Top 5 Wednesday: Books I hope to finally read in 2017

Happy Wednesday!

This is my first time participating in Top 5 Wednesday, a weekly feature hosted on Goodreads by Lainey and Samantha. I’ve been in the group for a while but until now I haven’t come across a theme that struck my fancy.

This week’s theme is in regard to books that have been sitting in my TBR pile FOREVER. Who doesn’t have a few of those, right?

5. “Await Your Reply” by Dan Chaon (2009)

I bought this one at a used book sale a couple years ago. It looks really good, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways–and with unexpected consequences–in acclaimed author Dan Chaon’s gripping, brilliantly written new novel.

Longing to get on with his life, Miles Cheshire nevertheless can’t stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed.

A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy.

My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself–through unconventional and precarious means.

Await Your Reply is a literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.

 

4. “A Thousand Acres” by Jane Smiley (1991)

Many of Smiley’s books are set in Iowa, my home state. I read “Some Luck,” the first installment in her “Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga” trilogy (I’ll get to books 2 and 3 someday), and this past summer I found “At Paradise Gate” at a used book sale. I’ll eventually get to it as well.

When Larry Cook, the aging patriarch of a rich, thriving farm in Iowa, decides to retire, he offers his land to his three daughters. For Ginny and Rose, who live on the farm with their husbands, the gift makes sense–a reward for years of hard work, a challenge to make the farm even more successful. But the youngest, Caroline, a Des Moines lawyer, flatly rejects the idea, and in anger her father cuts her out–setting off an explosive series of events that will leave none of them unchanged. A classic story of contemporary American life, A Thousand Acres strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a father, a daughter, a family.

3. “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley (1818)

I had plans to read this one leading up to Halloween – didn’t happen. I have no other particular reason for wanting to read it, other than the fact that it’s classic literature.

Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was only eighteen. At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature’s hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.

Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises profound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever.

2. “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo (1862)

OK, so technically I’m currently reading this one. Sort of. I first picked it up in October and I’m only about 113 pages in. Normally I can only read one book at a time, but I know if I try to read this one exclusively I will get so burned out or just be stuck reading it FOREVER (in case you didn’t know, it’s almost 1,500 pages long).

It’s pretty amazing so far, just … overwhelming.

Introducing one of the most famous characters in literature, Jean Valjean—the noble peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread—Les Misérables ranks among the greatest novels of all time. In it, Victor Hugo takes readers deep into the Parisian underworld, immerses them in a battle between good and evil, and carries them to the barricades during the uprising of 1832 with a breathtaking realism that is unsurpassed in modern prose. Within his dramatic story are themes that capture the intellect and the emotions: crime and punishment, the relentless persecution of Valjean by Inspector Javert, the desperation of the prostitute Fantine, the amorality of the rogue Thénardier, and the universal desire to escape the prisons of our own minds. Les Misérables gave Victor Hugo a canvas upon which he portrayed his criticism of the French political and judicial systems, but the portrait that resulted is larger than life, epic in scope—an extravagant spectacle that dazzles the senses even as it touches the heart.

1. “The Gilded Hour” by Sara Donati (2015)

As I’ve mentioned before, I feel badly that I haven’t read this one yet because it was a Christmas present from my husband last year (and I specifically requested it). I think I’m overwhelmed by the page count (it’s about half the size of “Les Mis”).

Whenever I finally get caught up on ARCs, I’m reading it next.

The year is 1883, and in New York City, it’s a time of dizzying splendor, crushing poverty, and tremendous change. With the gravity-defying Brooklyn Bridge nearly complete and New York in the grips of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, Anna Savard and her cousin Sophie—both graduates of the Woman’s Medical School—treat the city’s most vulnerable, even if doing so may put everything they’ve strived for in jeopardy.

Anna’s work has placed her in the path of four children who have lost everything, just as she herself once had. Faced with their helplessness, Anna must make an unexpected choice between holding on to the pain of her past and letting love into her life.

For Sophie, an obstetrician and the orphaned daughter of free people of color, helping a desperate young mother forces her to grapple with the oath she took as a doctor—and thrusts her and Anna into the orbit of Anthony Comstock, a dangerous man who considers himself the enemy of everything indecent and of anyone who dares to defy him.

What TBRs are gathering dust on your nightstand or in your e-reader? Please post your T5W link below if you participated this week!