumstances cleave to as well as what they — and perhaps we all — are trying to outrun.” — New York Times Book Review

“[A] beautifully written portrait. . . . Chernow doesn’t gloss over Grant’s struggle with alcoholism or his tendency to trust shady operators.  However, his willingness to protect the gains of freemen and to fight the KKK was an example of the moral courage he consistently displayed.  This is a superb tribute to Grant, whose greatness is earning increased appreciation.” — starred, Booklist “The definitive biography for the foreseeable future.” — Publishers Weekly “As Americans continue the struggle to defend justice and equality in our tumultuous and divisive era, we need to know what Grant did when our country’s very existence hung in the balance. If we still believe in forming a more perfect union, his steady and courageous example is more valuable than ever.” — New York Times Book Review

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The Ultimate Best Books of 2017 List

Or: clarity in consensus.

It’s the end of the year, and everybody has an opinion. And of course, where there’s an opinion, there’s a listicle. The river of Best of 2017 lists can be exhausting this time of year, so as a public service, and because my math skills are always in need of a little exercise, I’ve created a streamlined master list of the books that the most people loved this year. Of course, I couldn’t include everything (like NPR’s enormous list of favorites). But I looked at the end-of-year roundups from 35 outlets and tracked a total of 520 discrete books in order to figure out the most critically popular books of the year. Does that mean they are the Best? You’ll have to decide for yourself, by reading them.

It’s interesting to compare this list of the “best” books to the most recommended books of fall (though it’s not a perfect match-up, of course, because many of these books came out in other seasons)—for instance, everyone was pretty sure they were going to like Jesmyn Ward’s  Sing, Unburied, Sing , and Celeste Ng’s  Little Fires Everywhere , and then they did! Success. Other books fell a little in the relative rankings. But all in all, it’s pretty satisfying to see how much people loved and recommended books by women and people of color this year.

For the record, the best-of lists I consulted for this master list are from the following outlets:  GQ , The New York Times , Vogue , Vulture , USA Today , Luna Luna , Publisher’s Weekly  (Top 10), The Washington Post , The Chicago Review of Books ( Fiction , Poetry , and Nonfiction ), The New York Public Library , The LA Times ( Fiction and Nonfiction ), Financial Times ( Fiction , Poetry , and Literary Nonfiction ), Popsugar , Newsday , Library Journal , Elle , Amazon , Book Riot , EW , Cosmopolitan , The Economist , The Stranger , The Wall Street Journal , Bookpage , Shelf Awareness , NYLON ( Fiction and Nonfiction ), Entropy ( Fiction and Nonfiction ), Buzzfeed ( Fiction ), HuffPost ( Fiction ), Paste ( Nonfiction and Novels ), Esquire , The Boston Globe , TIME ( Novels and Nonfiction ),  The Chicago Tribune ,  The Brooklyn Rail . NB: wherever publications had multiple lists, I went with the shorter one—so, for instance, I counted the NYT  “Best Books” list but not their “Notable Books” list. This choice was made for my sanity.

(Some of these lists, I should say, bizarrely included books published in 2016—I caught what I could, but all mistakes in that area are the responsibility of the outlet in question.)

And now, without further ado…

The Best Books of 2017, per the power of the list:

On 22 lists Lincoln in the Bardo , George Saunders

On 19 lists Exit West , Mohsin Hamid Sing, Unburied, Sing , Jesmyn Ward

On 14 lists Killers of the Flower Moon , David Grann

On 13 lists Pachinko , Min Jin Lee Priestdaddy , Patricia Lockwood Little Fires Everywhere , Celeste Ng

On 12 lists Hunger , Roxane Gay Her Body and Other Partie s, Carmen Maria Machado

On 9 lists We Were Eight Years in Power , Ta-Nehisi Coates Sour Heart , Jenny Zhang

On 8 lists You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me , Sherman Alexie

On 7 lists The Power, Naomi Alderman Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan The Future is History, Masha Gessen The Leavers, Lisa Ko White Tears, Hari Kunzru The Answers , Catherine Lacey The Rules Do Not Apply , Ariel Levy Home Fire , Kamila Shamsie Borne , Jeff VanderMeer

On 6 lists Stay With Me , Ayobami Adebayo The Idiot , Elif Batuman What We Lose , Zinzi Clemmons What Happened , Hillary Clinton We Are Never Meeting in Real Life , Samantha Irby The Changeling , Victor LaValle

On 5 lists American War , Omar El Akkad All Grown Up , Jami Attenberg Grant , Ron Chernow Sunshine State , Sarah Gerard Goodbye Vitamin , Rachel Khong The Burning Girl , Claire Messud Made for Love , Alissa Nutting The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , Arundhati Roy The Blood of Emmett Till , Timothy B. Tyson They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us , Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

On 4 lists What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky , Lesley Nneka Arimah The Best We Could Do , Thi Bui Marlena , Julie Buntin Ill Will , Dan Chaon The Dark Dark : Stories , Samantha Hunt One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul Forest Dark , Nicole Krauss The Ninth Hour , Alice McDermott Homesick for Another World , Ottessa Moshfegh New People , Danzy Senna Bunk , Kevin Young

On 3 lists Future Home of the Living God , Louise Erdrich So Much Blue , Percival Everett Electric Arches , Eve L. Ewing My Favorite Thing Is Monsters , Emil Ferris World Without Mind , Franklin Foer Stephen Florida , Gabe Habash American Fire , Monica Hesse The Dawn Watch , Maya Jasanoff The Refugees , Viet Thanh Nguyen Mrs. Fletcher , Tom Perrotta After the Eclipse , Sarah Perry The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo , Taylor Jenkins Reid Conversations With Friends , Sally Rooney The Golden House , Salman Rushdie Autumn , Ali Smith Don’t Call Us Dead , Danez Smith The Hate U Give , Angie Thomas The Book of Joan , Lidia Yuknavitch

On 2 lists Salt Houses , Hala Alyan Large Animals , Jess Arndt The Golden Legend , Nadeem Aslam The Destroyers , Christopher Bollen The Heart’s Invisible Furies , John Boyne The Vanity Fair Diaries , Tina Brown Nomadland , Jessica Bruder When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities , Chen Chen Too Much and Not the Mood , Durga Chew-Bose Blind Spot , Teju Cole Sorry to Disrupt the Peace , Patty Yumi Cottrell Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race , Reni Eddo-Lodge Ali , Jonathan Eig Homo Deus , Yuval Harari Compass , Mathias Enard, trans. Charlotte Mandell Things We Lost in the Fire , Mariana Enríquez, trans. Megan McDowell Go, Went, Gone , Jenny Erpenbeck Abandon Me , Melissa Febos Locking Up Our Own , James Forman Jr. This Is How It Always Is , Laurie Frankel Difficult Women , Roxane Gay Ants Among Elephants , Sujatha Gidla Janesville , Amy Goldstein Turtles All the Way Down , John Green The Doll’s Alphabet , Camilla Grudova Sticky Fingers , Joe Hagan Notes on a Foreign Country , Suzy Hansen The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick , ed. Darryl Pinckney The Grip of It , Jac Jemc A Separation , Katie Kitamura Autumn , Karl Ove Knausgaard After Kathy Acker , Chris Kraus Since We Fell , Dennis Lehane Bluebird, Bluebird , Attica Locke Who Thought This Was a Good Idea , Alyssa Mastromonaco Afterglow , Eileen Myles There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé , Morgan Parker Calder , Jed Perl The Lost City of the Monkey God , Douglas Preston Ghost of the Innocent Man , Benjamin Rachlin Imagine Wanting Only This , Kristen Radtke Fever Dream , Samanta Schweblin, trans. Megan McDowell Theft By Finding , David Sedaris Improvement , Joan Silber The Mother of All Questions , Rebecca Solnit Anthony Powell , Hilary Spurling My Heart Hemmed In , Marie NDiaye, trans. Jordan Stump My Absolute Darling , Gabriel Tallent Frontier , Can Xue, trans. Karen Gernant Wait Till You See Me Dance , Deb Olin Unferth Why Poetry , Matthew Zapruder

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NYTBR’s 10 Best Books of 2017 & Editor’s Picks

HOORAY! Two nonfiction titles made the New York Times Book Review‘s “10 Best Books of 2017” list and five more (plus two honorable mentions) are New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2017! LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr. A former public defender in Washington, Forman has […]

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A look back on last year’s new york times best books.

• Categories:  About Bookselling
• By  Sydney Jarrard

As the New York Times Book Review prepares to announce its list of 10 “Best Books” of 2017, the American Booksellers Association is encouraging booksellers to take a look at last year’s top titles and keep them in mind when thinking about backlist favorites to sell this holiday season.

In 2016, the New York Times Book Review created bookmarks featuring the year’s selected titles and distributed the bookmarks to ABA member bookstores in the January 2017 Red box. “We are creating these bookmarks because this list does not just end in 2016,” the editors said in a statement. “We think these books will matter to readers for years to come, books we think people will remember long after they’ve read them, and books we think deserve to be remembered.”

This year, ABA will work with the New York Times Book Review to help booksellers feature and promote the 2017 Best Books list, which will be announced in December.

As ABA continues its campaign to highlight the importance of backlist titles such as last year’s New York Times Book Review picks, booksellers are reminded to visit the  ABA Book Buyer’s Handbook  to review publisher and university press offers  for Indies First, as well as publishers’  backlist programs ,  current special offers , and more. ABA’s new Backlist Buying Calculator can help booksellers evaluate the advantages of backlist offers. (A username and login are required to access these items; booksellers can e-mail  [email protected]  for login details.)

