Year-End Lists

Emily St. James: 18 Best TV Shows of 2017, “an 18-way tie,” as published by Vox

[see also 2021 • 2010s • 2019 • 2018]

• Better Call Saul
• Better Things
• BoJack Horseman
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
• The Deuce
• The Good Place
• Halt and Catch Fire
• The Handmaid’s Tale
• Insecure
• The Leftovers
• The Magicians
• Master of None
• Mr. Robot
• Nathan for You
• One Day at a Time
• Search Party
• Twin Peaks: The Return
• The Vietnam War

The second tier: 27 more shows I loved, in alphabetical order

• 12 Monkeys
• American Vandal
• The Americans
• Bates Motel
• Big Mouth
• Binging With Babish
• Black-ish
• The Bold Type
• The Carmichael Show
• Channel Zero: No End House
• The Chris Gethard Show
• The Crown
• Dear White People
• The Exorcist
• The Expanse
• Fargo
• Girls
• GLOW
• I Love Dick
• Samurai Jack
• Sense8
• She’s Gotta Have It
• Speechless
• Superstore
• Sweet/Vicious
• Vice Principals
• The Young Pope

Keith Phipps: Top 16 Films of 2017, as posted to Twitter

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2010s • 2018 • 2016 • 2014 • 2012 • 2011]

1. Phantom Thread
   Paul Thomas Anderson
2. Lady Bird
   Greta Gerwig
3. Get Out
   Jordan Peele
4. Call Me by Your Name
   Luca Guadagnino
5. The Florida Project
   Sean Baker
6. The Shape of Water
   Guillermo del Toro
7. Dunkirk
   Christopher Nolan
8. Baby Driver
   Edgar Wright
9. Mudbound
   Dee Rees
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
    Rian Johnson
11. The Post
    Steven Spielberg
12. Coco
    Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina
13. Faces Places
    Agnès Varda and JR
14. Personal Shopper
    Olivier Assayas
15. Dawson City: Frozen Time
    Bill Morrison
16. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
    Noah Baumbach

Charles Bramesco: 25 Best Films of 2017, as posted to Letterboxd

[see also 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

1. Call Me by Your Name
   Luca Guadagnino
2. A Ghost Story
   David Lowery
3. Baby Driver
   Edgar Wright
4. Personal Shopper
   Olivier Assayas
5. Phantom Thread
   Paul Thomas Anderson
6. The Shape of Water
   Guillermo del Toro
7. Manifesto
   Julian Rosefeldt
8. The Disaster Artist
   James Franco
9. Good Time
   Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie
10. The Florida Project
    Sean Baker
11. The Lure
    Agnieszka Smoczynska
12. The Square
    Ruben Östlund
13. Lady Bird
    Greta Gerwig
14. The Beguiled
    Sofia Coppola
15. Okja
    Bong Joon-ho
16. Logan Lucky
    Steven Soderbergh
17. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    Yorgos Lanthimos
18. Graduation
    Cristian Mungiu
19. Valerian
    Luc Besson
20. A Cure for Wellness
    Gore Verbinski
21. Faces Places
    Agnès Varda and JR
22. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
    Noah Baumbach
23. Nocturama
    Bertrand Bonello
24. Wonderstruck
    Todd Haynes
25. Song to Song
    Terrence Malick

Andy Greenwald: Top Ten TV Shows of 2017, as posted to Twitter

1. Twin Peaks: The Return
2. The Young Pope
3. The Leftovers
4. The Deuce
5. Glow
6. Mindhunter
7. Top of the Lake: China Girl
8. Insecure
9. The Good Place
10. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Joseph Salvatore: Best 50 Books of 2017, as published by The Brooklyn Rail

Nonfiction

1. China Lake

   A Journey into the Contradicted Heart of a Global Climate Catastrophe
   Barret Baumgart
2. The Best We Could Do

   An Illustrated Memoir
   Thi Bui
3. Cornell ’77

   The Music, the Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead’s Concert at Barton Hall
   Peter Conners
4. Je Suis L’Autre

   Essays & Interrogations
   Kristina Marie Darling
5. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
   Reni Eddo-Lodge
6. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
   Dan Egan
7. The Doubles
   Scott Esposito
8. Do I Make Myself Clear?

