Top 5 (Books I will DEFINITELY read in 2023) Tuesday

I’m going to tag and look at this post I made for 2022 to see if I did what I SAID I would do. Please join me in shaming myself 😂. I will even allow heckling but you can’t say anything rude about my cat!! I won’t shame myself too much about what I didn’t read for 2022 and neither will I push myself to read everything on this list. It’s all fun and not too much pressure.

Definitely go visit Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads and see which books she might read this year. Also, Meeghan, if you’re reading this – no pressure on YOU to read what’s on your list either 💜.

Some books on here fall under the HarperCollins publishing umbrella. Please follow the union on socials (Linktree for all of them) to support and raise awareness. I believe you’re able to purchase the books on their Bookshop website and so that way it helps them financially (I have added those links for those books). Please note that in South Africa we don’t have HarperCollins as a publisher and the books are published through a different, and smaller publisher – which is why I’m “able” to list them.

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2022 – WELL I literally only read one out of 6 that I had on the list (The Beautiful) 😂. And it was a reread instead of an actual (first) read. So let’s see what’s on the list today!

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (GR/SG) – 

Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he’s a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she–and her book club–are the only people standing between the monster they’ve invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.

I’m definitely wanting to read more Hendrix books and I think this and How to Sell a Haunted House are the Hendrix books I want to prioritise this year. If I read more, great! 

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas (GR/SG) –  

Welcome to The Sunbearer Trials, where teen semidioses compete in a series of challenges with the highest of stakes, in this electric new Mexican-inspired fantasy from Aiden Thomas, the New York Times bestselling author of Cemetery Boys.

“Only the most powerful and honorable semidioses get chosen. I’m just a Jade. I’m not a real hero.”

As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the evil Obsidian gods at bay. Ten semidioses between the ages of thirteen and eighteen are selected by Sol himself as the most worthy to compete in The Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all―they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body used to fuel the Sun Stones that will protect the people of Reino del Sol for the next ten years.

Teo, a 17-year-old Jade semidiós and the trans son of Quetzal, goddess of birds, has never worried about the Trials…or rather, he’s only worried for others. His best friend Niya―daughter of Tierra, the god of earth―is one of the strongest heroes of their generation and is much too likely to be chosen this year. He also can’t help but worry (reluctantly, and under protest) for Aurelio, a powerful Gold semidiós and Teo’s friend-turned-rival who is a shoo-in for the Trials. Teo wouldn’t mind taking Aurelio down a notch or two, but a one-in-ten chance of death is a bit too close for Teo’s taste.

But then, for the first time in over a century, Sol chooses a semidiós who isn’t a Gold. In fact, he chooses two: Xio, the 13-year-old child of Mala Suerte, god of bad luck, and…Teo. Now they must compete in five mysterious trials, against opponents who are both more powerful and better trained, for fame, glory, and their own survival.

Yes, this is certainly not just pushed over from the previous year where I also promised to read this. But never mind! We’re here now!

Babel by R.F. Kuang (GR/SG/Bookshop) –

From award-winning author R.F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire.

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.

Babel is the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

 

I got this a birthday gift from a friend and I keep wanting to pick but you know it’s just the issue of finding the time haha. But soon!

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (GR/SG) – 

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper – despite the displeasure of Achilles’s mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

I’ll probably only start this on the last day of January but that counts, right? Or at least it counts in my mind 😄

The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood (GR/SG) – 

What if you knew how and when you will die?

Csorwe does. She will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice. On the day of her foretold death, however, a powerful mage offers her a new fate.

Csorwe leaves her home, her destiny, and her god to become the wizard’s loyal sword-hand — stealing, spying, and killing to help him reclaim his seat of power in the homeland from which he was exiled.

But Csorwe and the wizard will soon learn – gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.

I have an arc of this 😭 😭  Which means I REALLY should get around to reading. It’s even about the length of it (UNDER 500 pages) when I read Daughter of the Moon Goddess this month and that was like 500 pages. I might take out the audiobook and read along and see if the arc matches up with the audio – and also because I want to know how to pronounce everything.

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And with that that’s another 5 books I really need to read this year! Like seriously, if I don’t read The Song of Achilles and The Unspoken Name this year force me to just STOP BLOGGING please and thank you. Have you read any of these books listed here? Which ones do you want to shout at me to read immediately? Or tell me which books you need to read this year!

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