A bit late with my year end wrap up—we were away from home for the first Christmas in ages and I’m only now getting caught up.

A quick glance ahead at 2018 would seem to indicate a year of some promise. I have two books I am readying for release, the first a volume of poetry (The Algebra of Inequality & Other Poems), which will be out April-May. A compilation of my best poems in the past five years. I am currently in the process of culling and selecting from a roster of nearly a hundred and fifty; not an easy or pleasant task. In the fall, finances permitting, I’ll be publishing a collection of short stories, Electric Castles: A Book of Urban Legends. Two hundred plus pages of prose set in cities here, there and nowhere.

Two books in one calendar year—that will be quite a stretch for my wee press but I think we can manage (crossing his fingers).

Looking back on 2017, I see it as a year where I managed to dabble in a little bit of everything: writing, photography, painting, music…

Is it good that I’m no longer so focussed on writing, that it isn’t my sole obsession these days? Am I right to believe that any form of expression belongs in my oeuvre, regardless of the media involved?

I feel such a tremendous sense of satisfaction when I see one of my books that also features cover art that I helped create or devise. That’s empowerment, I tell you. Watch for the cover of that aforementioned volume of poetry, come April; it’s one of mine as well.

I managed to achieve my target of reading one hundred books in 2017—actually, the final tally was 103. I also watched over a hundred movies last year and I’m be posting my favorites over at Cinema Arête in the coming hours.

Here’s my “Best of…” picks for the books I discovered and devoured in 2017. My reading, as ever, far-ranging and eclectic, about evenly divided between fiction and non-fiction.

Best Fiction of 2017

The Street of Crocodiles (Stories) by Bruno Schulz

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Tsar of Love & Techno (Stories) by Anthony Maara

Moonglow by Michael Chabon

We The Animals by Justin Torres

Ill Will by Dan Chaon

Sleet (Selected Stories) by Stig Dagerman

Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson

The North Water by Ian McGuire

Honorable Mention:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Trajectory (Stories) by Richard Russo

The World Made Straight by Ron Rash

Flings (Stories) by Justin Taylor

Revenger by Alastair Reynolds

Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds

Poetry:

The Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert by Zbigniew Herbert

War Primer by Bertolt Brecht

Flying at Night (Poems 1965-85) by Ted Kooser

Non-Fiction:

Scarcity: Why Having So Little means So Much by S. Maullainathan & E. Shafir

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Post-Capitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason

The Dilemmas of Lenin by Tariq Ali

October by China Mieville

The Lost Amazon edited by Wade Davis

The Art of Space by Ron Miller

A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros

Keep Watching the Skies! American SF Movies of the Fifties by Bill Warren

Honorable Mention:

A Spy Among Friends by Ben MacIntyre

Unknown Pleasures (Memoir) by Peter Hook

Footnotes in Gaza (Graphic Novel) by Joe Sacco

Trouble Boys (Biography of The Replacements) by Bob Mehr