Top Ten Tuesday is an original weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. I thought this would be a fun way to share a condensed version of potential rambles and thoughts that I have.

This Week’s Theme:
Top Ten New-To-Me
Authors I Read In 2014

Initial Thoughts:

Either I’m difficult to please or I have read a bunch of baloney this year–or perhaps a mix of both? (Because finding ten books that fit this theme was pretty difficult, I’m not gonna lie.)

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Brandon Sanderson

This dude is simply a wizard.

Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills.

Elle Cosimano

Her first book, Nearly Gone, was a book where I became part of the BAU for a day while sipping coffee with Reid, Garcia, JJ and Morgan, and solving the mystery of The Zodiac Killer. The writing didn’t reach four-or-five star glory for me but it was fun—and that’s what counts, right?

Bones meets Fringe in a big, dark, scary, brilliantly-plotted urban thriller that will leave you guessing until the very end.

Andrew Critchley

I didn’t know who this man was but thank goodness to Goodreads First Reads for allowing me to discover him because he wrote a genuine, human piece in Dublin in the Rain.

On a rainy day in Dublin, during the spring of 1947, a tragic accident brought devastation to those involved. As the subsequent years pass, unable to come to terms with the accident, the survivors set the path for a deeply troubled future for each generation that followed.

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Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. Fikry is the man of the hour and his grumpiness in life is what I aspire to exude (well, maybe).

On the faded Island Books sign hanging over the porch of the Victorian cottage is the motto “No Man Is an Island; Every Book Is a World.” A. J. Fikry, the irascible owner, is about to discover just what that truly means.

Alex London

The world in Proxy was neat; but the fact that he wrote about a normal LGBTQIA kid was even better.

Knox was born into one of the City’s wealthiest families. A Patron, he has everything a boy could possibly want—the latest tech, the coolest clothes, and a Proxy to take all his punishments. When Knox breaks a vase, Syd is beaten. When Knox plays a practical joke, Syd is forced to haul rocks. And when Knox crashes a car, killing one of his friends, Syd is branded and sentenced to death.

Joe Hart

You know what I hate? Creepy porcelain dolls. You know what I hate more? Creepy dolls staring right at you in dark basements on an empty island. Them goosebumpy chills though.

On a whim, Evan accepts an invitation to housesit on a picturesque island in northern Minnesota. At first it seems like the perfect second chance for he and his son to recover and rebuild their life together. But there is something very, very wrong with the house and all that occupies it.

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M.G. Buehrlen

I wish I had the luxury of 56 past lives to escape into. The world building is fun if you can overlook questionable decision making.

Fifty-six lifetimes to explore: the prospect is irresistible to Alex, especially when the same mysterious boy with soulful blue eyes keeps showing up in each of them. But the more she descends, the more it becomes apparent that someone doesn’t want Alex to travel again. Ever.

S.M. McEachern

So imagine like a dystopian grab-bag; you reach in, grab a handful of book elements and bam–a book. This is kind of like that. It still has its flaws but I found it to be pretty fun nonetheless. (But I’m going off of my review in the beginning of the year–when I was a wee lad who was a noob at reviewing LOL.) 

Sunny O’Donnell is a seventeen-year-old slave who has never seen the sun. She was born in the Pit, a subterranean extension of the bio-dome. …She didn’t think things could get any worse until she was forced upstairs to the Dome to be a servant-girl at a bachelor party. That’s where she met Leisel Holt, the president’s daughter, and her fiancé, Jack Kenner.

Afterthoughts:

So yes it was impossible to fill this list with ten because despite discovering many new authors, many of which were very meh to me. Some of the ones listed above were borderline questionable too. Thanks for perusing this post!

And as another weekly reminder (because I am so terrible at marketing my content), I am giving away a signed hardcover of Stiefvater’s Blue Lily, Lily Blue: https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/5bc5ec181/ (It’s open internationally.)

(…I am also experimenting with linking bao Broke and Boock tkish with Joseph instead of Joey LOL.)

Cheers,
Joey (Joseph?)