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bookofmirth · 2 years

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HI!!

I'll save all my acotar reread asks for later so you can get break for a little while :)))

I'm looking for other books i can fall in love with. Any recommendations? Or any books you read this year that you absolutely loved and why?

Enjoy your last couple reads of this years!! Happy new year if you read this later or happy almost new year!!

Hello! I will get to them so no worries!

I chose 5 of my top ones from this year, and included descriptions and why I like them. :D

Beneath the Keep by Erika Johansen. This is a prequel, and I think you should actually read the trilogy first, starting with The Queen of the Tearling. It's a fantasy series in the beginning, but then the genre morphs. I really, really loved BtK and I had very high expectations. The premise of Queen is that a woman has come of age and has to move from her isolated forest house to the castle where she will become... the queen. But her land gives monthly (I'm pretty sure monthly?) tributes to a nearby kingdom in the form of slaves, due to an agreement that Kelsea's mother made. Kelsea does not like this. Conflict ensues. Beneath the Keep follows one of the main characters from the original trilogy, sort-of as an origin story for him, but it also helps us understand a lot of things that Kelsea wasn't able to when she first takes the throne.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is one I've talked about a lot, but it's science fiction, about a crew who takes on a really challenging job to create a tunnel from one part of the galaxy (universe? details, idk haha) to another. It's not about the plot, though, it's very much about the crew, their friendships and relationships, their goals and hopes. And there are four books in the series, though you can read them independently from what I understand!

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is speculative/science-fiction. The premise is that Klara is an artificial intelligence "friend" designed to be a companion for children. We follow Klara's perspective in a shop, watching children walk by and hoping they take her home, and then her adjustment to living as a child's companion. It's simply written, but there is so much just beneath the surface. I love those kind of books, where people can use few words, and you just... can't stop thinking about what the implications are. In this case, there is the usual "what makes us human and what makes Klara not human", but it's also so, so fascinating to see the world through her eyes.

The Gameshouse by Clare North is... hard to describe. It's about a gambling den, or so it seems. People who aren't really worthy of its full potential only see it that way. However, people who are more intelligent, shrewd, clever, find themselves in another layer of these houses, and come to find that the houses, though spread across the world, are actually connected via mysterious portals. Instead of gambling for money, or jewels, the higher layers of the house allow people to gamble for time, for countries, for someone's sense of smell, for political influence over the CIA, things like that. They are always trying to one-up each other, and the game spans the globe and centuries. It's so rich and immersive, I loved it.

The last one I will talk about, mainly because I don't see a lot of hype on social media, is Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller. This is more literary than the other books. It's about a brother and sister, both in their 50s, whose mother passes. They lived with her, and had never lived away from home. They are both single, too, so you can imagine how sheltered a life they have had. They never traveled, and they don't even know a whole lot about technology - I vaguely remember the sister trying to find a job and having to set up her first email account? Anyway, when their mother dies, they realize that she had debts they were unaware of, and they end up losing their home. It's really poignant to watch them struggle to find a place in the world, to cling to what is familiar and safe, to wonder if they can still rely on one another, to watch the people in their hometown take advantage of them... For a literary fiction book, I was kinda freaking out about it in bookclub as I was reading.

Okay actually the last one is Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark. It's super short, but it's about people who fight against the KKK, because white people who get taken in by the KKK and start to believe in their message transform into monsters. Literally. So there is a group of Black people who take it upon themselves to kill the monsters and protect themselves. It's not for the faint of heart, you can imagine.

I made a post that has a bunch of linked recommendations, but I'm curious what your preferences are? I can make more specific recs if none of these work, or if none of the books I liked this year sound interesting!

#booklr #book recommendation #ask #heleencollier

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