The Book Haul To End All Book Hauls (Part 5)

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews. I get to show off all the books I’ve gotten recently.

I ordered so many books that they had to be shipped in 7 different boxes. Here are the contents of box #6.

More Happy Than Not – Adam Silvera

The Leteo Institute's revolutionary memory-relief procedure seems too good to be true to Aaron Soto—miracle cure-alls don't tend to pop up in the Bronx projects. But Aaron can't forget how he's grown up poor or how his friends aren't always there for him. Like after his father committed suicide in their one-bedroom apartment. Aaron has the support of his patient girlfriend, if not necessarily his distant brother and overworked mother, but it's not enough. 

Then Thomas shows up. He has a sweet movie-watching setup on his roof, and he doesn't mind Aaron's obsession with a popular fantasy series. There are nicknames, inside jokes. Most importantly, Thomas doesn't mind talking about Aaron's past. But Aaron's newfound happiness isn't welcome on his block. Since he can't stay away from Thomas or suddenly stop being gay, Aaron must turn to Leteo to straighten himself out, even if it means forgetting who he is. 

Adam Silvera's extraordinary debut novel offers a unique confrontation of race, class and sexuality during one charged near-future summer in the Bronx.

The Shock of the Fall – Nathan Filer

There are books you can’t stop reading, which keep you up all night. 

There are books which let us into the hidden parts of life and make them vividly real. 

There are books which, because of the sheer skill with which every word is chosen, linger in your mind for days. 

The Shock of the Fall is all of these books. 

The Shock of the Fall is an extraordinary portrait of one man’s descent into mental illness. It is a brave and groundbreaking novel from one of the most exciting new voices in fiction.

A Wrinkle in Time Trilogy – Madeleine L’Engle

Fifty years ago, Madeleine L’Engle introduced the world to A Wrinkle in Time and the wonderful and unforgettable characters Meg and Charles Wallace Murry, and their friend Calvin O’Keefe. Now their first three adventures are together in one volume. In the Newbery Award winner A Wrinkle in Time, the children learn that Mr. Murry has been captured by the Dark Thing, and they must time travel to Camazotz to save him. In A Wind in the Door, Meg, Calvin and Mr. Jenkins (their grade school principal) must travel inside C.W. and battle to save Charles’s life—as well as the balance of the universe. And in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Meg’s brother Charles Wallace has twenty-four hours to stop the tragedy of nuclear war from occurring. Read the iconic novels that continue to inspire millions of fans around the world.

Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You – Todd Hasak-Lowy

A heartfelt, humorous story of a teen boy’s impulsive road trip after the shock of his lifetime—told entirely in lists! 

Darren hasn't had an easy year. 

There was his parents’ divorce, which just so happened to come at the same time his older brother Nate left for college and his longtime best friend moved away. And of course there’s the whole not having a girlfriend thing. 

Then one Thursday morning Darren's dad shows up at his house at 6 a.m. with a glazed chocolate doughnut and a revelation that turns Darren’s world inside out. In full freakout mode, Darren, in a totally un-Darren move, ditches school to go visit Nate. Barely twenty-four hours at Nate’s school makes everything much better or much worse—Darren has no idea. It might somehow be both. All he knows for sure is that in addition to trying to figure out why none of his family members are who they used to be, he’s now obsessed with a strangely amazing girl who showed up out of nowhere but then totally disappeared. 

Told entirely in lists, Todd Hasak-Lowy's debut YA novel perfectly captures why having anything to do with anyone, including yourself, is: 

1. painful 2. unavoidable 3. ridiculously complicated 4. possibly, hopefully the right thing after all. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy. 

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what. 

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

Blankets – Craig Thompson

Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. Blankets is a tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith.