The NY Times 100 Notable Books of 2017

It’s that time of year! As a Thanksgiving treat, we offer a feast of books to accompany your regularly scheduled feeding. Posted here a bit early are our 100 Notable Books of 2017. As always, editors at the Book Review have selected the 50 best fiction and 50 best nonfiction books of the year from the thousands reviewed since Dec. 4, 2016. While 100 sounds like a lot, narrowing the choices down to just 50 in each category (with fiction covering poetry as well) is not easy. Many great books are necessarily eliminated as we winnow.

But our hope is that this process of curation will give you plenty of books to discover and discuss over the holiday dinner, and to dip into over the long weekend. Perhaps it will give you a helpful Black Friday start on your holiday shopping. And you can look forward to our 10 Best Books selected from these Notables, coming next week.

This issue of the Book Review is largely devoted to hearth and home. Our cover review is a biography of the storied homesteader Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of “Little House on the Prairie.” Caroline Fraser makes the case in her expansive look at Wilder’s life and work that the story of the American West cannot fully be told without reexamining the pivotal role of women in that history. She also joins us on this week’s podcast.

Thanksgiving is, of course, about our shared American history, about gratitude, about family. But it’s also about food. So indulge in reviews of two very personal books, Anne Fadiman’s “The Wine Lover’s Daughter” and Jane Kramer’s “The Reporter’s Kitchen,” as well as Justin Spring’s “The Gourmands’ Way.” Still hungry? Anthony Bourdain answers this week’s By the Book.

Please stay in touch and let us know what you think – whether it’s about this newsletter, our reviews, our podcast or what you’re reading. Send me your letters to the editor. We read and ponder all of it. I even write back, albeit belatedly. You can email me a books@nytimes.com.

Pamela Paul Editor of The New York Times Book Review @PamelaPaulNYT