Sam Jordison 

Help choose an overlooked gem from 2017 for December’s reading group

The Guardian has covered a lot of great books this year, but did we miss something essential? Please share your findings so we can highlight a hidden treasure
  
  

Missed a jewel? … diamonds during their sorting process.
Missed a jewel? … diamonds during their sorting process. Photograph: Juda Ngwenya/Reuters

Has 2017 been a good year for literature? Time will be the ultimate judge, but sitting looking back over the past few months, it certainly feels like good things have been happening.

I know I’ve read a few cracking novels. There was an especially fine Not the Booker prize shortlist, which is always a good sign. Elsewhere, I’ve loved books as diverse as Eley William’s surprising and bewildering Atrib. and John le Carré’s reassuringly excellent Legacy of Spies

In fact, so many fine-looking books have arrived in 2017 that it’s been hard to keep up. If you are anything like me, you are probably feeling that you have missed as many gems as you have managed to read. So let’s use this month’s reading group as a chance to catch one of the gems we might have overlooked.

Which book did you miss out on reading this year? What have we missed here at the Guardian? Which book have you had on your to-read pile and not quite reached? Have you loved a novel so much that you want to share it with everyone else?

Have you been wondering if Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13 is as good as everyone says it is? Have you been worrying that the Booker Prize judges got it wrong when they chose George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo? Have you been worrying that they got it right, but that you still don’t know what the book is about?

Do you have a gorgeous book from a small press that you think we should know about? Would you just really like to kick back and indulge yourself with Cressida Cowell’s magical Wizards Of Once?

Have you been thinking that not enough people know about Carlos Fonesca’s Colonel Lágrimas yet? Have you felt left out as everyone else has been enjoying he Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage?

Now is your time to help plug those gaps. We ask only that the book is widely available, was published in the last year and that reading it will make us all feel good. It would also be great if you could provide a few words about why you want to read the book – or why you think everyone else should. I will compile and weigh up the suggestions in a few days’ time, pop them in a hat and return with a new blogpost once the result has been drawn.

 

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