The New York Times Book Review ’s top 10 titles for 2016 were selected from the Times ’ list of 100 Notable Books of the Year . Titles chosen for the final list, as selected by Book Review editors, embody excellence on a number of fronts, including in the author’s ambition, execution of vision, quality of language, and storytelling power.

The 2016 New York Times Best Books , as announced on December 1, 2016, are:

• The Association of Small Bombs , by Karan Mahajan (Viking)
• The North Water , by Ian McGuire (Henry Holt & Company)
• The Underground Railroad , by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
• The Vegetarian , by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Hogarth)
• War and Turpentine , by Stefan Hertmans, translated by David McKay (Pantheon Books)
• At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails , by Sarah Bakewell (Other Press)
• Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right , by Jane Mayer (Doubleday)
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City , by Matthew Desmond (Crown Publishers)
• In the Darkroom , by Susan Faludi (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company)
• The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between , by Hisham Matar (Random House)

The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2016 were selected by judges G. Brian Karas, an illustrator for more than 70 books for children; Cynthia Weill, the director of the Center of Children’s Literature at Bank Street College of Education in New York City; and Cheryl Wolf, the librarian for two New York City public elementary schools.

The 2016 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books , as announced on November 3, 2016, are:

• The Cat From Hunger Mountain , written and illustrated by Ed Young (Philomel Books)
• The Dead Bird , by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Christian Robinson (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers)
• Freedom in Congo Square , by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Little Bee Books)
• Little Red , written and illustrated by Bethan Woollvin (Peachtree)
• The Polar Bear , written and illustrated by Jenni Desmond (Enchanted Lion Books)
• Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis , by Jabari Asim, illustrated by E.B. Lewis (Nancy Paulsen Books)
• The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes , written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh (Abrams)
• The Tree in the Courtyard: Looking Through Anne Frank’s Window , by Jeff Gottesfeld, illustrated by Peter McCarty (Alfred A. Knopf)
• A Voyage in the Clouds: The (Mostly) True Story of the First International Flight by Balloon in 1785 , by Matthew Olshan, illustrated by Sophie Blackall (Margaret Ferguson Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• The White Cat and the Monk: A Retelling of the Poem “Pangur Ban,” by Jo Ellen Bogart, illustrated by Sydney Smith (Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press)

Watch upcoming issues of Bookselling This Week for the announcement of the 2017 New York Times Best Books list and for details about this year’s bookmarks. The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2017 were announced on November 2, 2017.

Booksellers who are attending the 2018 Winter Institute will have the opportunity to get a sneak peek inside the book review process during a session featuring New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul and ABA CEO Oren Teicher. The session will take place on Tuesday, January 23, from 10:40 a.m. to 11:40 a.m. See the full Winter Institute program here . 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

125 years of literary history.

edited by Tina Jordan & Noor Qasim ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2021

An ebullient celebration of literature.

A capacious history of the influential publication.

To commemorate the 125th anniversary of the New York Times Book Review , current deputy editor Jordan, assisted by Qasim, offers a fascinating selection of reviews, letters, interviews, essays, announcements, book lists, bits of gossip (Colette, on a ship, wore sandals without stockings!), and op-ed pieces published in the supplement since its first appearance on Oct. 10, 1896. Organized chronologically into five sections that comprise around three decades each, and profusely illustrated with author photographs, plates, advertisements, and assorted literary artifacts, the volume amply fulfills the editor’s goal of revealing how the Review “has shaped literary taste, informed arguments and driven the world of ideas in the United States and beyond.” Book critic Parul Sehgal prefaces the selections with an astute essay examining how the Review has covered works by women, writers of color, and writers in the LGBTQ+ community. In its early years, White male perspectives dominated, with reviewers worried about the proliferation and popularity of women writers. Overall, however, the collection amply represents reviewers “contemptuous of anxious gatekeeping,” bringing to their task “nerve, wariness and style.” Anxious gatekeeping, however, as well as wafts of condescension, can be found. For example, in 1904, the reviewer of W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk remarked, “Many passages of the book will be very interesting to the student of the negro character who regards the race ethnologically and not politically, not as a dark cloud threatening the future of the United States.” In 1933, assessing two feminist histories, the Review ’s editor saw the success of the women’s movement as “one of the major tragedies in the history of mankind.” Reviews by acclaimed authors include Eudora Welty on Charlotte’s Web ; W.H. Auden on Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring ; Kurt Vonnegut on Tom Wolfe; and Margaret Atwood on Toni Morrison’s Beloved . A long list of other famous reviewers appends the volume.

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-23461-7

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021

HISTORY | UNITED STATES | GENERAL NONFICTION

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

The osage murders and the birth of the fbi.

by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann ( The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession , 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

GENERAL HISTORY | TRUE CRIME | UNITED STATES | FIRST/NATIVE NATIONS | HISTORY

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A WEALTH OF PIGEONS

A cartoon collection.

by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020

A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.

The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.

Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker . So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny .” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

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by Steve Martin ; illustrated by Harry Bliss

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