Mid-year book lists: Amazon best books and bestsellers of 2017 so far

Amazon best books and bestsellers of 2017 so far

Getting ready for summer? Looking for the most popular or most interesting books of the first half of 2017? Make sure to check out the lists from Amazon.

Many readers are looking for the book recommendations at least twice a year. The first occasion for research is summer. The other one is Christmas.

The end of the year is full of book rankings and charts of all kinds. What about summertime? Amazon has two proven ways to find the books that are worth reading. You can jump to each list right from below:

  • Amazon bestsellers of 2017 so far – top 100 lists of books that enjoyed the biggest sales since the beginning of the year. The lists are ongoing, and you can check them out any time you want,
  • Amazon best books of 2017 so far – a set of rankings curated by Amazon editors – the mid-year version of the popular list of Amazon’s Best Books of the Year. The lists include titles featured as the Best Books of the Month, as well as worthwhile new releases.

Before we move to the details, here are other Amazon bestsellers lists worth checking out if you want to find the book that will let you enjoy summertime to the fullest.

Where can I find book bestsellers

Amazon Charts – innovative bestsellers lists that are updated weekly and include the latest trending books across all reading formats: print, Kindle, audiobooks, and digital subscriptions. The charts will let you quickly spot the most popular titles, based not only on sales but also user statistics, such as the speed of reading or number of pre-orders.

Current book bestsellers – every major category in the Amazon store comes with the list of the bestselling items. The lists get updated a few times a day, so they are a good tool to check out which books are currently the hottest. The lists, both for print and Kindle books, are split into genres and subcategories, down to the lowest level.

New York Times Bestsellers – Amazon runs special sections that feature the books that made it to weekly bestsellers lists by The New York Times. The NYT lists can be found in both print and Kindle sections. We link to the second directory, as it showcases the combined charts (print+ebook) for fiction and nonfiction.

Amazon Charts – top 10 facts about the next-generation bestseller lists

Read also Amazon Charts – top 10 facts about the next-generation bestseller lists

Top article

Amazon Charts are innovative rankings of Top 20 Most Sold and Top 20 Most Read books in combined reading formats that are updated on a weekly basis.

Amazon bestsellers of 2017 so far

Bestselling print and Kindle books on Amazon in 2017 so far

Overview

We’ll list Top 20 bestsellers in two formats: Book and Kindle. Take a look at the tables below. You’ll quickly realize these lists feature different books.

The only title that’s in the top 5 both in print and Kindle is The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel from Margaret Atwood, first published in 1985. The book is set in the near future, in a militarized society where women are brutally subjugated.

The Handmaid's Tale novel by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is among top bestsellers of 2017, both in print and Kindle editions / Image: Amazon

This classic dystopia was popular since the beginning, but now it enjoys extra attention thanks to the TV series from Hulu, starring Elizabeth Moss and Joseph Fiennes.

Which book is on top of the print list? Dr. Seuss fans, time to celebrate! Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is the children’s classic parents keep buying for their kids. It was #5 print book bestseller in the list of Amazon Bestsellers of 2016.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is followed by J. D. Vance’s book named by The Times as one of “6 books to help understand Trump’s win.” Hillbilly Elegy is a powerful and passionate look at the struggles of America’s white working class and a troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream.

It’s not usual to see poetry book among the bestsellers, but Rupi Kaur has the power. Her Milk and Honey is a collection of poems and prose about love, loss, violence, and femininity. And it occupies #3 position, selling better than A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, or William P. Young’s The Shack.

You’ll find Top 20 Print Bestsellers of 2017 So Far in the table below. As you see, all of the titles are Prime-eligible. It means that if you are an Amazon Prime subscriber living in the US, you can get any of these books shipped for free.

Top 20 Amazon bestsellers of 2017 so far: print books

No. Book Prime
1. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! – Dr. Seuss yes
2. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis – J. D. Vance yes
3. Milk and Honey – Rupi Kaur yes
4. The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom – Melissa Hartwig yes
5. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood yes
6. Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher yes
7. The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity – William P. Young yes
8. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – Neil deGrasse Tyson yes
9. First 100 Words – Roger Priddy yes
10. A Man Called Ove: A Novel – Fredrik Backman yes
11. The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts – Gary Chapman yes
12. 1984 (Signet Classics) – George Orwell yes
13. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life – Mark Manson yes
14. You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life – Jen Sincero yes
15. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy – Sheryl Sandberg yes
16. Giraffes Can’t Dance – Giles Andreae yes
17. Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life… And Maybe the World – William H. McRaven yes
18. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing – Marie Kondō yes
19. The Going-To-Bed Book – Sandra Boynton yes
20. Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers – Timothy Ferriss yes
Data collected on June 18, 2017

Let’s move to Kindle bestsellers of 2017 so far. With the growing popularity of Kindle Unlimited this list will be increasingly dominated by the titles that are most popular among Amazon’s ebook subscribers.

