Every week, I post about books I’ve recently added to my TBR. Why? Because I forget why I add books and this way, I’ll have a record. Hopefully, it’ll help me make reading decisions in the future.
What it’s about (from Goodreads):
Two o’clock was missing.
In an alternate Victorian world controlled by clock towers, a damaged clock can fracture time—and a destroyed one can stop it completely.
It’s a truth that seventeen-year-old clock mechanic Danny Hart knows all too well; his father has been trapped in a Stopped town east of London for three years. Though Danny is a prodigy who can repair not only clockwork, but the very fabric of time, his fixation with staging a rescue is quickly becoming a concern to his superiors.
And so they assign him to Enfield, a town where the tower seems to be forever plagued with problems. Danny’s new apprentice both annoys and intrigues him, and though the boy is eager to work, he maintains a secretive distance. Danny soon discovers why: he is the tower’s clock spirit, a mythical being that oversees Enfield’s time. Though the boys are drawn together by their loneliness, Danny knows falling in love with a clock spirit is forbidden, and means risking everything he’s fought to achieve.
But when a series of bombings at nearby towers threaten to Stop more cities, Danny must race to prevent Enfield from becoming the next target or he’ll not only lose his father, but the boy he loves, forever.
Why I added it:
I saw a preview of this one in Diversity Spotlight Post from Boricuan Bookworms, who I found out about because of Claribel Ortega’s list of bloggers of color. When I saw Victorian steampunk fantasy, I was sold. I love the Victorian era, and while I don’t read steampunk often, I did quite love Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series. I’d love to go back into a Victorian steampunk novel, and one that features LGBTQ+ characters, so I immediately put the ebook on hold at my library.
What it’s about (from Goodreads):
After graduation, Kieran expected to go straight into a career of flipping burgers—only to be offered the internship of his dreams at a political campaign. But the pressure of being an out trans man in the workplace quickly sucks the joy out of things, as does Seth, the humorless campaign strategist who watches his every move.
Soon, the only upside to the job is that Seth has a painful crush on their painfully straight boss, and Kieran has a front row seat to the drama. But when Seth proves to be as respectful and supportive as he is prickly, Kieran develops an awkward crush of his own—one which Seth is far too prim and proper to ever reciprocate.
Why I added it:
Morgan at Backlist Babe was talking about it in this post. And I mean, that cover though. I’m always looking for stories about LGBTQ+ characters (I’m not sure if you could tell).
What it’s about (from Goodreads)
Emoji have gone from being virtually unknown to being a central topic in internet communication. What is behind the rise and rise of these winky faces, clinking glasses and smiling poos? Given the sheer variety of verbal communication on the internet and English’s still-controversial role as lingua mundi for the web, these icons have emerged as a compensatory universal language.
The Semiotics of Emoji looks at what is officially the world’s fastest growing form of communication. Emoji, the colourful symbols and glyphs that represent everything from frowning disapproval to red-faced shame, are fast becoming embedded into digital communication. Controlled by a centralized body and regulated across the web, emoji seems to be a language : but is it? The rapid adoption of emoji in such a short span of time makes it a rich study in exploring the functions of language.
Professor Marcel Danesi, an internationally-known expert in semiotics, branding and communication, answers the pertinent questions. Are emojis making us dumber? Can they ultimately replace language? Will people grow up emoji literate as well as digitally native? Can there be such a thing as a Universal Visual Language? Read this book for the answers.
Why I added it:
This picture. Also, discourse is interesting to me (I’m doing discourse analysis for my dissertation, so…)
the (book) supplier 
[…] of the reason I was drawn to this novel was the setting. When I did my student teaching, the big unit that I taught my two […]
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