We're an Open Book
I generally get most
of my Adult literary fiction recommendations from podcasts and one I’ve heard a lot
about is Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. I picked this up at my Indie book
store (shout out to Fountain Bookstore) after the bookseller told me how much she loved Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale which I have but haven’t read yet….
I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.”
― David Levithan, Every Day
- Release Date: August 28th 2012
- Pages: 233
- Genre: Paranormal Romance ?
- Publisher: Knopf (Random House)
This novel is fairly different from the previous Levithan novels I’ve read so far. It’s very high concept and cerebral. The story follows A, a who wakes up every day in someone else’s body. A lives their life for one day before falling asleep and waking up in a new body the next day. A is essentially a soul without a body, A has sentient thoughts and memories, A has no gender or form.
When I first heard about this book, I thought it would essentially read like a series of short stories, but there is a continuing plot. When A meets a girl named Rhiannon while in the body of her boyfriend, Justin A falls in love with her. Now, A is will do anything to get back to her and find a way for them to be together…
- Release Date: January 1, 2011
- Pages: 352
- Publisher: Quirk Books
- Genre: Paranormal Historical
Jacob has always felt that his life was just ordinary, especially compared to the stories he heard from his grandfather about the halcyon days and Peculiar children during World War II. But these strange stories are just stories though, right? After the traumatic death of his Grandfather, Jacob begins to see things– things that can’t possibly be real. Soon, Jacob finds himself traveling to the small island of Carinholm, Wales, the place of his Grandfather’s stories, where he discovers the past and present may not be that far apart at all….
- Release Date: September 30th 2014
- Pages: 352
- Genre: Science Fiction
- Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic)
A few months ago I read Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince as my starting point to support the We Need Diverse Books campaign and to start including more diverse books in our blog. The Summer Prince started out kind of rocky for me but morphed into an intricate, creative poignant dystopian tale. When I saw Johnson’s next book on NetGalley I jumped at the chance to review it.
In the political, power-hungry world of Washington D.C. Our main character 18-year-old Emily Bird occupies a curious space as a black upper-class teen in D.C. society. Bird grits her teeth and bares it as her mother, who raised herself up from the lower-income Northeast DC neighborhood, pushes Bird to join the Ivy league crowd whether she wants to or not. But when Emily loses hours of memories right before a pandemic flu turns D.C into a quarantine zone, she becomes a girl of her own making. With the help of Coffee, the son of a Brazilian diplomat and new friends, they will uncover her memories and who is trying to keep her from remembering….
- Release Date: February 4th, 2014
- Genre: Sci-Fi/Adventure
- Audiobook length: 15 hours 40 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan
Cress is the third book in Marrisa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles Series. In this book, we get introduced to Cress who briefly appears at the end of Cinder. Cress is a highly imaginative teenage girl who has spent most of her life in isolation aboard a satellite. When the chance comes for her to embark on a real adventure with the crew from the previous novels; her will, smarts and survival skills are put to the test….
