Books of 2017

Right, beginning of a new year, so time to look at what I read in the last year and what of it I can recommend.

Please ignore that it’s almost February. I’m going to pretend that the year starts with February, that way I don’t have to think about where January went.

First thing to mention is a change of tracking method. The blog plugin I was using to track my books doesn’t work under HTTPS. It gives odd errors when adding or updating books. I wasn’t in the mood for debugging php, instead the entire tracking of books and reading dates has been moved to GoodReads (with a few hiccups along the way)

That does make it easy to get the retrospective of 2017 at least: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2017/19743140

77 books read, my goal was 75 and I was surprised that this time I made the goal (helped partially by a week vacation in December where I read 10 books)

There were a few of the year’s books that I consider standouts.

Caliban’s War, Abaddon’s Gate and Cibola Burns

The Expanse series is fantastic, and in these three books things go from bad (proto-molecule infested moon crashes into Venus) to worse, to weird, to really, really bad.

Complex characters, complex plot, very little black and white and every solution to a problem creates a few more problems along the way.

Ordination and StillBright

I’m a sucker for paladins. A friend pointed out a few years back that most of my D&D characters have paladin tendencies. Case in point, my current character is a 5e LG Fighter with 2 levels of Cleric.

These are the story about a battle-weary knight who, after being chosen by a forgotten goddess, strives to become a beacon of hope to the war-torn world

Stiger’s Tigers, The Tiger, The Tiger’s Fate

Roman-type empire in a fantasy world. Junior legion officer thrown to the wolves and manages to change the world in the process.

I like the ‘roman legions in a fantasy world’ idea and, other than this and Codex Alera, I haven’t seen good treatments of the idea.

Arcanum Unbounded

Short stories by Brandon Sanderson in the Cosmere shared universe.
Enough said.

For 2018 I’m setting the same goal, 75 books. I have piles of unread books all over the house, so I’m not short on material, just on time.