Notable Reads of 2017
Welp, choosing my twenty favorite books of 2017 was harder than I thought. Usually, I make a long-list and cut titles from it subsequently. Not only it was not necessary this year, but I found it difficult to separate my 10 favorite from my 10 notable reads. But I did it and this is the latter. Consider it the best of the rest. Books that didn't quite belong in the top 10, but that were too good to be left off it.
These are excellent novels/books by any means, but if you want to know what my winners of 2017 are, tune-in next Thursday for Best Reads of 2017. Don't forget, they're books I've read in 2017. They were not necessarily published this year.
Occultation and Other Stories, by Laird Barron
For using the natural world, which we all think we know and understand, as the keeper of the unknown terrors of the universe.
A Collapse of Horses, by Brian Evenson
For crafting compelling and challenging stories where the unknowable is the main character.
She Rides Shotgun, by Jordan Harper
For Chapter 0 and for confronting what could've been a tired cliché premise and violently turn it on its head to create an original survival story.
X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the 21st Century, by Chuck Klosterman
For being the lead perspective in pop culture analysis and blending original insight with powerful (and sometimes moving) personal voice.
The Night Manager, by John Le Carré
For creating the most intimate and visceral setting for a sprawling, international spy novel and creating perhaps one of the most riveting first 50 pages I've ever read.
The Sarah Book, by Scott McClanahan
For its gut-wrenching and all-too-real portrait of the pressures of adulthood and the downfall of what was once an innocent love.
For being more pertinent in 2017 than it was when released in 2013 and exploring the problem with authority abuse from the authority figure perspective.
For taking the drug-dealer-in-trouble trope and taking in to a new and unexpected direction that challenge conventional crime fiction.
For taking a place that doesn't exist and making it more vibrant than most places that are real.
For writing a terrifying story that features old and helpless people and making it terrifying because they are actually old and helpless.
