Top Ten Tuesday: Books That I Recently Got!

Hey everyone and welcome to the beginning of the week! Since it is Tuesday, it’s time for another round of ✨Top Ten Tuesday ✨

This week’s theme is a freebie… so basically I come up with my own topic. I’ve been getting some new books (whether I’m buying them, someone is lending them to me or I’m finding them in the Free Little Libraries around my house), and I want to talk about them!

So here are ten books I recently got that I’m excited to read and wanna talk about RIGHT NOW 😂

Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl hosts Top Ten Tuesday’s every week, so go check out her blog (where you’ll also find more bloggers who participated in that weeks round of Top Ten Tuesday)!

---

I’ll include a blurb for each book, provided by The StoryGraph! If you’re not already on there, I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you love tracking your books and reading analytics!

The Girl From The Other Side series by Nagabe

I’ve been eyeing this series for a while due to the beautiful artwork, and finally took the plunge since I wanted to read some more spooky manga!

Blurb: In a world split between the Inside and the Outside, those living in both realms are told never to cross over to the other side, lest they be cursed. A young girl named Shiva lives on the other side, in a vacant village with a demonic guardian known only as “Teacher.” Although the two are forbidden to touch, they seem to share a bond that transcends their disparate appearances. But when Shiva leaves the Teacher’s care to seek out her grandmother, the secret behind her mysterious living arrangement comes to light.

Feed by M.T. Anderson

I was loaned this book, and told that it was a good read! Nothing else to it haha

Blurb: For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon — a chance to party during spring break. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their .heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy girl who has decided to fight the feed and its ever-present ability to categorize human thoughts and desires.

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

I heard a lot of good things about this book, and have had it on my list for a while. I finally decided to get it with my Barnes and Noble gift card!

Blurb: Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends–some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man, conspire to fracture his defenses, while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community.

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

For those who haven’t been on my blog before, I loved The Stormlight Archive and have been working my way through the Mistborn series (Also read Warbreaker… just thought I should throw that in there 😂). However, I never got a copy of Sanderson’s debut, so I decided to go ahead and get it to read once I’m done with Mistborn (or at least, once I finish Well of Ascension).

Blurb: Elantris was the capital of Arelon: gigantic, beautiful, literally radiant, filled with benevolent beings who used their powerful magical abilities for the benefit of all. Yet each of these demigods was once an ordinary person until touched by the mysterious transforming power of the Shaod. Ten years ago, without warning, the magic failed. Elantrians became wizened, leper-like, powerless creatures, and Elantris itself was dark, filthy, and crumbling. Arelon’s new capital, Kae, crouches in the shadow of Elantris. Princess Sarene of Teod arrives for a marriage of state with Crown Prince Raoden, hoping — based on their correspondence — to also find love. She finds instead that Raoden has died and she is considered his widow. Both Teod and Arelon are under threat as the last remaining holdouts against the imperial ambitions of the ruthless religious fanatics of Fjordell. So Sarene decides to use her new status to counter the machinations of Hrathen, a Fjordell high priest who has come to Kae to convert Arelon and claim it for his emperor and his god. But neither Sarene nor Hrathen suspects the truth about Prince Raoden. Stricken by the same curse that ruined Elantris, Raoden was secretly exiled by his father to the dark city. His struggle to help the wretches trapped there begins a series of events that will bring hope to Arelon, and perhaps reveal the secret of Elantris itself.

Don’t Read The Comments by Eric Smith

Another book that was loaned and recommended to me, as it’s a fun and fast read!

Blurb: For Divya and Aaron, it’s the world of online gaming. While Divya trades her rising-star status for sponsorships to help her struggling single mom pay rent, Aaron plays as a way to fuel his own dreams of becoming a game developer – and as a way to disappear when his mom starts talking about medical school. After a chance online meeting, the pair decides to team up – but soon find themselves the targets of a group of internet trolls who begin launching a real-world doxxing campaign, threatening Aaron’s dream and Divya’s actual life. They think can drive her out of the game, but Divya’s whole world is on the line…And she isn’t going down without a fight.

