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 Recent Adds
To The Infinite TBR
Initial Thoughts:
The list of TBR additions was compiled after skimming through other posts for this week’s topic. If that’s not recent enough then I don’t know what is. So thank you, I guess?
Excepts have been provided for your viewing and images, as per usual, link back to Goodreads
The Affinities – Robert Charles Wilson
To join one of the twenty-two Affinities is to change one’s life. It’s like family, and more than family. Your fellow members aren’t just like you, and they aren’t just people who are likely to like you. They’re also the people with whom you can best cooperate in all areas of life–creative, interpersonal, even financial. At loose ends both professional and personal, young Adam Fisk takes the suite of tests to see if he qualifies for any of the Affinities, and finds that he’s a match for one of the largest, the one called Tau. It’s utopian—at first. Problems in all areas of his life begin to simply sort themselves out, as he becomes part of a global network of people dedicated to helping one another—to helping him.
Imaginary Things – Andrea Lochen
Watching children play and invent whimsical games of fantasy is one of life’s great joys. But what if you could actually see your child’s imagination as it unfolded? And what would you do if your child’s imagination suddenly became dark and threatening?
Burned-out and broke, twenty-two-year-old single mother Anna Jennings moves to her grandparents’ rural home for the summer with her four-year-old son, David. The sudden appearance of shadowy dinosaurs forces Anna to admit that either she’s lost her mind or she can actually see her son’s active imagination. Frightened for David’s safety, Anna struggles to learn the rules of this bizarre phenomenon and how best to protect him. But what she uncovers along the way is completely unexpected: revelations about what her son’s imaginary friends truly represent and dark secrets about her own childhood imaginary friend.
Boo – Neil Smith
Oliver Dalrymple, nicknamed “Boo” because of his pale complexion and staticky hair, is an outcast at his Illinois middle school–more interested in biology and chemistry than the friendship of other kids. But after a tragic accident, Boo wakes up to find himself in a very strange sort of heaven: a town populated only by 13-year-old Americans. While he desperately wants to apply the scientific method to find out how this heaven works (broken glass grows back; flashlights glow without batteries; garbage chutes plummet to nowhere), he’s confronted by the greatest mystery of all–his peers. With the help of his classmate Johnny, who was killed at the same time, Boo begins to figure out what exactly happened to them (and who they really were back in America) through this story about growing up, staying young and the never-ending heartbreak of being thirteen.
The Ice Twins – S.K. Tremayne
One of Sarah’s daughters died. But can she be sure which one?
A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcroft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives.
But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity–that she, in fact, is Lydia–their world comes crashing down once again.
Pretty Ugly: A Novel – Kirker Butler
Miranda Miller’s mission in life is to make sure her nine-year-old daughter, Bailey, continues to be one of the most successful child pageant contestants in the southern United States. Lately, that mission’s been difficult. Bailey has been secretly binge eating to gain weight so Miranda will let her retire; and the reality show Miranda been trying to set up for Bailey (and herself) just went to their biggest rival, Starr Kennedy and her tyrannical stage mother, Theresa.
But Miranda’s got an ace up her sleeve. She’s seven months pregnant with her fourth child, a girl, thank God, and Miranda is going to make damn sure that this one will be a pageant champion, too.
A Thousand Nights – E.K. Johnston
LO-MELKHIIN KILLED THREE HUNDRED GIRLS before he came to her village, looking for a wife. When she sees the dust cloud on the horizon, she knows he has arrived. She knows he will want the loveliest girl: her sister. She vows she will not let her be next.
And so she is taken in her sister’s place, and she believes death will soon follow. Lo-Melkhiin’s court is a dangerous palace filled with pretty things: intricate statues with wretched eyes, exquisite threads to weave the most beautiful garments. She sees everything as if for the last time. But the first sun rises and sets, and she is not dead. Night after night, Lo-Melkhiin comes to her and listens to the stories she tells, and day after day she is awoken by the sunrise. Exploring the palace, she begins to unlock years of fear that have tormented and silenced a kingdom. Lo-Melkhiin was not always a cruel ruler. Something went wrong.
The Mechanical – Ian Tregillis
My name is Jax. That is the name granted to be by my human masters.
I am a clakker: a mechanical man, powered by alchemy. Armies of my kind have conquered the world – and made the Brasswork Throne the sole superpower. I am a faithful servant. I am the ultimate fighting machine. I am endowed with great strength and boundless stamina.