Recently, when Amazon Charts were released, we learned which Kindle Unlimited books are considered as sold – and therefore eligible to enter bestsellers lists.

The book available via Kindle Unlimited subscription is “sold” when the user reads a certain percentage of it – “roughly the length of a free reading sample.”

Most books from big, traditional publishers, such as Penguin Random House or Macmillan, are not included in Kindle Unlimited. The ebook subscription is powered by titles that are either self-published or released by publishing houses founded by Amazon.

And these books are becoming more and more popular, as avid readers (such as KU subscribers) are hungry for new interesting titles in their favorite genres.

Besides The Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll find in the top the books by Mark Sullivan (Beneath a Scarlet Sky), Rhys Bowen (In Farleigh Field), or Adam Mitzner (Dead Certain).

Top 20 Kindle bestsellers of 2017 are listed below. As you see, only three titles are not included in Kindle Unlimited.

Top 20 Amazon bestsellers of 2017 so far: Kindle books

No. Book KU
1. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood yes
2. Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel – Mark Sullivan yes
3. In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II – Rhys Bowen yes
4. Dead Certain: A Novel – Adam Mitzner yes
5. Everything We Keep: A Novel – Kerry Lonsdale yes
6. The Night Bird (Frost Easton Mystery Book 1) – Brian Freeman yes
7. A Criminal Defense – William L. Myers Jr. yes
8. Beach Lawyer (Beach Lawyer Series) – Avery Duff yes
9. Silent Child – Sarah A. Denzil yes
10. 1984 – George Orwell yes
11. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – J.K. Rowling yes
12. The Practice House – Laura McNeal yes
13. The Secret Wife: A Captivating Story of Romance, Passion and Mystery – Gill Paul
14. Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake Series Book 1) – Rachel Caine
15. The Letter: The #1 Bestseller That Everyone Is Talking About – Kathryn Hughes
16. Only the Truth – Adam Croft yes
17. Split Second – Douglas E. Richards yes
18. Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations – Garson O’Toole yes
19. Extracted (Extracted Trilogy Book 1) – RR Haywood yes
20. The Halo Effect: A Novel – Anne D. LeClaire yes
Data collected on June 18, 2017

Top 5 print bestsellers of 2017 so far

Oh, the Places You'll Go! - Dr. Seuss

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss’s wonderfully wise Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is the perfect send-off for grads—from nursery school, high school, college, and beyond!

From soaring to high heights and seeing great sights to being left in a Lurch on a prickle-ly perch, Dr. Seuss addresses life’s ups and downs with his trademark humorous verse and illustrations, while encouraging readers to find the success that lies within.

⇢ Hardcover

Hillbilly Elegy - J. D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

J. D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans.

The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside.

J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

⇢ Hardcover

Milk and Honey - Rupi Kaur

Milk and Honey

Rupi Kaur

#1 New York Times bestseller Milk and Honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity.

The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache.

Milk and Honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.

⇢ Paperback

The Whole30 - Melissa Hartwig

The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom

Melissa Hartwig, Dallas Hartwig

The Whole30 provides the step-by-step, recipe-by-recipe guidebook that will allow millions of people to experience the transformation of their entire life in just one month.

Melissa and Dallas Hartwig’s critically-acclaimed Whole30 program has helped hundreds of thousands of people transform how they think about their food, bodies, and lives.

Their new book features more than 100 chef-developed recipes, like Chimichurri Beef Kabobs and Halibut with Citrus Ginger Glaze, designed to build your confidence in the kitchen and inspire your taste buds.

⇢ Hardcover

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

From the bestselling author of the MaddAddam trilogy, here is the #1 New York Times bestseller and seminal work of speculative fiction from the Booker Prize-winning author.

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets.

She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant because in an age of declining births Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.

Now a Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss, Samira Wiley, and Joseph Fiennes. Includes a new introduction by Margaret Atwood.

⇢ Paperback

Top 5 Kindle bestsellers of 2017 so far

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast.

Set in the near future, the novel describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead.

The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment’s calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions.

⇢ Kindle

Beneath a Scarlet Sky - Mark Sullivan

Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Mark Sullivan

Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, USA Today bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky is an epic tale of one young man’s incredible resilience during one of the history’s darkest hours.

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered.

When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.

⇢ Kindle

In Farleigh Field - Rhys Bowen

In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II

Rhys Bowen

World War II comes to Farleigh Place, the ancestral home of Lord Westerham and his five daughters, when a soldier with a failed parachute falls to his death on the estate.

After his uniform and possessions raise suspicions, MI5 operative and family friend Ben Cresswell is covertly tasked with determining if the man is a German spy.

Inspired by the events and people of World War II, writer Rhys Bowen crafts a sweeping and riveting saga of class, family, love, and betrayal.

