“I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read That Yet” #23 (Help Me Choose!)

September’s Result – His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

Now, this was an unanticipated delight! It had been on my TBR for some years because of my love for Uprooted and Spinning Silver. The early 19th century historical setting deterred me from picking it up. Happily, I can now thank everyone who voted for this book for introducing me to the world of Temeraire 😄 My hold finallly came in a few weeks ago. The steady worldbuilding and pacing, rotating through combative action, political maneouvering, and character developing scenes, pulled me quickly through the story. I read 2/3 of book two yesterday! Of course, Temeraire is a delight, and Laurence is not bad himself, either. These books (the first two, at least) are so easily readable and of reasonable length, I can imagine myself finishing all nine of the series 😲

December’s Selection

I’ve learnt my lesson and accepted that this should be a bimonthly event, given how long it can take me to get ahold of the selected book. So, today’s post will be the last “I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read That Yet!” for 2023!

The final theme for this year is popular intriguing books. I have a Goodreads shelf titled to-read-intriguing. This is where I put any book that sounds intriguing to me 😜 This generally means speculative fiction for adults which doesn’t fall neatly into the fantasy genre, as well as stories that purport to have an unusual twist or premise. Any thriller or horror title that catches my interest typically ends up on this shelf. To select titles, I sorted my to-read-intriguing shelf by number of ratings and chose the first four titles with the most ratings.

• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (1,798,601 ratings ) – This book has blown up since I added it to my TBR four years ago! I find these sorts of thrillers usually never live up to their promise, but the premise and polarizing reviews from bloggers I follow have kept it on my TBR.
  • The intriguing bit: “One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.”
• Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (446,060 ratings)
  • The intriguing bit: “Is it this world or the other that’s the dream?”
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (359,521 ratings) – This one might be too romantic for me, but its status as a Mexican classic and general premise keep it on my TBR.
  • The intriuging bit: “the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family”, magical food
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (243,398 ratings)
  • The intruging bit: “Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless”, who is Piranesi and who is The Other.

Which book should I read in September?
Leave a comment to vote! (Voting closes on 5 Nov)

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