   Why Writing Well Matters
   Harold Evans
9. Abandon Me
   Melissa Febos
10. World Without Mind

    The Existential Threat of Big Tech
    Franklin Foer
11. Shirley Jackson

    A Rather Haunted Life
    Ruth Franklin
12. Hunger

    A Memoir of (My) Body
    Roxane Gay
13. Sunshine State
    Sarah Gerard
14. Killers of the Flower Moon

    The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
    David Grann
15. Knowing Knott

    Essays on an American Poet
    Edited by Steven Huff
16. Question Like a Face
    Christine Hume and Jeff Clark
17. Literary Witches

    A Celebration of Magical Women Writers
    Taisia Kitaiskaia
18. After Kathy Acker
    Chris Kraus
19. Tell Me How It Ends

    An Essay in 40 Questions
    Valeria Luiselli
20. Draft No. 4

    On the Writing Process
    John McPhee
21. After the Eclipse

    A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search
    Sarah Perry
22. The Mother of All Questions
    Rebecca Solnit
23. The Blood of Emmett Till
    Timothy B. Tyson
24. Among the Living and the Dead

    A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe
    Inara Verzemnieks
25. The Show That Never Ends

    The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock
    David Weigel

Fiction

1. The Power
   Naomi Alderman
2. The Hunger Saint
   Olivia Kate Cerrone
3. So Many Olympic Exertions
   Anelise Chen
4. American War
   Omar El Akkad
5. Future Home of the Living God
   Louise Erdrich
6. The Gypsy Moth Summer
   Julia Fierro
7. The Iliac Crest
   Cristina Rivera Garza
8. The Epiphany Machine
   David Burr Gerrard
9. The Gargoyle Hunters
   John Freeman Gill
10. Bad Dreams and Other Stories
    Tessa Hadley
11. Exit West
    Mohsin Hamid
12. A Separation
    Katie Kitamura
13. The Leavers
    Lisa Ko
14. Stranger, Father, Beloved
    Taylor Larsen
15. Pachinko
    Min Jin Lee
16. Dear Cyborgs
    Eugene Lim
17. Her Body and Other Parties
    Carmen Maria Machado
18. The Ninth Hour
    Alice McDermott
19. My Heart Hemmed In
    Marie NDiaye
20. Little Fires Everywhere
    Celeste Ng
21. The Standard Grand
    Jay Baron Nicorvo
22. Heritage of Smoke
    Josip Novakovich
23. Refrigerated Music for a Gleaming Woman
    Aimee Parkison
24. Wait Till You See Me Dance
    Deb Olin Unferth
25. Sour Heart
    Jenny Zhang

Joseph Salvatore: Best 25 Poetry Books of 2017, as published by The Brooklyn Rail

1. Advances in Embroidery

   Poems, with Translations from Mahmoud Darwish
   Ahmad Al-Ashqar
2. Calling a Wolf a Wolf
   Kaveh Akbar
3. Bye-Bye Land
   Christian Barter
4. Before the Drought
   Margo Berdeshevsky
5. Half-Light

   Collected Poems 1965-2016
   Frank Bidart
6. Let’s Not Live on Earth
   Sarah Blake
7. Second Nature
   Patricia Carlin
8. Barbie Chang
   Victoria Chang
9. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
   Chen Chen
10. bone
    Yrsa Daley-Ward
11. Trophic Cascade
    Camille T. Dungy
12. The January Children
    Safia Elhillo
13. Gates & Fields
    Jennifer Firestone
14. Sky Country
    Christine Kitano
15. I Am Flying into Myself

    Selected Poems, 1960-2014
    Bill Knott
16. These Days Of Candy
    Manuel Paul Lopez
17. In the Language of My Captor
    Shane McCrae
18. Devotions

    The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
    Mary Oliver
19. There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce
    Morgan Parker
20. On Imagination
    Mary Ruefle
21. Lessons on Expulsion
    Erika L. Sánchez
22. Don’t Call Us Dead
    Danez Smith
23. The Trembling Answers
    Craig Morgan Teicher
24. Afterland
    Mai Der Vang
25. Where the Time Goes
    Gale Renee Walden

Girish Shambu: 3 Favorite New Films of 2017. See his personal round-up for a wealth of other favorites: older films seen for the first time, books, essays, critics, websites, concerts, and so on.

