--- {"type":"list","title":"Books Read 2017","listId":5662,"canonicalUrl":"https://listium.com/@anlyri/5662/books-read-2017","visibleItemTotal":4,"creator":{"id":"anlyri","name":"Anna R.","url":"https://listium.com/@anlyri"},"stats":{"views":168,"likes":1},"category":"books & literature","publishedAt":"2017-01-07T03:05:35.733Z","updatedAt":"2017-05-22T04:22:48.727Z","fields":[{"id":0,"name":"Title","type":"PrimaryText"},{"id":1,"name":"Author","type":"Text","format":"short"},{"id":2,"name":"Year Published","type":"Text","format":"short"},{"id":3,"name":"Genre","type":"Text","format":"short"},{"id":7,"name":"First Reading","type":"Symbols","format":"checkbox"},{"id":6,"name":"Recommended","type":"Symbols","format":"tick_cross"},{"id":8,"name":"Plot Summary","type":"Text","format":"long"}]} --- # Books Read 2017 By [Anna R. (@anlyri)](https://listium.com/@anlyri) 168 views · 1 like Published 7 January 2017 · Updated 22 May 2017 Category: books & literature Books I've read throughout the year. Photo from decalgirl.com. ## Items ### 1. [Snow Flower and the Secret Fan](https://listium.com/@anlyri/5662/books-read-2017/12/snow-flower-and-the-secret-fan) Item ID: `12` - Author: Lisa See - Year Published: 2006 - Genre: Historical Fiction - First Reading: false - Recommended: Yes - Plot Summary: > In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she’s painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. > > As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart. ### 2. [All the Light We Cannot See](https://listium.com/@anlyri/5662/books-read-2017/13/all-the-light-we-cannot-see) Item ID: `13` - Author: Anthony Doerr - Year Published: 2014 - Genre: Historical Fiction - First Reading: true - Recommended: Yes - Plot Summary: > Winner of the Pulitzer Prize > From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. > > Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. > > In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. > > Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times). ### 3. [My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry](https://listium.com/@anlyri/5662/books-read-2017/14/my-grandmother-asked-me-to-tell-you-shes-sorry) Item ID: `14` - Author: Fredrik Backman - Year Published: 2013 - Genre: Fiction - First Reading: true - Recommended: Yes - Plot Summary: > Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother's stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal. > > When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa's greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other. ### 4. [And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer](https://listium.com/@anlyri/5662/books-read-2017/16/and-every-morning-the-way-home-gets-longer-and-longer) Item ID: `16` - Author: Fredrik Backman - Year Published: 2016 - Genre: Novella - First Reading: true - Recommended: Yes - Plot Summary: An exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man’s struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family’s efforts to care for him—even as they must find a way to let go.