Top Ten Tuesday - 2014 Releases I Most Wish I had Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme for bloggers who like books and lists.  It's awesome and is graciously hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

There are apparently A LOT of books published last year that I want to read.  Making the list made me want to rush out and buy all of them and start reading all of them right now.  Infinite hours in the day are needed. 

To jog my memory of some of the books of last year I perused some "best of" lists and a couple of the most complete and divers were NPR's and Book Riot's.  I'm sure there are many more but these were especially fun to peruse.  Here's my list:

1) Lives in Ruins by Marilyn Johnson

A non-fiction book that focuses on the the field of Archeology and the lives of those that work in the field.  I briefly entertained the idea of being an Archeologist and still find the field fascinating and this looks like it might be a Mary Roach-esque examination. 

2) Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

It seemed like this was the biggest title of 2014 - It was everywhere!  I think this dystopian novel does look amazing though and will definitely check it out after everybody has stopped talking about it.

3) The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

This is another non-fiction and I'm not entirely sure I do want to read it.  It addresses the fact that we may be facing a sixth major extinction of life on Earth but this time it is not due to natural forces but to the damage humans are doing to the world. Yay, Homo sapiens!

4) The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine

This is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses fairytale but set in 1920s New York.  That's enough to get me interested but I've also seen a lot of good reviews of it as well. I am a little concerned about horrid 1920's slang.

5) Some Luck by Jane Smiley

I'm a big fan of Jane Smiley's writing, particularly A Thousand Acres and this is her returning to this setting.  Some Luck is the first of a planned trilogy that will follow the lives of an Iowa farm family across 100 years.  It was nominated for the National Book Award.

6) The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Chinese science fiction!  How cool is that.  I haven't heard a single negative thing about this book.  It's about the world preparing for an alien invasion. 

7) Jackaby by William Ritter

Part of the description from Goodreads.com: "Doctor Who meets Sherlock in William Ritter’s debut novel, which features a detective of the paranormal as seen through the eyes of his adventurous and intelligent assistant in a tale brimming with cheeky humor and a dose of the macabre." I'm not sure there is anything more in my wheelhouse than this quite frankly.  How did I not read this immediately upon release?

8) Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell

I've seen a number of great reviews for this debut novel.  The term swashbuckling is used to describe it.  Need I say more?

9) Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

This was on a couple of best of lists and it looks like an original and character driven science fiction novel.  Follows the  intersecting lives of three characters; a marine biologist, a famous African rap artist and a soldier; after an unidentified object crashes into the ocean near Nigeria. 

10) Moriarty By Anthony Horowitz

I loved The House of Silk which was Anthony Horowitz's first excursion into writing a Sherlock Holmes story.  I was really psyched and surprised to hear he had written a second installment which I will definitely be reading hopefully sooner rather than later!




Honorable mentions: Neverland by Anna Katmore, How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman, Land of Love and Drowning by Tiffanie Yanique, The Bees by Laline Paull, Dust and Light by Carol Berg, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, The Southern Reach Trilogy by  Jeff VanderMeer, Not my Father's Son by Alan Cumming and Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews

Final comment:  Are covers getting more spectacular or is it just me?  I think all the covers above are gorgeous!  Go cover designers and artists!

Have you read any of these?  Any you recommend I tackle immediately because of their grand awesomeness?  What books published last year are you the most sorry for missing?