Last month, during the Top 10 Tuesday topic hiatus, I made a post about 10 books that I had recently added to my TBR on Goodreads. My TBR list is constantly expanding and I thought it would be fun to revisit this topic periodically to give a look at some of the books I most recently decided to add. The struggle was trying to find a way to differentiate these posts from my usual weekly Top 5 and Top 10 lists — a problem I have not yet figured out how to solve. Although I do add books to my TBR pretty frequently, this is most likely something I will revisit once a month or so. This week alone, I added 14 books to my shelves, just to give a sense of how huge my shelves can get. My TBR is currently sitting at almost 1700 books!
Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme all about the books we are adding to our shelves each week. It is hosted by TyngaReviews and ReadingReality.
1) The One That Got Away by Melissa Pimentel
If I remember correctly, I found this book because it was suggested to me based on another book I’d already read, although I can’t remember exactly which one. I also thought the cover art was very interesting. This book is about Ruby and Ethan, a couple who has split up and meet again 10 years later at Ruby’s sister’s wedding. For a while, I avoided these kinds of contemporary romance stories but after reading The Hating Game this year, I realized how much fun they could be. This book is also supposed to be a retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which I haven’t read but I love Jane Austen so I think it could be good.
2) Crossed and 3) Reached by Allie Condie
I finished reading Matched earlier this week, one of several series that I’d been meaning to try for a while. While I do agree with a lot of online reviews I’d seen which commented that it was not the most original dystopian, I still really enjoyed the book and I’m interested enough to find out what happens next. I went through a phase for a while where I actively avoided reading any more YA dystopians because after The Hunger Games (which I loved) and Divergent (which I liked), they all started to feel pretty similar. I thought Matched was generally well written, although a little rushed in places. It will be interesting to see how the story and characters develop in the rest of the series.
4) Dear Fahrenheit 451: A Librarian’s Love Letters and Break-Up Notes to the Books in Her Life by Annie Spence
Aside from the ridiculously long title, this book just seems like such a cool concept! This book consists of a series of letters addressed to various books that Annie Spence has read. I love the idea of this because it seems like such a unique format for writing reviews and sharing your opinions on books. I enjoy reading book reviews online, but I’ve never really thought about reading a book that consists of reviews. I especially love the creativity of how this book is set up, and also just the idea that our attachment to books can sometimes feel pretty similar to relationships with people. This is a new release that will be out on September 26, so it is definitely something to look forward to!
5) The Good Daughter by Alexandra Burt
I discovered this book a couple of days ago when I went to the library to pick up a couple of my requested book that had come in. This book was on a display near the door featuring some of the new and popular books, and the cover art caught my attention. This book was released in February of this year, and focuses on a woman named Dahlia Waller who is trying to distance herself from her childhood with her eccentric mother, and years later she returns home to confront her mother and try to piece together the secrets of her past. I’m a little worried about this one because the Goodreads reviews so far have generally been pretty mixed, with many quite negative comments about the book being slow and confusing. Although I often look at reviews, I don’t necessarily let them put me off a book, so I’ll have to wait and see when I read it myself.
6) Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato
This was another book that I discovered on the same shelf in the library as The Good Daughter, and another that was released earlier this year. This book is about a young boy named Edgar whose father died in an accident that he can barely remember, and now lives with his mother, Lucy. The plot synopsis was actually fairly vague, but the book received excellent reviews on Goodreads, described as both a page-turner and a masterpiece. To be honest, I’m always a little wary of such high praise but the book seems very intriguing. I was also interested since a prompt requiring a literary fiction book had recently been voted into one of my reading challenges for next year, and this one seems to be a good fit.
7) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Although I’d heard about this book earlier this year, it didn’t interest me much at the time because I didn’t properly understand what it was about. I thought this book was another one along the lines of Windfall, which is about a character who suddenly wins the lottery and the way all that money affects their lives. It wasn’t until a couple of days ago where I actually really looked at the synopsis and realized that I had it completely mixed up with other books. This book is a family saga about a Korean family exiled from their homeland and seeking a better life in Japan. Although I’ve always been very interested in Asian history, I know very little about Korea and I don’t think I’ve ever read any books about it. This is another book that has received excellent reviews on Goodreads, so it seems like it could be a great one to start with.
8) Fowl Language: Welcome to Parenting and 9) Fowl Language: The Struggle is Real by Brian Gordon
I’m not even a parent, but I love Brian Gordon’s cartoons! I first encountered them on Facebook, where many of my friends who are parents started sharing them and I found them adorable and hilarious! I discovered the comics had been collected into books earlier this week after reading Adulthood is a Myth, another comic series that I follow on Facebook. The slight downside with these collections is that fans of the series probably already follow the page on Facebook, and the cartoons in the collection tend to be the same ones we’ve already seen. I still think it would be fun to read a book that has several of them together though! I especially love the Fowl Language comics because they have the perfect blend of humour and sarcasm, and give (what I imagine anyway) is a very accurate look at what it is to be a parent.
10) The Pocket Wife by Susan H. Crawford
I think this was a book that came up on my recommendations pages, and I was intrigued by the unusual title. This book has been compared to Before I Go to Sleep, which I read earlier this year and loved. It is about a woman suffering from bipolar disorder, who may have murdered her friend during a breakdown. This book has been out for a couple of years already, but I’d never heard of it before. I tend to love stories with unreliable narrators trying to piece together what really happened. I’m especially intrigued to find out what “pocket wife” even means, since it seems like such an odd phrase.
11) The One That Got Away by Bethany Chase
It’s a little funny that I added two contemporary romance books with the exact same name to my list in the same week. This book is about a woman named Sarina whose ex-boyfriend Eamon returns to town while her soon-to-be fiancee is away. Eamon approaches Sarina, who has an architecture practice, so renovate his new house, and their time together causes her to remember all of the reasons she fell in love with him in the first place. As I said earlier, this is not necessarily the kind of book I pick up very often but I’m starting to realize how interesting they can be, and how fun. I go into books like this expecting something light and entertaining, and usually they tend to deliver.
12) The Party by Elizabeth Day
I found this book the other day on a list of thrillers that rival Gone Girl, which I haven’t read yet but will be reading soon. This was one of a couple books on that list that I hadn’t already added to my TBR. It is about a man named Martin who makes friends with the wealthy Ben Fitzmaurice, giving him access to an exclusive upper-class world and forming a close friendship that lasts several decades. The plot summary reminded me a bit of a more fleshed-out Great Gatsby-type story, although since it is a thriller, the details are quite vague. This is another book that was only recently released, in mid-July of this year, so it will be interesting to see more reviews as they come in.
Abyssal Librarian 
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