Goodreads tells me I read one less book this year than last. Though always tempted to read ever more and more, I’ve become less concerned about hitting arbitrary reading quotas, so I’m able to better enjoy the books I do read. Here are the 2017 books I enjoyed the most, with links to reviews I wrote when I read them:

1. Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper (review)
2. Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler (review)
3. High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic by Glenn Frankel
4. Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
5. The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World by Damon Krukowski (review)
6. Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks (review)
7. How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds by Alan Jacobs (review)
8. Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen (review)
9. The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel (review)
10. The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse (review)

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Honorable mentions:

• The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures by the Library of Congress
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries by Anders Rydell (review)
• My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul
• Rainy Lake House: Twilight of Empire on the Northern Frontier by Theodore Catton