An Aside | Books I’m Eyeing

I have recently rebooted my RSS feed, which is totally and absolutely making Mount TBR explode. I saw this feature over at Book Smugglers and it inspired me to do a similar feature of my own. Occasionally I’ll post the books that are looking at me. Maybe you guys can add to my list and make my library (my hold list is impressive) hate me even more.

So, without further ado, here are the books I’m eyeing this week.

Love Minus Eighty – Will McIntosh

(To be fair, this one arrived at the library yesterday and I’m already halfway through it, but I’m still eyeing it so it’s getting stuck here)

Discovery blamed on: Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf

About the Book

Years in the future, dead women in cryogenic dating farms await rich, lonely suitors to resurrect them and take them home. LOVE MINUS EIGHTY follows interconnected lives touched by these dating farms. There’s Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sells everything to visit her, seeking her forgiveness but instead falling in love. Veronika, a socially-awkward dating coach, finds herself responsible for the happiness of a man whose life she saved against his will. And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in the heterosexual dating center near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the centuries pass. In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.

Boy Nobody – Allen Zadoff

Discovery blamed on: Fantasy Book Critic

About the Book

Boy Nobody is the perennial new kid in school, the one few notice and nobody thinks much about. He shows up in a new high school, in a new town, under a new name, makes few friends and doesn’t stay long. Just long enough for someone in his new friend’s family to die — of “natural causes.” Mission accomplished, Boy Nobody disappears, and moves on to the next target.

When his own parents died of not-so-natural causes at the age of eleven, Boy Nobody found himself under the control of The Program, a shadowy government organization that uses brainwashed kids as counter-espionage operatives. But somewhere, deep inside Boy Nobody, is somebody: the boy he once was, the boy who wants normal things (like a real home, his parents back), a boy who wants out. And he just might want those things badly enough to sabotage The Program’s next mission.

The Curiosity – Stephen P. Keirnan

Discovery blamed on: Civilian Reader

About the Book

Michael Crichton meets The Time Traveler’s Wife in this powerful debut novel in which a man, frozen in the Arctic ice for more than a century, awakens in the present day.

Dr. Kate Philo and her scientific exploration team make a breathtaking discovery in the Arctic: the body of a man buried deep in the ice. As a scientist in a groundbreaking project run by the egocentric and paranoid Erastus Carthage, Kate has brought small creatures-plankton, krill, shrimp-“back to life.” Never have the team’s methods been attempted on a large life form.

Heedless of the consequences, Carthage orders that the frozen man be brought back to the lab in Boston, and reanimated. As the man begins to regain his memories, the team learns that he was-is-a judge, Jeremiah Rice, and the last thing he remembers is falling overboard into the Arctic Ocean in 1906. When news of the Lazarus Project and Jeremiah Rice breaks, it ignites a media firestorm and massive protests by religious fundamentalists.

Thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, Kate and Jeremiah grow closer. But the clock is ticking and Jeremiah’s new life is slipping away. With Carthage planning to exploit Jeremiah while he can, Kate must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the man she has come to love.

A gripping, poignant, and thoroughly original thriller, Stephen Kiernan’s provocative debut novel raises disturbing questions about the very nature of life and humanity-man as a scientific subject, as a tabloid plaything, as a living being: A curiosity.

Lexicon – Max Barry

Discovery blamed on: Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf

About the Book

At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren’t taught history, geography, or mathematics—they are taught to persuade. Students learn to use language to manipulate minds, wielding words as weapons. The very best graduate as �poets,” and enter a nameless organization of unknown purpose.

Whip-smart runaway Emily Ruff is making a living from three-card Monte on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization’s recruiters. Drawn in to their strage world, which is populated by people named Brontë and Eliot, she learns their key rule: That every person can be classified by personality type, his mind segmented and ultimately unlocked by the skilful application of words. For this reason, she must never allow another person to truly know her, lest she herself be coerced. Adapting quickly, Emily becomes the school’s most talented prodigy, until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Parke is brutally ambushed by two men in an airport bathroom. They claim he is the key to a secret war he knows nothing about, that he is an �outlier,” immune to segmentation. Attempting to stay one step ahead of the organization and its mind-bending poets, Wil and his captors seek salvation in the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, which, if ancient stories are true, sits above an ancient glyph of frightening power.

A brilliant thriller that traverses very modern questions of privacy, identity, and the rising obsession of data-collection, connecting them to centuries-old ideas about the power of language and coercion, Lexicon is Max Barry’s most ambitious and spellbinding novel yet.

Pure – Julianna Baggott

Discovery blamed on: Inadvertently on the beautiful cover art for the second book of the series as posted by Civilian Reader. I’m not big on YA, or dystopian, so we shall see how this goes, but the cover art impressed me enough to make me want to give it a shot.

