2017 Reading Year in Review:

[TacomaDiver]

2017 was a down year for me in the numbers of books I've read.

From 2011 forward, my annual counts increased - this is just a "benefit" of having a nice long daily commute via train to and from work. A job change in 2016 changed my commuting habits, and as added onto TJCams's post elsewhere, I think I hit a "reader's block."

I just wanted that interested in reading as much as I once was - I think it might be because I tend to read the same kinds of books and I wasn't being wowed anymore. Or, now that I think about it, my days are longer and I've been hitting the gym a lot more often than before, it could just be sheer exhaustion.

So I finished 47 books this in 2017. 2017 was also the first time I participated in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. I had high hopes for this challenge, but the aforementioned "reader's block" put a stop to this.

Three books were reread (the illustrated Stardust, Watership Down, and Eyes of the Dragon (which took me three months to finish!),) quite a few comic collections (finally finished Y the Last Man - something I started when it was originally published, caught up with Astro City (still great after all these years,) discovered that The Vision was an amazing - but uncomfortable - read - wow!, and officially discovered Mouse Guard (see my Building Mice post for that "obsession.")

One of my pleasant surprises was The Seventh Angel by Jeff Edwards. I hadn't heard of him before, but acquired a signed edition of one of his books (Dome City Blues) a few years ago (it was the second book in a set - but I only wanted the first book.) I enjoyed the heck out of it, so promptly tracked down eBook versions (didn't appear at the time that he had published analog versions) of his other books. The Seventh Angel is the second book in a trilogy about a futuristic Naval Destroyer. Maybe it was the timing of this read (the book too featured a protagonist with a bigger nuclear button than the other guys) but I was left on the edge of my seat the entire time. Maybe I found a new genre to excite me again?

My five star reads of the year (in order of reading) were

The Vision: Volume 1: Little Worse Than A Man
The Vision: Volume 2: Little Better Than A Beast
The Time Traveler's Wife
Grunt: The Curious Science Of Humans At War
The Name Of The Wind
Mouse Guard: Winter 1152
Mouse Guard: The Black Axe
Watership Down
The Handmaid's Tale
Mouse Guard: Legends Of The Guard Volume 3
Y: The Last Man: The Deluxe Edition Book One
Stardust: Being A Romance In The Realms Of Faeire
The Seventh Angel

I always finish what I start, sometimes that's painful (I'm looking at you Summerland!) The biggest "groaners" for me last year were:

The Cold Dish - I think the TV version of Longmire ruined the book for me. I don't know if I'll ever continue this series because of how painful the first book was compared to the TV series.
The Last Unicorn - OMG - this was awful. I was tempted SO MANY times to put this down.
Norse Mythology - Gaiman is hit and miss to me, and while this was a miss to read, I LOVED listening to him read one of the stories live. Maybe he needs to narrate the audio version and I'd give it a listen
Lock & Key: Small World - I didn't see the point of this "deluxe" version of a one issue comic. It did have David "Mouse Guard" Petersen do a cover so I always have that to look back on.
Thrawn - I LOVED Zahn's original Star Wars books (memory could be confusing me too) so I was excited to read about Thrawn's reintroduction to the Star Wars Universe. And I hated it.
Way Station - Admittedly I don't remember why this was a miss - something must have turned me off.
Monstress: Volume 1 - I'm conflicted. The artwork was AMAZING. Such beauty. But the story left me with an overall feeling of WTF is going on? I might pick up Volume 2 to see things make more sense.
Once Gone - definitely worth the price I paid - $FREE.99 on Amazon. Generic FBI thriller story.

Here's to a good 2018!

[Dan Hocker]

2017 was a year of heavy re-reads for me. Here's a list of new reads for me, then I'll mention some of my re-reads.


Magnus Chase Trilogy - Rick Riordan is one of the very few YA authors whose work I really enjoy reading. He takes ancient mythology and brings it to the modern day. This set of books focuses on Norse mythology and I really enjoyed it.

Ready Player One - I've owned this one for awhile, but only got around to it this year. This one is really only actually good if you care for the nostalgia it brings. Otherwise it's kinda over hyped. I care about the nostalgia though, so it worked for me.

The Black Elfstone: The Fall of Shannara - The first book in the final trilogy Terry Brooks is writing in his "Shannara World". This one was good, but kinda "un-memorable" in that I really don't remember what it was about anymore. Then again almost anything is better than the previous trilogy he wrote in this world. That one was a slog and I never finished it.

The Sorcerer's Daughter: The Defender's of Shannara - This is the third book of this trilogy and I'm pretty sure I started this one at the begining of 2017 and disliked it so much I never bothered to finish it.

Empire's End: Aftermath: Star Wars - The final book in the Aftermath trilogy. I really enjoyed this book and this trilogy. It had a bit of a rocky start but each book in the trilogy was better than the previous.


Here are some rereads from this year as well:

Harry Potter series (this one ends up being about every other year)
The Martian
Some (maybe most) of the Shannara books


Something to note is that these are all audio books. So re-reading them isn't really that big of a deal as I'm usually just listening to them while I'm working or driving. The re-reads are also harder for me to remember as most of them I've re-read so many times that I just can't remember if I did or didn't this year.