What I Read This Year
The vast majority of books I read this year were not published this year, but I did read several 2017 releases. You'll notice that hardly any of the books I absolutely loved received major awards attention or adulation this year. The hype surrounding most of the books at the tops of the critics lists were largely lost on me. I tried reading a few of them--and I won't say which ones, as it would be bad manners to publicly put down other novelists (now if we were in private conversation that'd be another thing altogether...)--but I found them mostly unreadable, pretentious, dull, overhyped, or, most often, a combination of all four factors. So, I am only mentioning here the books I read in 2017 that I loved. My reading list this year was largely shaped by the fact that I taught in Edinburgh for two weeks this summer, so I immersed myself in Scottish literature as much as I was able. And it is an incredibly rich literature. The other twenty-two books I read this year cam
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