{"id":5139,"date":"2018-01-01T07:50:30","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T07:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aussiepizzas.com\/PIZZADELIVERY\/my-top-5-books-of-2017\/"},"modified":"2018-01-01T07:50:30","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T07:50:30","slug":"my-top-5-books-of-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aussiepizzas.com\/PIZZADELIVERY\/my-top-5-books-of-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"My Top 5 Books of 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

After my mammoth \u2014 but not always enjoyable during the home strait \u2014 effort to read 200 books last year, I decided not to strive for any particular total this year. Inevitably, though, as I neared the 150 mark, I did my best to reach this figure, although ‘only’ managed 148. Here are my five favourites, as well as five more that almost made my shortlist (some of these also featured in my summer reading list<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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1. The Unseen World<\/a><\/i> by Liz Moore. Meticulously plotted and researched, moving and thought-provoking, Moore’s novel follows 12-year-old Ada Sibelius as her father David \u2014 a brilliant but eccentric pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence and a director of a computer science lab in Cambridge, MA \u2014 begins to develop signs of dementia. The race is then on for Ada to discover the secrets locked inside his mind, but it’s more of a marathon than a sprint, as the novel edges through the 1980s to the present day, with a few hops back to the 1920s and 1930s. As someone whose day job involves the communication of science \u2014 including recent developments in computer science and AI \u2014 I found the themes covered here most interesting, but at its heart, The Unseen World <\/i>is a complex, richly portrayed family drama with a fascinating mystery at its core.<\/p>\n

2. The Alice Network<\/a><\/i> by Kate Quinn. Quinn’s novel weaves together the stories of two women connected through the real-life Alice Network \u2014 a network of about 100 female spies posted by the British Army and MI6 in northern France during World War One \u2014 in a compelling work of historical fiction. In 1915, Eve Gardiner is recruited into the network and posted in a small town in northern France. Eve is trained up by Lili \u2014 based on the real-life Louise de Bettignies, the so-called ‘queen of spies’ whose code name, Alice, gave the network its name. Her assignment is to gather as much information from the occupying Germans as possible and feed it back to her handlers, a perilous job in a town where collaborators and spies abound. Thirty years later, Charlie St. Clair, an unmarried, pregnant American student, comes to Europe with her mother, but takes off to search for her beloved cousin Rose, who went missing in France during World War Two \u2014 a search which soon connects her with Eve. Both Eve and Charlie make flawed but courageous heroines and once I got into The Alice Network<\/i>, I was gripped by both stories.<\/p>\n

3. The Light We Lost<\/a><\/i> by Jill Santopolo. Set mainly in the first decade of the 20th century in New York City, Santopolo’s novel is a beautifully written, intense and often devastating love story. Columbia students Lucy and Gabe meet on 9\/11 and, after a couple of false starts, fall in love. But Lucy soon struggles to compete with Gabe’s all-encompassing desire to become a photographer, forcing her to make some very tough decisions. With convincing dialogue, and believable, if sometimes frustrating, central characters, The Light We Lost <\/i>is a fantastic debut novel.
4. Quicksand<\/a><\/i> by Malin Persson Giolito. I read a lot of legal thrillers and Persson Giolito’s story about a teenage girl awaiting trial for her involvement in a mass shooting at her exclusive prep school was smart, gripping and satisfyingly twisty. If you enjoy novels with unreliable narrators, this fast-paced novel will keep you guessing as to whether our intelligent, knowing narrator Maja is indeed as innocent as she claims or whether we should believe a word she says.<\/p>\n

5. Sourdough<\/a><\/i> by Robin Sloan. A young woman from the Midwest \u2014 Lois, a gifted programmer \u2014 takes a job at a San Francisco-based robotics company but before long, finds herself becoming an obsessive sourdough baker in her spare time. So far, so standard. But if you’ve read Sloan’s previous novel<\/a>, you won’t be surprised to find that the sourdough, and the novel itself, have been proved with a hefty dose of quirkiness and magical realism. Sourdough <\/i>is a delightful, clever and unpredictable novel, which is particularly enjoyable for those who have lived in or visited San Francisco.<\/p>\n

And now, here are five more books, which didn’t quite make my top five this year but which I enjoyed a great deal:<\/p>\n