I love novels that tell narratives through multiple perspectives. I think back to when I first started George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels and getting lost in certain character stories and hurriedly rushing through others. Six of Crows is a novel told through, you guessed it, six different characters perspective. But before the book gets there, it starts with a prolonged prologue to set up the world that nearly had me put the book down. The entire first quarter of Six of Crows I found to be both dull and confusing.

For the first time in 2017, I'm incredibly conflicted about a book I read. Homegoing, the debut novel from Yaa Gyasi is far and away the most well-written novel I've read so far this year. The way in which she so eloquently weaves the narrative with the setting was often breathtaking. And yet, for the majority of Homegoing, I found myself drifting along without a real sense of direction or purpose.

After reading Ben H. Winters trilogy, The Last Policeman, I became cautiously optimistic about his latest venture Underground Airlines. On the surface, it's a novel that takes place in an alternative history where the Civil War didn't take place, and slavery wasn't abolished. Instead, it was relegated to four southern states. To avoid war a new set of amendments were added to the constitution that made it impossible to abolish slavery without basically disbanding the entire constitution. A compromise to avoid the Civil War.

It's been a long time since I read a fictional book set in World War II. It's not that I've grown tired of the genre, I just feel like I've read some of the best the genre has put out. And yet, towards the end of 2016, I started to see a lot of people talking about Ruta Repetys novel Salt to the Sea. It's one one of the first books I've read in 2017 and I have to say it left me with completely mixed feelings.

For my bookclub GamersRead, this months pick was The Princess Diarist written by the late Carrie Fisher. I being the one in the group who doesn't have a deep affinity for Star Wars made The Princess Diarist a slightly different read then that of my comrades. Going in I knew almost nothing about Carrie Fisher other then she played Princess Leia and was also the mom in one of my favorite shows Catastrophe. 

I don't remember when I first heard about Malala. I don't remember hearing about her being shot by the Taliban or her pursuing education for all. I have a feeling the first time I had heard about Malala was her speech to the UN or when she was doing rounds of interviews with places like The Daily Show. Regardless I've had her book, I Am Malala, on my to-read list for a long time and am so glad that I started my 2017 reading endeavor with her amazing tale.