About the Book

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . .
Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.

Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . .
There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it’s his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.

When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes

Discovery based on: My serious enjoyment of all things Lauren Beukes writes.

About the Book

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN’T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN’T EXIST.

The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own.” 

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He’s the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth.

So do any of these books interest you? Or are there any that I’ve missed that I should be eyeing?

11 Responses

  • I also want to read “Love Minus Eighty” and “The Shining Girls.” And thanks to you I now also want to read “Boy Nobody!”

    I read “Pure” last year, and enjoyed it. I don’t know if I would enjoy it as much now, seeing as how I’m getting pretty burned out on YA dystopias (though Pure is more of a combination post-apoc and dystopia, depending on which character’s viewpoint you’re following, and I think the story plants the seeds for a sort of proto-dystopia, if that makes any sense), but at the time, I thought it was a pretty good novel.

    • YA dystopian books are the next vampire craze. They seem to either be really well done, or not very good at all. I have a hard time getting into them so it’ll be interesting to see whether or not I enjoy Pure. I’m getting it from the library so I’m not out anything if it doesn’t work for me.

      Love Minus Eighty is amazing. I’m going to finish it today, but it is easily one of my favorite books I’ve read this year.

      • Have you read McIntosh’s “Hitchers?” That was the book that introduced me to his writing, and it’s one of the big reasons I’m looking forward to “Love Minus Eighty.” He’s got a creative mind and I like how he tells a story. if you haven’t read “Hitchers” yet, I definitely recommend doing so.

  • Technically Pure was released by it’s publisher as Adult Fiction, but was quickly embraced by YA audiences, so it got stuck with the YA label. I liked Pure and loved book 2 Fuse. Not sure what separate it from other YA novels, like Daughter of Smoke and Bone. This is why I get utterly confused with the YA/Adult labels.

    I absolutely LOVED Love Minus Eighty. It’s in contention for my favorite of the year. The Shining Girls was also quite good. I have a review copy of Boy Nobody, and am quite intrigued by Lexicon.

    Right now I need to avoid checking out to many blogs. I have a backlog of like 15 audio review copies I am working through, and I’m trying to knock as many of them out as I can this month without getting too drawn into new releases.

    • I am going to finish Love Minus Eighty today, probably in an hour. I absolutely devoured that book. I agree, it’s in contention for my favorite books of this year, as well.

      YA books are interesting in the respect that they either seem to be like Twilight-ish stuff or they are far more adult and could easily be considered crossovers. I hope this one is more of a crossover, because the boy-meets-girl-sexual-tension thing just drives me crazy. I hope I enjoy it. The premise looks really interesting, but I do tend to shy away from YA dystopian books, so we shall see.

      And I know what you mean about not checking out so many blogs. That’s my downfall. I forgot how quickly they add to my TBR pile. I have a TON of books sent from publishers and authors that I have yet to review. I feel bad about getting more, but occasionally I need to read what I want just for the hell of it. It keeps me on my toes.

  • I will admit that I was too creeped out by Pure to continue it D: People got fused with whatever objects they were near when the destructive things happened, and it’s freaking creepy! I also just have no stomach for that kind of creep >.>

    • You know, that and the cover art is what attracts me to it. It’s an interesting concept but it seems more “adult” than a lot of other YA books out there. The library just let me know they have it in, so I’ll probably start it today. I like being creeped out when I read, so hopefully that means I’ll enjoy it!

  • Love Minus Eighty was excellent, and I’m looking forward to reading The Shining Girls as well.

    this is a great blog feature, one I might have to borrow. I’m cracking up that you are outing the bloggers who made your TBR pile explode!

    • Between cancer treatment and my various back surgeries this year I’ve totally forgotten about my RSS feed. Now life is getting back to boring (yay!) and I rebooted the damn thing. My TBR pile has exploded as a result. I’m having a lot of fun with it. Bonus, my two-year-old loves it when I read to her, so I’m getting a TON of reading done now.

      I’d love it if you did this blog feature! You’d also add to my growing TBR pile and that’s just a lot of fun! Discovering books is great. I love to read the books authors and publishers send me, but I also like to balance that with my own personal choices. It keeps me from getting bored, and blogs like yours are essential to that. 🙂

  • Shining Girls is what jumps out to be out of this list, Sarah

    • I’m 59th on the hold list for The Shining Girls, so I’m not holding my breath for it anytime soon. Then again, I was 164th on the list for The Ocean at the End of the Lane and I got that within two weeks, so maybe it’ll come sooner than I expect. I’m excited about that one…. very excited about it. I love Beukes. She’s an incredible author.

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