Here’s A Bunch Of Books You Should Read Over Christmas

Christmas is looming, and hopefully that means getting the chance to get through some of the books that are on your ever-growing shame pile. If you are looking for more to add, or are simply after some new recommendations – this is what the team will be reading over the summer break.


Tegan Jones – Commercial Editor

I have so many things on my list. I’m an absolute monster. I’ll try to keep this brief.

Artemis By Andy Weir

WELCOME TO ARTEMIS. The first city on the moon. Population 2,000. Mostly tourists. Some criminals. Jazz Bashara is a criminal. She lives in a poor area of Artemis and subsidises her work as a porter with smuggling contraband onto the moon.

But it’s not enough. So when she’s offered the chance to make a lot of money she jumps at it. But though planning a crime in 1/6th gravity may be more fun, it’s a lot more dangerous…

Price: $24.50 (26% off)


The Road To Jonestown By Jeff Guinn

In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America.

Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.

Price: $32.50 (46% off)


Valentine By Jodi McAlister

Strange and terrible things begin to happen to four teenagers – all born on the same Valentine’s Day. One of these teenagers is the Valentine: a Seelie fairy changeling swapped for a human child at its birth. The Unseelie have come to kill the Valentine – except they don’t know who it is.

Pearl shares a birthday with Finn Blacklin. She’s known him all her life and disliked every second of it. Now Pearl and Finn must work together to protect themselves from the sinister forces that are seeking them out.

But there’s one more problem: the explosive chemistry between them…

Price: $12.95 (35% off)


Molly’s Game By Molly Bloom

When Molly Bloom was a little girl in a small Colorado town, she dreamed of a life without rules and limits, a life where she didn’t have to measure up to anyone or anything – where she could become whatever she wanted. She ultimately got more than she ever could have bargained for.

In Molly’s Game, she takes you through her adventures running an exclusive private poker game catering to Hollywood royalty like Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck, athletes, billionaires, politicians and financial titans.

With rich detail, Molly describes a world of glamour, privilege and secrecy in which she made millions, lived the high life and fearlessly took on the Russian and Italian mobs – until she met theone adversary she could not outsmart: the UnitedStates government.

Price: $13.38 (13% off)


Rae Johnston – Editor

I’m re-reading Stephen King’s Cell becasue it’s been a while and I want to know if it holds up/feels Black Mirror-eque.

Cell By Stephen King

Civilization slipped into its second dark age on an unsurprising track of blood but with a speed that could not have been foreseen by even the most pessimistic futurist. By Halloween, every major city from New York to Moscow stank to the empty heavens and the world as it had been was a memory.’

The event became known as The Pulse. The virus was carried by every cell phone operating within the entire world. Within hours, those receiving calls would be infected.A young artist Clayton Riddell realises what is happening. He flees the devastation of explosive, burning Boston, desperate to reach his son before his son switches on his little red mobile phone…

Price: $16.75 (16% off)


Alex Walker – Editor, Kotaku Australia

I’m up to volume 19 of Fables, but I don’t want to post any spoilers! So here’s volume 1 in case you haven’t read it.

Fables Volume 1: Legends In Exile

When a savage creature known only as the Adversary conquered the fabled lands of legends and fairy tales, all of the infamous inhabitants of folklore were forced into exile. Disguised among the ‘mundys’, their name for normal citizens of modern-day New York, these magical characters created their own secret society that they call Fabletown. From their exclusive luxury apartment buildings on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, these creatures of legend must fight for their survival in the new world.

Price: $15.19 (24% off)


Adam Wells – Journalist, Kotaku Australia

I read Nation by Terry Pratchett every other Christmas and The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman is what I alternate it with.

Nation By Terry Pratchett


When a giant wave destroys his entire Nation – his family and everyone he has ever known – Mau finds himself totally alone. Until he meets Daphne, daughter of a colonial Governor and the sole survivor from a shipwreck. They have no common language, no common culture – but together they discover some remarkable things – like how to milk a pig and why spitting in beer is a good idea – and must try and forge a new kind of Nation.

Then other survivors arrive to take refuge on the island, and not all of them are friendly… In Nation Pratchett brings us a novel that is both witty and wise, encompassing themes of death and Nationhood, while also being extremely funny.

Price: $14.95 (25% off)


The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

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 where she once lived, 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.

Price: $11.25 (30% off)


Hayley Williams – Social Media & Community Editor

The Way Of Kings (The Stormlight Archive Book 1) – Brandon Sanderson

The entire world is at war with itself – and has been for centuries since the Radiants turned against mankind. Kings strive to win more Shardblades, each secretly wishing to be the one who will finally unite all of mankind under a single throne.

On a world scoured down to the rock by terrifying hurricanes that blow through every few days is a young spearman, forced into the army of a Shardbearer, led to war against an enemy he doesn’t understand and doesn’t really want to fight.

What happened deep in mankind’s past? Why did the Radiants turn against mankind, and what happened to the magic they used to wield?

Price: $15.99


Chris Jager – Editor, Lifehacker Australia

The First Law Trilogy By Joe Abercrombie

The trilogy is set in an epic fantasy world at war, reminiscent of medieval-era Europe and the greater Mediterranean world. The plot involves three major powers with two major theaters of war. The trilogy centers on the fortunes of a variety of characters as they navigate through these and other conflicts.

One of the most highly acclaimed fantasy trilogies of the past decade. If you enjoy Game of Thrones this set is a must.

Price: $51.95


Stalin Volume II – Waiting For Hitler By Stephen Kotkin

This second volume is the story of the ‘mature’ dictator – a figure who had no precedent in ability to shape the USSR and its people. It is the great achievement of this book that it places Stalin both in the context of his day-to-day life in the Kremlin and in the far wider Communist world of which he was the apex.

The terror state, the industrial state and the ideological state were all brought together by Stalin and no account of the inter-war world will be complete now without Kotkin’s book. It ends when the ‘waiting for Hitler’ finally came to an end, transforming the nature of the threat faced by both Stalin and the whole society he had shaped.

Price: $60.75 (19% off)


If you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more.


The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans

Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Kotaku, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


5 responses to “Here’s A Bunch Of Books You Should Read Over Christmas”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *