Belated 2017 Booklist
A very late write up of a year that I can see contained a lot of graphic novels/comics, some fantasy and only two non-fiction books ( A Burglar's Guide to the City and The Book that Made Me ). From a year or so on, the ones that I think were my favourites are The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I loved Sarah Moss' Night Waking a few years ago and The Tidal Zone has many of the elements that I enjoyed- a somewhat wry narrative voice, an interest in the way we relate to the past from the present and the inclusion of history, as well as some interesting family dynamics. The Tidal Zone deals with the way people reconstruct life after a catastrophe, in the reconstruction of Coventry Cathedral and the recovery of the protagonist's daughter from a sudden collapse. A Gentleman in Moscow is a fairly gentle and charming book about a member of the Russian aristocracy who gets stuck living in a fancy hotel at the advent of the revolution. ...