Monday Question: The Books Of 2013?

Here’s what I want to know today:

What book (to be published in 2013) are you most excited about reading?

And, of course, the obligatory: why?

If I may add one to your list: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, which I’m in the middle of reading right now and it is a right jaw-dropper of a book. Scary stuff, a thriller so tense you’ll crack your teeth from clenching your jaw. Beukes has a great voice, one that has matured profoundly from the already-excellent Zoo City; if I had to compare it to another author’s writing I’d say that with this book Beukes is like the love child of Stephen King and Peter Straub. Which is not to say it’s like the books they worked on together but rather if both of their minds were smooshed together and this was the resultant prose. But even that doesn’t cover the tension of the tale or the beauty of her writing.

Here’s how I know it’s a great book — I can’t stop thinking about it. Like, I read a lot of books and it’s not as common as I’d like where, when I put the book down, I continue to think about it the next day. With this book, though, I do. I get that ache in the back of my mind, and I find this itch to drop whatever I’m doing and get back to reading the book.

It’s also a book that far exceeds my own writing. And, as a writer, you can have two responses to that: destructive jealousy or the rectal rocket-booster of inspiration. I’m choosing the latter.

So, that’s a book I think you might wanna add to your 2013 list.

Because it’s fucking amazeface. Is that a thing kids say? “Amazeface?”

IT IS NOW.

(You can read the first chapter here.)

Back to the question at hand:

One book.

In 2013.

You’re looking forward to it.

Name it, tell us why.

I’ll hang up and wait for your answer.

CARRIER LOST