The Ten Best Books I read in 2017
This year I read something like two-hundred books. Here are the ten best books I read, in order from the tenth best to the very best. I don’t normalize or grade on a curve. I read a work of ancient Greek antiquity with the same set of eyes as I would something I found moldering in the “To-Discard” stack at a Goodwill store, so I don’t create separate lists for Best Non-Fiction of the Year and Best Fiction. Here, without further ado, are the books:
10. “Walking in Berlin: A Flaneur in the Capital” by Franz Hessel: This is the best worm’s eye account of Berlin and what it was like to walk down the streets of the capital between the First and Second World War. Descriptions are evocative, beautiful, precise.
9. “Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress” by Judith Yarnall: Investigations into the origin or meaning of myth can turn down blinds alleys very quickly. Ms. Yarnall holds an even tone and weaves a spell as she effortlessly integrates everything from poetry, painting, and archeology into her short but informative work on the Goddess-cum-Woman known primarily for turning men into pigs.
8. “The Memoirs of a Sexologist: Discretion and Indiscretion” by Ludwig Lenz: Sometimes I’ll get a book just out of sociological interest, and occasionally this book will be good enough to make me forget why I picked it up in the first place. “Memoirs of a Sexologist” exceeded every expectation I had for it, and though it is about human sexuality, fetishes, etc., it is also a portrait of fin-de-siècle Europe and how its cultural mores and belief system gave way after the horror of the First World War. Lenz worked as a doctor-in-residence in a brothel for soldiers during the Great War, and was friends with the father of modern sexology and Public Enemy No. 1 in the Nazi years, endocrinologist Magnus Hirschfeld.
7. “Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime” by Val McDermid: I haven’t read any of McDermid’s fiction, but I need to now. Her book sets itself the interesting and ambitious goal of locating the origins of modern forensic science in ancient techniques used to solve crimes or impel murderers to confess (without resorting to witchcraft or the dunking chair). This was probably the most informative book I read all year. McDermid condenses almanacs’ and centuries’ worth of knowledge into a few hundred pages.
6. “The Big If” by Rick Broadbent: I’m obsessed with boxing, and I read a lot on the subject. The last book I wrote is even about a boxer. That said, an interest in the sport isn’t a prerequisite for reading this book. It’s the tragic saga of a young lad from Merthyr-Tydfil, a coalmining town that would be of little interest except that it was the home of two world-class boxers, Howard Winstone and Johnny Owen. I read a crap book about Winstone later in the year, but “The Big If” is a masterpiece at showing how two men with disparate backgrounds (Lupe Pintor and Johnny Owen in this case) suffered a lifetime of hardships before meeting each other in the ring and fighting, as Chris Eubank once said, to see whose heart breaks first.
5. “Chester Stubbs” by Craig Miles Miller: I had low hopes for this one going in. It’s told in the voice of a Floridian redneck-alcoholic and I was bracing for some Forrest Gump-esque escapades in which the author patronized both his protagonist and the reader. What I got was probably the funniest and most poignant book I’ve come across in at least a year. “Chester Stubbs” is one of the books that, as soon as you describe the plot, sounds insignificant. But in the hands of the unheralded Craig Miles Miller, this character grows and reveals himself to be an incredibly complex man, notwithstanding the bad grammar. That the voice remains believable rather than becoming mannered is a tribute to Miller’s ability to breathe life into the guy.
4. “Once a Jailbird” by Hans Fallada: I’d read previous books by Fallada, like Little Man, What Now? and was blown away by how realistic the story was, and how naturalistic the prose was. It beautifully captured the tedium and despair that comes from barely eking out an existence in the service industry when every day you yearn for more and are surrounded by people with better lives. It made its point without being didactic. The same goes for Once a Jailbird, although I like this book more, since it’s filled with all kinds of details about the underworld culture in Germany, the land of smoky rooms filled with cons and grifters that somehow achieves a romantic quality, like Jack Black’s You Can’t Win or Jim Tully’s Beggars of Life. Fallada is a better writer than both of those men, though, who can spin a near-epic tale out of ordinary lives.
3. “Dark Companion” by Jim Nisbet: Nisbet is, like Tom Kakonis, an acquired taste and a bit of an oxymoron. He’s a guy who writes crime/noir (whatever you want to call it) but he doesn’t do it in minimalist prose or in a straightforward way. The writing is expansive, flashy, willfully literary and calling attention to itself in a way that might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I was in awe of the guy’s technical prowess. The story isn’t the most original, but the way it unfolds reminded me a bit of the totally off-kilter yet believable bloodbaths created by Charles Willeford at his most enigmatic.
2. “Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction” by Grady Hendrix: I was expecting some lush, glossy or matte images of cool horror trade paperbacks from a bygone era (back when writers in the “mid-list crunch” could live off their advances). What I got instead was probably the most pleasurable reading experience I’ve had all year. There is lot of cool info about the lives and works of writers and artists whose offerings in the horror field were as imaginative and bold as anything Breughel could have come up with, had he lived in the 20th century. I got a serious case of nostalgia from this one, along with a solid shelfful of recommendations in the horror department, books and authors whose existence would have otherwise escaped me.
1. “The Taste of Ashes” by Howard Browne: Reading this book was sort of the literary equivalent of watching the film “Chinatown.” As it was unfolding, I thought, “This is pretty good. The plot is coursing along like well-aired tires over hot asphalt.” It’s only after you’re already immersed in the good story, however, that you realize how great it is. Browne (apparently, he wrote a lot of teleplays and other TV pieces) has absorbed all the established hard-boiled works from the likes of Chandler, Hammett (and if you include him in their company) Macdonald. He has bettered them all with this book, I believe, and that is no mean feat. This is one of the darkest and most brilliant (yet understated) PI books I’ve ever read, maybe the best (aside from my personal favorite The Burnt Orange Heresy). It’s a genre I’ve sometimes written in, but there’s no way in hell I’ll ever be this good, or anywhere close.