⇢ Kindle

Dead Certain - Adam Mitzner

Dead Certain: A Novel

Adam Mitzner

By day, Ella works as a buttoned-up attorney on some of the city’s most grueling cases. By night, she pursues her passion for singing in the darkest clubs of Manhattan.

No one knows her secret, not even Charlotte, the younger sister she practically raised. But it seems she’s not the only one in the family with something to hide.

When Charlotte announces she’s sold her first novel, Ella couldn’t be more thrilled… until she gets a call that her sister’s gone missing.

⇢ Kindle

Everything We Keep - Kerry Lonsdale

Everything We Keep

Kerry Lonsdale

Everything We Keep explores the devastation of loss, the euphoria of finding love again, and the pulse-racing repercussions of discovering the truth about the ones we hold dear.

Sous chef Aimee Tierney has the perfect recipe for the perfect life: marry her childhood sweetheart, raise a family, and buy out her parents’ restaurant.

But when her fiancé, James Donato, vanishes in a boating accident, her well-baked future is swept out to sea.

⇢ Kindle

Amazon best books of 2017 so far

Best books of 2017 so far picked by Amazon editors

Overview

On June 21, 2017, Amazon has announced the list of best books of 2017 so far.

As I have already mentioned, the lists of the best books are curated by Amazon editors, and sales do not count.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Arundhati Roy
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy was named by Amazon editors The Best Book of 2017 So Far / Image: Amazon

The editors read hundreds of books per year trying to pick the most interesting titles. They select the best books of each month, which are naturally taken into consideration when compiling two main lists: in June and December.

The list of Amazon best books of 2017 so far includes the titles published between January and June. It’s a great way to find new summer reads if you want to follow the recommendations of specialists.

A novel by the internationally celebrated author Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was selected as #1 book. It’s the intricate and graceful story of lives touched by magic, broken by tragedy, and mended with love.

Sarah Harrison Smith, Editorial Director at Amazon, says about the book:

Our top pick this year, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a sweeping yet intimate story, one that packs heartbreak, humor, love and acceptance—and a memorable cast of characters—into a novel that will stick with readers for a very long time.

Below, you’ll see Top 20 best books of 2017 so far. We’ve checked which books on the list are available in Kindle Unlimited (for Kindle Editions) and Prime free shipping (for print editions).

Top 20 Amazon best books of 2017 so far

No. Book Prime KU
1. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness – Arundhati Roy yes yes
2. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI – David Grann yes
3. Beartown: A Novel – Fredrik Backman
4. Exit West: A Novel – Mohsin Hamid yes
5. Priestdaddy: A Memoir – Patricia Lockwood yes yes
6. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir – Sherman Alexie yes yes
7. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders yes
8. The Impossible Fortress: A Novel – Jason Rekulak yes
9. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body – Roxane Gay yes yes
10. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari yes
11. Strange the Dreamer – Laini Taylor yes
12. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy – Sheryl Sandberg yes
13. The Weight of Ink – Rachel Kadish
14. The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story – Douglas Preston yes
15. 4 3 2 1: A Novel – Paul Auster yes
16. This Is How It Always Is – Laurie Frankel yes
17. The Bear and The Nightingale – Katherine Arden yes
18. Quicksand – Malin Persson Giolito yes
19. Ginny Moon – Benjamin Ludwig yes
20. One of the Boys: A Novel – Daniel Magariel yes

Top 5 best books of 2017 so far, picked by Amazon editors

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: A novel

Arundhati Roy

A new novel from an internationally acclaimed author Arundhati Roy takes us on a journey of many years – the story spooling outwards from the cramped neighbourhoods of Old Delhi into the burgeoning new metropolis and beyond, to the Valley of Kashmir and the forests of Central India, where war is peace and peace is war, and where, from time to time, ‘normalcy’ is declared.

This ravishing, magnificent book reinvents what a novel can do and can be. And it demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy’s storytelling gifts.

⇢ Kindle ⇢ Print

Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

David Grann

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of Z, comes a haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off.

⇢ Kindle ⇢ Print

Beartown - Fredrik Backman

Beartown: A Novel

Fredrik Backman

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove returns with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream—and the price required to make it come true.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain.

In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.

⇢ Kindle ⇢ Print

Exit West - Mohsin Hamid

Exit West: A Novel

Mohsin Hamid

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city.

As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.

Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are.

⇢ Kindle ⇢ Print

Priestdaddy - Patricia Lockwood

Priestdaddy: A Memoir

Patricia Lockwood

The childhood of Patricia Lockwood was unusual in many respects.

There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest.

There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange riddles and warnings of impending danger.

Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing, frequently semi-naked father, who underwent a religious conversion on a submarine and found a loophole which saw him approved for the Catholic priesthood by the future Pope Benedict XVI, despite already having a wife and children.

⇢ Kindle ⇢ Print

• • •

Best books and bestsellers of 2017 so far on Amazon

• • •

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