Books in 2017

2017 got off to a better start than 2016 and I tried to maintain a better pace through the year. The reading in 2017 was aided in no small part by the no of books I started reading in 2016 but didn't quite finish. 2017's reading also got off to a good start thanks to starting off with graphic novels which make the reading a bit more fun.

1. The Property by Rutu Modan
2. Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbag
3. Logicomix (graphic novel)
4. Running by Ronnie O Sullivan
5. Why We Run by Robin Harvie
6. On Writing by Stephen King
7. On the Move by Oliver Sacks
8. TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking
9. H is or Hawk by Helen MacDonald
10. From Ouch to Oops by Ram G Vallath
11. The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl and Cyril M Kornbluth
12. Twenty Four Years to Boston by Jim Brennan
13. Redshirts by John Scalzi
14. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
15. Enter The Dangal by Rudraneil Sengupta
16. The Element: How finding your passion changes everything by Ken Robinson
17. I contain multitudes by Ed Yong
18. The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
19. To Sell is human by Dan Pink
20. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
21. Four men in a boat by Tim Foster et al
22. A lifetime in a race by Mathew Pinsent
23. Sapiens by Hariri
24. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
25. The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
26. The boy who runs by John Brant
27. Raif Badawi: Dreaming of Freedom (graphic novel)
28. Will it make the boat go faster by Ben Hunt Davis and Harriet Beveridge
29. The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman
30. I'm not a terrorist but I've played one on TV by Maz Jobrani

One of the key changes this year was that I read some fiction, driven partly by Gautam Shenoy's lovely sci-fi themed column for FactorDaily. 

I was torn for choice to pick one book I'd recommend. I enjoyed almost every book but not one book held me for the entire time I held it. King's book was a great read but you may not like unless you are a writer (even if you are aspiring to be one).

The Jonasson book was a surprise and I enjoyed it, perhaps because I had no expectations from it.

However the John Brant book is perhaps the one story that'll stick for a long time in terms of life lessons. To manage what Julius Achon has managed with his kind of background is incredibly inspiring.

The one reading moment that stuck with me for an entire day was to read Gaiman on Syrian refugees. It just tore me up. While anyone who lives in our time should be able to see the horrors of Syrian refugees, Gaiman's writing affected me quite a bit.

2017 was a better year than 2016 thanks to audio books, Kindle versions and Google Play Books on my phone. Thanks to these, I am in various stages of reading another half dozen titles at the least.
I continued to indulge in books on rowing. I suspect 2018 may be titled towards cycling, which I haven't read about in a while.
I am hoping 2018 is at least as good, if not better.

What was your year in reading like?