10. “Walking in Berlin: A Flaneur in the Capital” by Franz Hessel: This is the best worm’s eye account of Berlin and what it was like to walk down the streets of the capital between the First and Second World War. Descriptions are evocative, beautiful, precise.
9. “Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress” by Judith Yarnall: Investigations into the origin or meaning of myth can turn down blinds alleys very quickly. Ms. Yarnall holds an even tone and weaves a spell as she effortlessly integrates everything from poetry, painting, and archeology into her short but informative work on the Goddess-cum-Woman known primarily for turning men into pigs.
8. “The Memoirs of a Sexologist: Discretion and Indiscretion” by Ludwig Lenz: Sometimes I’ll get a book just out of sociological interest, and occasionally this book will be good enough to make me forget why I picked it up in the first place. “Memoirs of a Sexologist” exceeded every expectation I had for it, and though it is about human sexuality, fetishes, etc., it is also a portrait of fin-de-siècle Europe and how its cultural mores and belief system gave way after the horror of the First World War. Lenz worked as a doctor-in-residence in a brothel for soldiers during the Great War, and was friends with the father of modern sexology and Public Enemy No. 1 in the Nazi years, endocrinologist Magnus Hirschfeld.
7. “Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime” by Val McDermid: I haven’t read any of McDermid’s fiction, but I need to now. Her book sets itself the interesting and ambitious goal of locating the origins of modern forensic science in ancient techniques used to solve crimes or impel murderers to confess (without resorting to witchcraft or the dunking chair). This was probably the most informative book I read all year. McDermid condenses almanacs’ and centuries’ worth of knowledge into a few hundred pages.
6. “The Big If” by Rick Broadbent: I’m obsessed with boxing, and I read a lot on the subject. The last book I wrote is even about a boxer. That said, an interest in the sport isn’t a prerequisite for reading this book. It’s the tragic saga of a young lad from Merthyr-Tydfil, a coalmining town that would be of little interest except that it was the home of two world-class boxers, Howard Winstone and Johnny Owen. I read a crap book about Winstone later in the year, but “The Big If” is a masterpiece at showing how two men with disparate backgrounds (Lupe Pintor and Johnny Owen in this case) suffered a lifetime of hardships before meeting each other in the ring and fighting, as Chris Eubank once said, to see whose heart breaks first.
5. “Chester Stubbs” by Craig Miles Miller: I had low hopes for this one going in. It’s told in the voice of a Floridian redneck-alcoholic and I was bracing for some Forrest Gump-esque escapades in which the author patronized both his protagonist and the reader. What I got was probably the funniest and most poignant book I’ve come across in at least a year. “Chester Stubbs” is one of the books that, as soon as you describe the plot, sounds insignificant. But in the hands of the unheralded Craig Miles Miller, this character grows and reveals himself to be an incredibly complex man, notwithstanding the bad grammar. That the voice remains believable rather than becoming mannered is a tribute to Miller’s ability to breathe life into the guy.
4. “Once a Jailbird” by Hans Fallada: I’d read previous books by Fallada, like Little Man, What Now? and was blown away by how realistic the story was, and how naturalistic the prose was. It beautifully captured the tedium and despair that comes from barely eking out an existence in the service industry when every day you yearn for more and are surrounded by people with better lives. It made its point without being didactic. The same goes for Once a Jailbird, although I like this book more, since it’s filled with all kinds of details about the underworld culture in Germany, the land of smoky rooms filled with cons and grifters that somehow achieves a romantic quality, like Jack Black’s You Can’t Win or Jim Tully’s Beggars of Life. Fallada is a better writer than both of those men, though, who can spin a near-epic tale out of ordinary lives.
3. “Dark Companion” by Jim Nisbet: Nisbet is, like Tom Kakonis, an acquired taste and a bit of an oxymoron. He’s a guy who writes crime/noir (whatever you want to call it) but he doesn’t do it in minimalist prose or in a straightforward way. The writing is expansive, flashy, willfully literary and calling attention to itself in a way that might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I was in awe of the guy’s technical prowess. The story isn’t the most original, but the way it unfolds reminded me a bit of the totally off-kilter yet believable bloodbaths created by Charles Willeford at his most enigmatic.
2. “Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction” by Grady Hendrix: I was expecting some lush, glossy or matte images of cool horror trade paperbacks from a bygone era (back when writers in the “mid-list crunch” could live off their advances). What I got instead was probably the most pleasurable reading experience I’ve had all year. There is lot of cool info about the lives and works of writers and artists whose offerings in the horror field were as imaginative and bold as anything Breughel could have come up with, had he lived in the 20th century. I got a serious case of nostalgia from this one, along with a solid shelfful of recommendations in the horror department, books and authors whose existence would have otherwise escaped me.
1. “The Taste of Ashes” by Howard Browne: Reading this book was sort of the literary equivalent of watching the film “Chinatown.” As it was unfolding, I thought, “This is pretty good. The plot is coursing along like well-aired tires over hot asphalt.” It’s only after you’re already immersed in the good story, however, that you realize how great it is. Browne (apparently, he wrote a lot of teleplays and other TV pieces) has absorbed all the established hard-boiled works from the likes of Chandler, Hammett (and if you include him in their company) Macdonald. He has bettered them all with this book, I believe, and that is no mean feat. This is one of the darkest and most brilliant (yet understated) PI books I’ve ever read, maybe the best (aside from my personal favorite The Burnt Orange Heresy). It’s a genre I’ve sometimes written in, but there’s no way in hell I’ll ever be this good, or anywhere close.
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