As I wrote about last year, my ongoing New Year’s resolution is to try to read one non-fiction and one fiction book per month. I was unable to fully accomplish this goal for 2017 (I tend to gravitate more towards fiction in tumultuous times), but I loved the books I did manage to read along the way.

In the vein of last year’s post, I sought out non-fiction and science / speculative fiction books by a diverse set of authors. While last year I aimed to discover as many new female authors as possible, this year I specifically strove to experience sci-fi from other cultural perspectives and underrepresented voices, as well as learn more about the history of non-Western civilizations.

My reading list is below, including links to each book’s Amazon page if you’d like to check them out. There were no “thumbs down” books I read this year, and I’m bad at book reviews anyway, so I’ll leave judgement up to y’all.

Non-Fiction

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece by Jennifer T. Roberts

Predicting the Unpredictable: The Tumultuous Science of Earthquake Prediction by Susan Elizabeth Hough

The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire by Jack Weatherford

What Works: Gender Equality by Design by Iris Bohnet

Fiction

Autonomous: A Novel by Annalee Newitz

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Infomocracy: A Novel by Malka Older

Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was by Angelica Gorodischer

The Mountains of Mourning by Lois McMaster Bujold

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

Warcross by Marie Lu