Have a long, arduous business trip coming up soon? One of the best ways to hack off several hours of those flights is finding a good book to enjoy. Esquire put together a list of the best books of 2017 so far. Check out our 10 favorites below—along with links, so you can actually buy them.
Startup, Doree Shafrir – Buy It – If you’re a fan of Wired and BuzzFeed, you’ve probably read Shafrir’s journalism. This is her debut novel that has a tech angle to it, naturally.
The Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch – Buy It – Yuknavitch is already a bestseller (The Small Backs of Children), so you’ll have little trouble getting lost in her latest, a sci-fi novel that takes place in 2049.
American War, Omar El Akkad – Buy It – Another dystopian historic-fiction-meets-sci-fi novel, this one dreams up a Second American Civil War in 2074.
Anything Is Possible, Elizabeth Strout – Buy It – Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Oliver Kitteridge, which was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO series. Her latest “explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others,” per Amazon.
The Rules Do Not Apply, Ariel Levy – Buy It – Not many of us get to go to Mongolia. Fewer get to publish a memoir about the trip, however personally painful it may have been.
Celine, Peter Heller – Buy It – A private eye, specializing in missing persons cases, who lives at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge? Sign us up.
Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House, Alyssa Mastromonaco – Buy It – A peek behind the curtain of what it’s like to work for a president—in this case Barack Obama.
The Refugees, Viet Thanh Nguyen – Buy It – Listen to the author talk about his own experience as a refugee and the book here.
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders – Buy It – A work of fiction based on a historical truth, Saunders has written the greatest “fake news” item of the year so far.
Abandon Me, Melissa Febos – Buy It – Get a more personal side of the author who brought you Whip Smart, about the world of the professional dominatrix. This memoir tackles being abandoned by one’s own father—and coming to terms with it.
—RealClearLife
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