Some things I read in 2017, with some brief opinions/recommendations.

All categorisations are approximate at best and will probably cause some kind of contention.

Fiction

Fantasy

• The Wheel of Time, books 0-14 - TL;DR Epic, awesome, but long; I wouldn’t jump in lightly!
• Charles Stross - The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files #8) - go read all the Stross!
• Nathan Lowell’s Tanyth Fairport series - a really enjoyable fantasy series where there are no epic heroes and convenient portals, but real people doing real things
• Newt Scamander - Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them - I thought this was the screenplay, it’s actually “the textbook” - so little more than “a list of fantastic beasts” - a Monster Manual for the Potterverse
• Robert Jackson Bennett - City of Stairs - some really nice world-building
• Seth McDuffee - Good Boy - I came across this via a post on Reddit’s /r/WritingPrompts - neat idea - ghost controlling their former body which is now a zombie - and great story built upon it

SF/SciFi

• Dennis Taylor’s Bobiverse series - I tend to avoid starting unfinished series because I hate having to wait for the next edition, but this is less “here’s an epic storyline with cliffhangers and unresolved mysteries” and more “here’s a bunch of fun explorations and sub-stories” which I can enjoy with much more patience about when I can get hold of the next espisode.
• Larry Niven - Ringworld - I found it a perfectly pleasant read, but it didn’t feel the “incredible classic” I thought it was going to be; I suspect it was in 1970
• Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer - a “post-cyberpunk” “coming-of-age story” that I really enjoyed.
• Yahtzee Croshaw - Will Save The Galaxy For Food - great space fun
• Neal Stephenson - Seveneves - excellent SF from Stephenson, a bit more “people dying of space-radiation” than I wanted (I was reading it on the way to radiotherapy at the time) but really good
• Peter F. Hamilton - A Second Chance At Eden - again has some people dying of space-radiation, but a great collection of short stories in the Night’s Dawn world
• Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time - recommended by one of my radiographers, full of excellent ideas and explorations
• Cory Doctorow - Eastern Standard Tribe - I liked the idea but struggled to particularly enjoy the book itself
• Charles Stross - Empire Games - the first of the series following Stross’s Merchant Princes - as with its predecessors, excellently (and terrifyingly) well put-together

Other Fiction

• Robert M. Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg - The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules - I liked the idea but the dialog felt a bit odd; I think perhaps the translation was too literal.

Non-Fiction

“Educational”/”Instructional”

• Erin Meyer - The Culture Map - this felt incredibly insightful, and especially useful given I work with a team spread across over a dozen countries
• Gene Kim - The DevOps Handbook - an excellent excellent read about “real” DevOps - creating a learning culture, structuring teams, facilitating feedback, and much more
• Adele Faber - How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk - useful for general communication with adults too (but probably even more useful if you do have children)
• Nick Disabato - Draft Evidence - “a compendium of essays, letters, blog posts, interviews and photos” to “teach you a lot of broad strategies for […] a business that can serve the life you want” - I Kickstarter-ed this some time ago on someone’s recommendation, didn’t really expect to enjoy it when it finally turned up, but actually found it a nice and fulfilling read
• Gerald Weinberg - The Secrets of Consulting - not just for consultants but good for anyone trying to advise people or change minds
• Donald Gause - Are Your Lights On - recommended by Lucy over at Tech to Human this is a great aid to solving problems of all kinds
• Andrew Craig - How To Own The World- I got this free via some kind of Amazon Prime library thing - I didn’t feel like I got much from it that I haven’t picked up elsewhere, but it’s still a good collection of information
• Steven Johnson - Where Good Ideas Come From - recommended by a colleague, an interesting exploration of, well, exactly what the title says
• Jock Busuttil - The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management - I first encountered Jock when I inherited maintenance of his Perl scripts as an undergraduate; his guide is insightful, clear, and helpful
• Manuel Arriaga - Rebooting Democracy - short, but packed with interesting examples and analyses
• Richard Apodaca - Owning Bitcoin: The Illustrated Guide to Security, Privacy, and Potential - another free book via the Amazon Prime library thing - I’d mined some Bitcoin years ago when they were worthless, and this was a great guide, going from “what is hashing” to “here’s how transactions work” to “here are functions in the bitcoin scripting language”

Other Non-Fiction

• Clarissa Dickson Wright - Spilling The Beans - I don’t tend to read many autobiographies but this was fascinating and fun
• Hape Kerkeling - I’m Off Then - a German comedian’s account of his pilgrimage - not my usual sort of thing, but a colleague recommended it so I bought my dad a copy and figured I should read it myself, and enjoyed it much more than I expected

Other

• Kate Summerscale - The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher - it combines a historical account of the main character, the role of the detective and the rise of the detective novel, with a “real-world murder mystery” - I wish it had tried to just do one thing; interesting, but I didn’t particularly enjoy it