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Most Anticipated New Releases of 2017 (so far)

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I love when it gets to the end of the year and I can start list-making: my favorite books of the year, the books I’m most excited about next year, my new and improved reading goals. Since December’s not over yet (thank goodness, since I love December), I thought I’d get a jump on things and start with some 2017 new releases that I’m super excited about. These are all books by authors I already love or new installments in series I’m already a fan of, so it’s definitely not an exhaustive list. I’ll do a post later on about other anticipated releases that I’m excited about from unfamiliar authors, but for now, here’s what I’m already impatiently waiting to read in 2017.

The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3)

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (anticipated release August 15th) – the final book in the Broken Earth trilogy is out this summer and I absolutely cannot wait. The first two books were some of the best books I read in 2015 and 2016, and I’ve loved every single thing I’ve read by N.K. Jemisin. If you like fantasy and aren’t reading this series, this is the perfect time to join. It’s set in a world that experiences repeated devastating natural disasters; some characters have the ability to manipulate the earth and are persecuted and controlled for their abilities. There are also mysterious beings essentially made of stone. The heart of the story, though, is about a mother’s search for her daughter amidst the chaos.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

Hunger by Roxane Gay (no release date set) – reading Gay’s Bad Feminist was one of my most significant bookish experiences of this year and it left me wanting to read much, much more by this author. This book was actually supposed to come out in 2016 but the release date was pushed back; while Bad Feminist was a collection of essays that hit on so many different topics, this is a memoir focusing on Gay’s relationship with food and her body. I have no doubt it’s going to be amazing.

Borne

Borne by Jeff Vandermeer (anticipated release September 7th) – I fell in love with the fascinating weirdness of Vandermeer’s writing with his Southern Reach trilogy a few years ago, and this sounds like it will be just as wonderfully strange. Apparently, it’s set in the future and is about a woman named Rachel who finds a mysterious genetically engineered creature that she names Borne; meanwhile, her city is ruled by a genetically engineered bear (?) and there is a mysterious Company doing all of this genetic engineering. I just need to read it. Like right now.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children, #2)

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire (anticipated release June 13th) – this is a companion novella to Every Heart a Doorway focusing on two of its many interesting characters. This series (is it a series? I hope so, because I’d love more insight into a few more of its characters) is about children who enter magical lands in Narnia-esque ways and have difficulty adjusting to the real world once they return. Some are able to eventually go back to their fantasy worlds and others aren’t, but they all long for those places where they felt most like themselves. The characters in this novella are twin sisters who went to a world similar to that of Frankenstein, which also contains vampires, although the two of them loved it for very different reasons–one because she was fascinated by the science, and the other because she was fascinated by the vampires.

White Hot (Hidden Legacy, #2)

White Hot by Ilona Andrews (anticipated release May 30th) – I KNOW. This cover is TERRIBLE. It’s a good thing I’m planning to get this on ebook, because wow. This is the second book in a duology focusing on a world where families inherit different types of magical powers, and the most powerful of these families essentially control society. Our main character has the ability to tell truth from lies and gets entangled with an extremely powerful billionaire sorcerer dude. It’s more romance-focused than the Kate Daniels series, and I don’t love it as much as Kate, but it’s still Ilona Andrews and I’ll read anything that she comes out with.

A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3)

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas (anticipated release May 2nd) – this is such an enjoyable escapist series; I hesitate to call it a guilty pleasure because I try not to feel guilty about my reading choices, but that describes it pretty well. It’s set in a fantasy world with fairy tale retellings intertwined with the narrative and focuses on Feyre, a formerly human huntress who is learning to control her abilities and deal with a series of threats to her world. I enjoyed the hell out of the last book, A Court of Mist and Fury, and I hope that this one will be just as good (although for some reason I feel like it won’t be, but maybe that’s just me).

 

What books are you excited for in 2017??

book haul

May Book Haul!

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April was a month filled with enticing library used book sales, so there weren’t any sales in my area in May. Instead, I splurged a bit on some new books and, in an unusual move for me, actually read two and a half of the books I bought this month within the month.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante – I finally caved into the immense literary pressure and bought My Brilliant Friend, a book that for a long time I resisted reading. I genuinely had thought I wouldn’t enjoy it; I was very, very wrong. I loved it so much that I quickly had to run back to Barnes & Noble for the second book.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante – the sequel to My Brilliant Friend, I just finished reading this book this morning. And now desperately need the third book.

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas – I pre-ordered this book awhile ago and am currently about halfway through; so far I’m finding it significantly more enjoyable than its predecessor, A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’m looking forward to reading the rest but want to savor it.

Love Poems by Pablo Neruda – I have never read a single poem by Pablo Neruda, although I’ve been meaning to for years. I don’t tend to read a ton of poetry but I think I should be attempting to read more of it; I’ll start with this very slim volume of extremely famously beautiful love poems.

Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey – I don’t know a lot about this book, but I found it in the Staff Recommendations section at the Strand. The cover is absolutely gorgeous and depicts a woman being submerged in water; from the description, it looks to be about a woman leaving her life behind and immersing herself in a new environment in New Zealand. I’m intrigued.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro – I’ve read two of Ishiguro’s previous books (Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day) and love his thoughtful style and his focus on the theme of the unreliability of memory. This book is his first foray into touches of fantasy and depicts an elderly couple’s search for their son. I’ve been wanting to read it ever since it came out but was waiting for the paperback edition to be released.

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson – Winterson’s The Passion was my first 5-star read of 2016, and I found this book completely accidentally on a bargain table at the Strand. From the back of the book, “The Daylight Gate is Jeanette Winterson’s singular vision of a dark period of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power in a time when politics and religion were closely intertwined.” It looks to be about witchcraft and witchhunting in 1600s England, and I have really high hopes for it.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh – I really hate watching a movie before reading a book, but it’s been a long time since I saw the film version in an indie movie theater in my college town. My goal to read more classics has been going really terribly, and I’ve  heard amazing things about this book, so I’m going to hope that this can help get me into a classics zone. The Goodreads blurb refers to this book as “the most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder’s infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.”