We Hunt The Flame by Hafsah Faizal

This is one of those books that I’ve been meaning to read forever, and just not… so I finally got myself a copy to read! 👌

Blurb: People lived because she killed. People died because he lived. Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the sultan. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways. Both Zafira and Nasir are legends in the kingdom of Arawiya–but neither wants to be. War is brewing, and the Arz sweeps closer with each passing day, engulfing the land in shadow. When Zafira embarks on a quest to uncover a lost artifact that can restore magic to her suffering world and stop the Arz, Nasir is sent by the sultan on a similar mission: retrieve the artifact and kill the Hunter. But an ancient evil stirs as their journey unfolds–and the prize they seek may pose a threat greater than either can imagine.

The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska

The plot sounds intriguing to me, and it seems like a fun fantasy story ✨

Blurb: Karnawa season is a time for mischief and revelry. For the next few weeks, all will be wintry balls, glittery disguises, and nightly torch-lit sleigh-parties. Unbeknownst to the merrymakers, two uninvited girls join the fun. Zosia and Marynka are drawn to each other the moment they meet, until they discover they’re rivals, who both have their sights set on the prince’s heart. If one consumes a pure heart, she’ll gain immeasurable power. Marynka plans to bring the prince’s back to her patron in order to prove herself. While Zosia is determined to take his heart and its power for her own. Their ambition turns into a magical contest with both girls vying to keep the prince out of the other’s grasp, even as their attraction to one another grows. But their attempts on his life draws the attention of the city that would die for him, and suddenly their escalating rivalry might cost them not just their love for each other, but both their lives.

The Magic Kingdom of Landover series by Terry Brooks

My dad told me about this series, and he had a few of the books in the series, but not all of them (including the first book). I actually got the bind up a while ago, but I figure I would just add it in here… because why not 🤷‍♂️

Blurb: Chicago lawyer Ben Holiday can’t fathom what lies ahead when he purchases Landover–a magical kingdom of chivalry and sorcery–from Meeks, the mysterious seller who placed the ad. Weary and jaded, Ben clings to the ad’s promise: “Escape into your dreams.” But Landover is not the enchanted idyll he expected. The kingdom is in ruin. The barons refuse to recognize Ben as King, a dragon is decimating the countryside, and a demon lord has challenged any prospective ruler to a fatal duel. To make matters worse, the Paladin, renowned champion of the Kings of Landover, seems to be merely a legend. Ben’s only allies are a bumbling court magician, a talking dog turned court scribe, and the beautiful Willow, who is part girl, part tree. With his friends in tow, Ben sets out to claim the throne. But when Meeks decides he wants Landover back, Ben will face supernatural foes of every stripe to prove himself worthy of the kingship. The question is: Can he survive?

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

I loved The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (it was one of my favorite books of all time for a while there), and the only other book I read by her was elsewhere, so I’m excited to read more of her stuff! I know there are a few other books she’s written as well, but I just never got around to reading them… maybe this will motivate me to go back down the rabbit hole.

Blurb: On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. They borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo: a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sam and Sadie build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, games as artform, technology and the human experience, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before. 

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

I loved Station Eleven, and maybe it’s because it was right at the beginning of the pandemic and it hit close to home for that reason. Granted, Emily St. John Mandel’s writing style is great too, and it’s making me excited to read her newest book (and I have another one of her books on my buy list for next time!).

Blurb: Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

---

That’s all I have today for my Top Ten Tuesday post! Do you like any of the books on this list, or have any recommendations? Let me know in the comments down below (:

Don’t forget to check out That Artsy Reader Girl’s post, where you can also find more bloggers who participated in this weeks Top Ten Tuesday! If you want to participate in future Top Ten Tuesday’s, check out this list!

On that note, I will see you in the next post!

-Erin (: