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Sarah's Bookshelves Live

Ep. 194: Bookish Time Capsule (2017) with Catherine (@GilmoreGuide)

Sarah's Bookshelves Live

Sarah Dickinson

Arts, Books

4.7 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In Ep. 194, Catherine (@GilmoreGuide) and Sarah head back to the year 2017 in the book world with this second annual special retrospective episode!  They share big bookish highlights for that year, including book news, award winners, and what was going on in the world outside of reading. They also talk about how their own 2017 reading shook out, including their favorite 2017 releases.  Plus, a quick run-down of listener-submitted favorites!  This episode is overflowing with great backlist titles to add to your TBR!  

This post contains affiliate links through which I make a small commission when you make a purchase (at no cost to you!).

CLICK HERE for the full episode Show Notes on the blog.

Highlights

  • The big news that was going on outside the book world.
  • The book stories and trends that dominated 2017.
  • How similar 2017 and 2025 are.
  • The 2017 books that have had staying power.⁠
  • Was this as dismal a year in books as Sarah remembers?
  • Sarah's and Catherine's personal 2017 reading stats.⁠
  • Listener-submitted favorites from 2017.⁠

Bookish Time Capsule (2017) [2:12]

The World Beyond Books

  • No books mentioned in this segment.

The Book Industry

Bookish Headlines and Trends

Big Books and Award Winners of 2017

Our Top Books of 2017

Listeners' Top Books of 2017

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live. I'm your host, Sarah Dickinson. Join me every other week as we get real and sometimes a bit snarky about books and reading. Let's get rolling. Welcome to our second annual time capsule

0:23.5

episode. This episode was inspired by a podcast episode that Knox and Jamie of the Popcast did a couple

0:31.6

years ago to celebrate their 10-year podcast anniversary. They revisited the year they launched their podcast. We are not celebrating

0:39.8

anything today, and we're not targeting the year that we started Sarah's bookshelves live,

0:44.8

but in that episode, Knox and Jamie briefly touched on the books that stood out in 2013,

0:50.8

which was the year they launched their podcast. So that got me thinking, we need an entire

0:56.4

episode that goes deep into what was going on in the book world in a given year. So that's

1:01.7

what we're going to do today. And we have chosen to focus on the year 2017. And Catherine is

1:08.3

with me to help me go back in time to 2017 in books. Welcome, Catherine. Hi, happy to be here, although that was a funky year. It was. We will get into it. Yes. We will be getting into it. We always do. Both in and out of the book world. Right. Exactly. So here's how things are going to work today. We are

1:29.2

going to cover 2017 in books in seven categories. That sounds like a lot, but some of them are kind of

1:35.3

small. We're going to talk about what was going in the world beyond books in 2017, just so we can

1:41.0

set the proper context for our bookish conversation. We're going to talk about book industry and category sales, major headlines and trends,

1:49.8

the big books of 2017, some big award winners, which in our minds is not the same as the big

1:57.9

books of 2017. Maybe there's some overlap, but also there's definitely some

2:02.7

that do not overlap. And then we're going to share our personal top 10 lists from that year

2:07.5

and share a couple listener favorites, which we got from Instagram. All right. So starting off

2:13.8

with what was going on in the world outside of books in 2017. I think we'll just get the bad news out of the way first.

2:22.1

I was going to say, but it feels like it's a bit of deja vu because 2017 was a post-election year in the same way that 2025 is, and both were elections highly contentious

2:36.5

divisive races. And the same president is in office.

2:40.8

2017 was Trump's first year in office. Yes. So that's where we are politically in 2017.

2:47.2

Should feel a little familiar. Yes. Also, the opioid epidemic was absolutely raging.

2:54.1

Drug overdoses became the leading cause of death for people under the age of 50.

...

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