Monday, January 8, 2018

Ten Books I Meant To Read In 2017 But Didn't

Top Ten Tuesday is currently hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week is all about the books we meant to read in 2017 but didn't get around to reading. I'm listing the books that were published in 2017 that I missed out on. Hopefully I will be able to read some of these in 2018!

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin



A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She's not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.

Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.



The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy #1) by Katherine Arden



At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most frightening tales.



Aletheia by J.S. Breukelaar



The remote lake town of Little Ridge has a memory problem. There is an island out on the lake somewhere, but no one can remember exactly where it is—and what it has to do with the disappearance of the eccentric Frankie Harpur, or the seven-year- old son of a local artist, Lee Montour.

When Thettie Harpur brings her family home to find Frankie, she faces opposition from all sides—including from the clan leader himself, the psychotic Doc Murphy. But Lee, her one true ally in grief and love, might not be enough to help take on her worst nightmare. The lake itself.

Because deep below the island, something monstrous lies waiting for Thettie, and it knows her name.

A tale of that most human of monsters—memory—Aletheia is part ghost story, part love story, a novel about the damage done, and the damage yet to come. About terror itself. Not only for what lies ahead, but also for what we think we have left behind.



Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones



Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew.

The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.



Bone White by Ronald Malfi



Paul Gallo saw the report on the news: a mass murderer leading police to his victims graves, in remote Dread's Hand, Alaska.

It's not even a town; more like the bad memory of a town. The same bit of wilderness where his twin brother went missing a year ago. As the bodies are exhumed, Paul travels to Alaska to get closure and put his grief to rest.

But the mystery is only beginning. What Paul finds are superstitious locals who talk of the devil stealing souls, and a line of wooden crosses to keep what's in the woods from coming out. He finds no closure because no one can explain exactly what happened to Danny.

And the more he searches for answers, the more he finds himself becoming part of the mystery. . .



The Grip of It by Jac Jemc



Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between ocean and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to settle into their home and their relationship, the house and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The architecture—claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of bruises; mold spores taint the water that James pours from the sink. Together the couple embark on a panicked search for the source of their mutual torment, a journey that mires them in the history of their peculiar neighbors and the mysterious residents who lived in the house before Julia and James.

Written in creepy, potent prose, The Grip of It is an enthralling, psychologically intense novel that deals in questions of home: how we make it and how it in turn makes us, mapping itself onto bodies and the relationships we cherish.



La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust #1) by Philip Pullman



Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon, Asta, live with his parents at the Trout Inn near Oxford. Across the River Thames (which Malcolm navigates often using his beloved canoe, a boat by the name of La Belle Sauvage) is the Godstow Priory where the nuns live. Malcolm learns they have a guest with them, a baby by the name of Lyra Belacqua . . .



The Dry (Aaron Falk #1) by Jane Harper



After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.

Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.



Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King, Owen King



In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place. The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied, or is she a demon who must be slain?



Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng



Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principal is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluring mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When the Richardsons' friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs. Richardson on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Mrs. Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family – and Mia's.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of long-held secrets and the ferocious pull of motherhood-and the danger of believing that planning and following the rules can avert disaster, or heartbreak.



Have you read any of these books? Let me know if I need to make any of them a top priority!

Jennifer

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40 comments:

  1. Ronald Malfi is on my list of authors to try this year. I've got a couple of his books.

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  2. Man, you and I have a lot of books in common. I bought Alethia after seeing it on your blog and I have the King book just sitting and waiting for me. I also own The Grip of It and hope to read Philip Pullman's series this year. So many good books!

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    1. So maaaannnyyy books!! They all sound so good. Why can't we just read them all?

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  3. "Sleeping Beauties" was on my list for 2017, too, but the first reviews I saw weren't very positive about the book so that kinda scared me away even though I'm a huge Stephen King fan. But I still want to give this book a try this year, if only it weren't so damn long :D

    I've also heard a lot of good things about "The Dry" already, so maybe I might read this one as well in 2018!

