Picking out my potential reads is one of my favourite things about going on holiday. I know that a lot of people hate all the sitting around of flying long haul but I've never minded it. I can sit down with a book and read it quietly without feeling as though I should be doing something around the house and without being distracted by Netflix or my phone.
Tomorrow morning, we fly to New York and I'm unbelievably excited. As I always am whenever we go on holiday! We're only away for five days, there's tons that we want to pack in and we're away with friends this time so I'm not anticipating much reading time but there'll be flights at either end and maybe a quiet afternoon in Central Park if we all end up indulging too much and need some down time so that's at the very least more time than I would normally get to read.
So what have I picked out?
The only book that I know I'll definitely read is The Lie Tree by Francis Hardinge. After my recent grumble about reading for book clubs, a couple of the members who I know better and I decided that we would make a last ditch effort to steer our group reading back in the right direction. Much to all of our surprise, The Lie Tree is the choice for April's meeting and I'm ecstatic. I'll be leaving this job (and therefore the book club - I'm moving locations entirely) in May so this is one of the last two meetings I'll be able to go to. It's nice that I'll get to leave on a high. Hopefully.
For other reads, I have a lot of books on my Kindle so I'm just going to read whatever I fancy reading on any given day! I've been reading The Crimson Petal and the White for a long time (which is fine - it's wonderful) so I fancy a bit of a break from historical fiction and something a bit pacier. If The Lie Tree doesn't meet the brief, I have these gems lined up...
I'm almost certainly going to pick up The Fireman by Joe Hill. I was so super happy to get an advanced copy and it sounds so, SO good. A dystopian novel about a virus that causes its victims to develop scales before bursting into flames and a pregnant woman trying to save herself and her unborn child by trying to discover the secret of the mysterious Fireman. Amazing, right? I've actually just seen that you can enter a GoodReads giveaway to win an early copy so you should get on that HERE.
I also have another advanced copy that I'm really looking forward to: Foxlowe by Eleanor Wasserberg. It's described as "a chilling, compulsive debut about group mentality, superstition and betrayal – and a utopian commune gone badly wrong", which sounds frankly excellent.
The other two are books I've owned for ages. The Bees by Laline Paull and The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson. The Bees sounds...well, a bit weird. Apparently, it's The Handmaid's Tale meets The Hunger Games. But with bees. The Well of Ascension is the second in the Mistborn trilogy. I read the first one when we were in Singapore last September and loved it. The magic system in the series is really unique and is focussed on metals and the properties that some people can extract from them if they consume them. It sounds weird but it absolutely works and I'm looking forward to getting to the next one in the series!
And that's my plan! Maybe. Any tips on what I really do need to be getting to right now? Either from that selection or otherwise!
So what have I picked out?
