What are the BEST BOOKS you've read in 2017?

[spin]

3. Back in the later 1950s when I was in my early teens I remember my father reading ...

the Horatio Hornblower book series by C. S. Forester about a fictional Napoleonic Wars era Royal Navy officer. I'm about halfway through the series and it is indeed excellent. Hornblower rises from midshipman to Admiral of the British Fleet though the series. Hornblower is definitely intelligent, brave and highly skilled but he suffers from self doubt and is a lonely and often unhappy individual. It's fascinating to follow his rise through the ranks.

My father also read a novel called No Blade of Grass in the Saturday Evening Post. It finally came out in digital form on Amazon.com so I decided to read it. Originally the novel was titled The Death of Grass and was written by a British author Samuel Youd under the pen name John Christopher. In the novel a virus strain infects and kills off all forms of grass including rice, wheat and barley. This leads to a total breakdown in civilization. What I found most interesting was how fast the main characters and the group of people they are traveling with lose their sense of morality in order to survive.