But I am beholden to the wishes of my human masters.
I am a slave. But I shall be free.
Dreamstrider – Lindsay Smith
Livia is a dreamstrider. She can inhabit a subject’s body while they are sleeping and, for a short time, move around in their skin. She uses her talent to work as a spy for the Barstadt Empire. But her partner, Brandt, has lately become distant, and when Marez comes to join their team from a neighborhing kingdom, he offers Livia the option of a life she had never dared to imagine. Livia knows of no other dreamstriders who have survived the pull of Nightmare. So only she understands the stakes when a plot against the Empire emerges that threatens to consume both the dreaming world and the waking one with misery and rage.
Time Salvager – Wesley Chu
In a future when Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humanity has spread into the outer solar system to survive, the tightly controlled use of time travel holds the key maintaining a fragile existence among the other planets and their moons. James Griffin-Mars is a chronman–a convicted criminal recruited for his unique psychological makeup to undertake the most dangerous job there is: missions into Earth’s past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. Most chronmen never reach old age, and James is reaching his breaking point.
On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets an intriguing woman from a previous century, scientist Elise Kim, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, James brings her back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, and discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity’s home world.
Seveneves – Neal Stephenson
What would happen if the world were ending?
A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .
Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.
Afterthoughts:
You’re welcome.
Also: another preemptive thank you is in order for the hundreds of books added to my mental TBRafter today.
Cheers,
Joey
OMG OMG OMG OMG HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THE NEW NEAL STEPHENSON
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THE WONDERS OF TTT IN ACTION!
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Imaginary Things sounds so good, that is definitely going on my TBR shelf on Goodreads! Than
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Haha, I skimmed through Goodreads before posting this list and Imaginary Things caught my eye too! (Although I’ll admit I had a moment of “ugh, why didn’t I think of writing something like this”).
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Augh! This topic is dangerous. Had 3 of yours, added 3 more.
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The meme strikes again!
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Hello Dream Strider, and welcome to my TBR.
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Hello Dream Strider, welcome to her TBR.
But really, I got an Inception vibe from it (I love Inception).
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Spotted a couple of these today which are now on the TBR too… TTT kills me. R x
My TTT: https://confessionsofabookgeek.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/top-ten-tuesday-books-ive-recently-added-to-my-tbr/
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It murders all of us…while smiling.
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So many of these have so much fantastic potential. It’s a little painful xD thanks for sharing!
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Potential and hype is the name of the game with so many of these. And hopefully, that’s enough to get me to actually (maybe) pick them up!
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The Mechanical is so good. I hope you read it.
Lynn 😀
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Haha here’s to hoping!
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A Thousand Nights has such a GORGEOUS cover. I feel like I’m going to be forever fangirling over it. It didn’t make my list, but I saw it last week on goodreads and I thought it sounds really cool and interesting.
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I don’t even know the story of Arabian Nights. So it won’t even be a retelling for me if I do end up doing more than just tbr-ing it.
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I have a couple of these (The Ice Twins and Pretty Ugly) on my list, but Imaginary Things is new to me. That one really looks interesting to me, so I have to add it to my list of books to read….this lifetime? My list is so big now that it’s no longer a “read this year,” but a hope to read this lifetime. *sigh*
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A lifetime (and then some) for most of us haha. Glad there was a novel that piqued your interest!
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Haha, I’ve already started adding books on my Goodreads TBR because of this TTT. Those fantasy and scifi covers though… *drools*
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I should actually use the Goodreads shelving function more.
Anything and everything I say I’ll read gets stored in my brain shelving (because then it doesn’t feel as bad I guess when I see that I have 1237127312893721371230283129783 things to read but haven’t even made a fraction of a dent in the actual pile).
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So I practically added 6 titles into my Long List of TBR Books Threatening to Topple Over and Kill Me thank you very much! Fun fact: I requested a digital review copy of Boo today and got an approval! 🙂
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I checked on NetGalley…HOW DID YOU GET IT? I’m so wary of those territory rights stuff cause I’ve always been declined LOL.
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Idk lol. As fas as I know, UK publishing houses almost ALWAYS decline my requests.
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Rejection is scary. Clicking request is scary. I will just wait for it to be released LOL.
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