[see also 2021 • 2018]

• Western
  Valeska Grisebach
• Strong Island
  Yance Ford
• The Future Perfect
  Nele Wohlatz

The Michigan Daily: Top 10 Books of 2017

1. We Were Eight Years in Power

   An American Tragedy
   Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Hunger

   A Memoir of (My) Body
   Roxane Gay
3. Gather the Daughters
   Jennie Melamed
4. Little Fires Everywhere
   Celeste Ng
5. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
   Hanif Abdurraqib
6. A Column of Fire
   Ken Follett
7. Ill Will
   Dan Chaon
8. The Idiot
   Elif Batuman
9. Goodbye, Vitamin
   Rachel Khong
10. Mean
    Myriam Gurba

The Stranger: Top Ten Albums of 2017, plus a list of “besties.” See also their list of albums by local Seattle bands on the same page.

• Utopia
  Björk
• Witness
  Benjamin Booker
• Drunk
  Thundercat
• Big Fish Theory
  Vince Staples
• Anguilla Electrica
  Porter Ricks
• Take Me Apart
  Kelela
• All My Circles Run
  Sarah Davachi
• Melodrama
  Lorde
• Musas
  Natalia Lafourcade
• Plunge
  Fever Ray

Besties

• Prince of Tears
  Baxter Dury
• Ctrl
  SZA
• A World of Masks
  The Heliocentrics
• Losing
  Bully
• Three Futures
  TORRES
• Robyn Hitchcock
  Robyn Hitchcock
• Villains
  Queens of the Stone Age
• Volcano
  Temples
• Out in the Storm
  Waxahatchee
• Tourist in This Town
  Allison Crutchfield
• Somersault
  Beach Fossils
• SATURATION II
  BROCKHAMPTON
• Deer Tick, Vol. 1
  Deer Tick
• Deer Tick, Vol. 1
  Deer Tick
• Capacity
  Big Thief
• Freedom Highway
  Rhiannon Giddens
• The Hanged Man
  Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
• Hey Mr Ferryman
  Mark Eitzel
• MASSEDUCTION
  St. Vincent
• Sleep Well Beast
  The National
• City Music
  Kevin Morby
• Swim Inside the Moon
  Angelo De Augustine
• 50 Song Memoir
  The Magnetic Fields
• Process
  Sampha
• Or
  Eyelids
• English Tapas
  Sleaford Mods

Book Riot: Best Books of 2017

• A Conjuring of Light
  V.E. Schwab
• All Grown Up
  Jami Attenberg
• An Extraordinary Union
  Alyssa Cole
• Bluebird, Bluebird
  Attica Locke
• Don’t Call Us Dead
  Danez Smith
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Hate to Want You
  Alisha Rai
• Her Body and Other Parties
  Carmen Maria Machado
• Hunger

  A Memoir of (My) Body
  Roxane Gay
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Little Fires Everywhere
  Celeste Ng
• My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
  Emil Ferris
• One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
  Scaachi Koul
• Pachinko
  Min Jin Lee
• Priestdaddy
  Patricia Lockwood
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward
• The Changeling
  Victor LaValle
• The Fact of a Body

  A Murder and a Memoir
  Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
• The Gauntlet
  Karuna Riazi
• The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue
  Mackenzi Lee
• The Hate U Give
  Angie Thomas
• The Prey of Gods
  Nicky Drayden
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
  Taylor Jenkins Reid
• The Wanderers
  Meg Howrey
• We Are Okay
  Nina LaCour
• We Were Eight Years in Power

  An American Tragedy
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
  Lesley Nneka Arimah
• When Dimple Met Rishi
  Sandhya Menon
• White Tears
  Hari Kunzru
• You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me
  Sherman Alexie