Favorite novels read in 2017

  
Listed in alphabetical order by author:



Willa Cather:                         Youth and the Bright Medusa
--cheating here, for this is a collection of excellent short stories
--first reading

Walter van Tilburg Clark:     The Track of the Cat
--a reread
--a tense tale of the hunter becoming the hunted
--a great novel from a sadly neglected novelist




Joseph Conrad:                      Victory
 --a reread
 --he had a rule:  don't get involved
--but sometimes .  .  .

 
Lawrence Durrell:                 The Alexandria Quartet
--a reread
--four novels that could be read as one


William Golding:                   The Spire
--a reread
--the effects of an obsession on the obsessed and bystanders




Russel Hoban:                       Turtle Diary
--a reread
--a quiet novel about a turtle that became a quiet film starring Glenda Jackson 
   and Ben Kingsley
--the ending is not the expected ending




Nikos Kazantzakis:                Toda Raba
 --first reading
 --the pilgrimages of various believers to an international conference in Moscow in the    late 1920s.


Thomas Mann:                      Royal Highness
 --a reread
--changing times in a German principality pre-WWI
--an early plea for careful use of natural resources



Chaim Potok:                         The Chosen
--first reading
--in his late teens, a son rejects his father's plans for his future.
--two very different sons with different backgrounds  and their friendship


Vita Sackville-West:             All Passion Spent
 --first reading
--now that she's a widow, she has some ideas about how to spend her days
--much to the dismay of her children.


Leo Tolstoy:                           Hadji Murad
 --first reading

 

Anthony Trollope                  The Fixed Period
--a reread
--it's a crime to grow old



Angus Wilson:                     Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
--a reread
--a professor of anthropology gains insight into his personal problems
--he didn't realize how much trouble this would cause those about him. 


It must mean something:  of the thirteen books listed, only five are new reads and only two of the authors are new to me.