Top Ten Tuesday ~ Most Anticipated Books

 

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish". It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

This week, our topic is Most Anticipated Books Releasing In the Second Half of 2022

I am still waiting for a few books to be released as a paperback or to be translated into a language known to me but I have posted about them before (see here). I have some of those books, some of them books are still not out the way I like them (paperback and preferably the original language) but I'm still waiting for these.

Falcones, Ildefonso "Painter of Souls" (El pintor de almas) (Goodreads)
(waiting for translation)

Jonuleit, Anja "Das letzte Bild" (Goodreads)

Pamuk, Orhan "Nights of Plague" (Veba Geceleri/Die Nächte der Pest) (Goodreads)
(waiting for translation)

Rimington, Celesta "The Elephant's Girl" (Goodreads)

Zeh, Juli "Über Menschen" [About People] - 2021

Then there are a few new books by some of my favourite authors that will be published until the end of the year. Can't wait.

Atwood, Margaret "Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering" - 2022 (Goodreads) *

Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead" - 2022

Oates, Joyce Carol "Extenuating Circumstances - 2022 (Goodreads)

Oates, Joyce Carol "Babysitter" - 2022 (Goodreads)

Tellkamp, Uwe "Der Schlaf in den Uhren" - 2022 (Goodreads)

* Funnily enough, the English cover is to be revealed, but the cover of the German translation has been made public already.

I am sure I will find many more books I should look forward to when I see what others have posted.

📚 Happy Reading! 📚

Atwood, Margaret "Hag-Seed"

Atwood, Margaret "Hag-Seed. The Tempest Retold" - 2016

Before I left the Netherlands, a friend gave me this book. She had received it as a present and couldn't get into it. She remembered that I liked Margaret Atwood. I do, so I was happy to read this book of hers. It's a little different from her other stories as she is retelling Shakespeare's "The Tempest" in a modern setting. Highly interesting.

I must admit, I never read or watched "The Tempest" though I did watch the musical "Return to the Forbidden Planet" which was already a retelling of Shakespeare's piece in a futuristic setting and won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical both in 1989 and 1990. It's been a long time since I watched it but I remember brilliant actors, an interesting story and great music.

I really liked this book. It shows two things. One, that Shakespeare was a brilliant writer whose stories are still very much alive today. And two, that Margaret Atwood is just as brilliant because she can take this timeless classic and bring it nearer to today's readers. Fantastic.

I hope, the author will tackle some more of the bard from Stratford-upon-Avon.

From the back cover:

"Treacherously toppled from his post as director of the Makeshiweg Festival on the eve of his production of The Tempest, Felix retreats to a backwoods hovel to lick his wounds and mourn his lost daughter. And also to plot his revenge.

After twelve years his chance appears in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will stage his Tempest at last, and snare the traitors who destroyed him. But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?"

Margaret Atwood received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2017. 

Atwood, Margaret "Oryx and Crake"

Atwood, Margaret "Oryx and Crake" (MaddAddam # 1) - 2003

I always like reading dystopian novels. It makes you think about what might happen if we carry on living the way we live now and makes us more aware of what we should or shouldn't be changing. It usually exaggerates the problems we have today but that's the point, it makes us more aware of it.

This story is about a genetic engineering world where the plan to destroy humanity through "medication" is almost successful. The "Children of Crake" who are supposed to replace humans are more like children, they remind me of the Eloi in "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. Just as innocent, just as naïve.

I hope I won't be around to see the world change that much but if we carry on like that, I might. In the meantime, let as many people read these kinds of books and hopefully see that we need to try to save this planet as long as it's still possible.

From the back cover:

"With the same stunning blend of prophecy and social satire she brought to her classic The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood gives us a keenly prescient novel about the future of humanity and its present. 

Humanity here equals Snowman, and in Snowman's recollections Atwood re-creates a time much like our own, when a boy named Jimmy loved an elusive, damaged girl called Oryx and a sardonic genius called Crake. But now Snowman is alone, and as we learn why we also learn about a world that could become ours one day."

Margaret Atwood was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for "Oryx and Crake" in 2003.

Margaret Atwood received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2017.

Atwood, Margaret "The Handmaid's Tale"

Atwood, Margaret "The Handmaid's Tale" - 1985

I read this book a couple of years ago, it is one of my favourites. (Find my review from back then here.) Since it has been made into a TV series last year, it seems to be everywhere and my book club chose it as our next read. Also, Margaret Atwood just received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis), as well.

I probably enjoyed this book even more the last time than this time, I think a lot of the fears Margaret Atwood portrayed in her book thirty years ago are more true now than then. Aren't we surrounded by people who believe that only "true" Christians who follow the Bible "by the book" deserve to have a good life? At least most of the news I hear nowadays of the United States seem to suggest that. The trouble is, the louder they shout, the less Christian they are.

Unfortunately, I had to miss the book club talk but I know everyone enjoyed it.

We discussed this in our international book club in January 2018.

From the back cover:

"The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire – neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.

Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first-century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception."

Margaret Atwood was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for "The Handmaid's Tale" in 1986.

Margaret Atwood received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2017.

Atwood, Margaret "The Blind Assassin"

Atwood, Margaret "The Blind Assassin" - 2000

A book within a book within a book. Three stories for the price of one. Sounded good. Plus, it is written by Margaret Atwood. I wanted to read more of her writings ever since I discovered "The Handmaid's Tale". It was worth the wait but I know I won't wait that long to read her next novel.

This novel is a love story. No, it's a science fiction book. Or is it a murder mystery? It's a mystery for sure. We get snippets of the narrator's life through newspaper articles, she is telling us her life as it is today and what it was when she was young. But then there is also the book by her sister in which two lovers meet and tell a third story, this one is definitely science fiction. Anyway, you have the feeling they belong together and it didn't take me that long to find out who was who but it still was terribly exciting.

It is hard to describe the book without giving too much away, so I will just say this:

Margaret Atwood has a certain style where she makes everything mysterious, she can linger on a story in order to build suspense as well as using the most wonderful words and notions in order to make her work beautiful.

Need I say more? I loved the book.

From the back cover:

"The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: 'Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off the bridge.' They are spoken by Iris Chase Griffen, sole surviving descendant of a once rich and influential Ontario family, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.
What makes this novel Margaret Atwood's strongest and most profoundly entertaining is the way in which the three wonderfully rich stories weave together, gradually revealing through their interplay the secrets surrounding the entire Chase family - and most particularly the fascinating and tangled lives of the two sisters. The Blind Assassin is a brilliant and enthralling book by a writer at the top of their form."

Margaret Atwood received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2017 and the Booker Prize for "The Blind Assassin" in 2000.

Atwood, Margaret "The Handmaid's Tale"

Atwood, Margaret "The Handmaid's Tale" - 1985

The Handmaid's Tale. A young lady called Offred tells us the story of Gilead, a country in the future, situated in a part of the present United States of America. Some catastrophes must have led to the state they are in, certainly some ecological disaster but also a revolution that caused the situation the people find themselves in, in a way they have a dictatorship in Mosaic times, the fertile young girls are sent to an older man whose wife can't have children, like Hagar who was the handmaid who was brought to Sarah's husband Abraham in order to bear him children. A lot of the parts of their lives are named after biblical characters or events.

We never get to know the name of the narrator, she just doesn't wish anyone to know it so she can believe there is another life, another place to go back to after all the horror in her life is over. I was wondering about the weird name the author gave to our protagonist until I came across the next ladies who all had a similar one. Offred = Of Fred. Sounds like a dream for guys that all the women carry their name, as if they were their possession ......

I don't even remember what I thought this book would be about, I certainly didn't think it might be a dystopian novel. I love those kind of stories better than the utopian ones, I cannot believe in a glorious future where everyone is peaceful and nobody has to suffer. Those stories that tell us about worlds gone wrong seem much more realistic.

The breeding part reminded me of Hitler's maternity institutions "Lebensborn" where he wanted to breed "pure" Aryans. Here, they just want to breed human creatures which seems to have become a problem. They also know what to do with people who do not comply or are otherwise useless. Their concentration camps are called "colonies" and people are sent there to work in contaminated regions where they will slowly, but very surely, die.

The biblical part reminded me more about what is going on in the United States now, interesting how Margaret Atwood could foresee that almost thirty years ago. Every law, every rule, everything has to confirm to the bible, anything that doesn't is evil. I can very well imagine that in the event of a major catastrophe, these kind of people will try to take over and a dictatorship not much unlike the one described could develop from this.

What I also really liked about the novel, even though it might be tempting and Offred does dream of a better world, she does not have any unrealistic hopes that this will ever happen. Nothing written with rose-tinted glasses.

Yes, a wonderful story, well told, changing between past and present, an interesting, nor foreseeable conclusion at the end, I loved the style. I loved the story. I will definitely read more by Margaret Atwood.

My favourite quote: "Maybe I'm crazy and this is some new kind of therapy. I wish it were true, then I could get better and this would go away."

I re-read this novel with our international book club in 2018. See my new review here.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire – neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.
Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first-century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception."

Margaret Atwood was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for "The Handmaid's Tale" in 1986.

Margaret Atwood received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2017.