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    1. The reviews really kept me from reading Sleeping Beauties. I will read it eventually. :( You are right - it's long! I'm going to try to do The Dry on audio, I think.

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  4. Awesome list! I also want to read the Bear and the Nightingale!

    Here’s my TTT!

    Ronyell @ Rabbit Ears Book Blog

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    1. Thanks! Hopefully we will both get the chance to read it soon.

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  5. My list would just be every single book on my shelf I haven’t read yet. Ha ha! I hope you get to these.

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  6. Not sure I could whittle the list down to ten! The Dry is definitely on my list and I have Little Fires on audio.

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    1. It really helped that I was picking 2017 titles only. Otherwise I would have been in trouble trying to come close to 10.

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  7. The Dry looks really good. I keep seeing that one, and Little Fires Everywhere seems to be getting lots of good buzz too. Plus I'm curious. :)

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    1. Those were definitely buzzy books. They sound really good to me, though. I'm hoping they live up to the hype.

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  8. I haven't read any of them either. Why is there never enough time?! Although I haven't seen much good about Sleeping Beauties so I'm a little glad I didn't jump on that right away.

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    1. I would definitely make a wish about reading all of the books if I came across a lamp with a genie in it. I think I'm going to hate Sleeping Beauties. Haha. I'm gonna read it, though.

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  9. You've got a great selection here. And hopefully that means some intense and enjoyable reading time! The Bear and the Nightingale is on my list as well. I hope to read both of Celeste Ng's novels this year.

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  10. Nice list of books!! I hope you read them all in 2018!! Here's a link to my TTT post for this week: http://captivatedreader.blogspot.com/2018/01/top-ten-tuesday-ten-books-i-meant-to.html

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  11. The Grip of It And Fever Dream both sound really good; and I like Robert Malfi! I'll be adding those books to MY reading list this year. :)

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    1. I hope we manage to read them! They do sound so good.

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  12. The only one I've read on here is The Bear and the Nightingale and I loved it. Not sure I would prioritize that one though, knowing your predilection for horror, because I would probably say Fever Dream or Bone White. I don't know much about either, but damn, they sound good and I'm curious about them now!

    ~Mogsy @ BiblioSanctum

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    1. The Bear and the Nightingale just sounded like a really nice read. But yeah, it will probably lose out to the horror. Haha! I really want to read Fever Dream. I'm so curious about it, too.

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  13. Oh they all sound awesome. I hope you get to read them someday this year and enjoy them. Thanks for sharing. 😁❤️

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  14. The Bear and the Nightingale was great, and I can recommend it for sure :)

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  15. The Book of Dust could have gone on my list too... I kept thinking I'd like to do a re-read first but it's a prequel right? I don't know. I haven't decided. lol And I've also been meaning to read The Bear and the Nightingale for years. :)

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    1. I don't think it would help to do a reread, but I do love those Dark Materials books so a reread would be awesome in general.

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  16. I'll be reading The Bear and the Nightingale and Little Fires too! Great list! Enjoy them!

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    1. I hope I can fit them in at some point. So. Many. Books. :/ Thanks! :)

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  17. Last year was not a great year of number of books I read but they were all 4 star so I'm pleased. The Dry is on my list for this year. Her newest coming out this year also sounds good.

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  18. You reminded me of the non review books I want to read, The Book of Dust and The Grip of It. I haven't read any of these either! Oh, I also bought a copy of Little Fires Everywhere, bit yeah, haven't had time to read it yet😐

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    1. I have that saaame feeling. If we only had unlimited reading time.

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  19. Mapping the Interior should be near the top of the list. Its pitch perfect. I read it in one sitting.

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  20. I also meant to read 'Sleeping beauties' but didn't really get a chance to..

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    1. I'm going to force myself to read that one at some point. (That sounds terrible to say...)

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