Novel Nerds *

In My Mailbox (3) - Farhana

In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren. All book links take you to goodreads for further information about each book. :)

Not many books this time, but I consider that a good thing since my finances are at a low right now!

Bake! by Nick Malgieri (from Amazon), The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days and Step-by-Step Baking (both were given to me as gifts by my sister).

As you can tell.. I enjoy baking! :)

Pure by Andrew Miller - I bought this on Amazon after reading the blurb online. I think I discovered it after it won the 2011 Costa Book of the Year. I’ve read one chapter so far but had to ditch it for uni books…

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li - I bought this from Waterstones on sale for.. yup 99p!! I was rummaging through the sale section back in February and happened to come across this. The blurb seemed interesting so I decided to pick it up!

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke - I remember eyeing this at some point in the past but never getting round to buying it. I can’t tell you how happy I was when I saw the spine staring back at me on the bookshelf at Oxfam. I was even happier when I saw the price! £1.99 for a book that looks like it’s barely been touched? YES PLEASE!

Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace - I picked this one up on a whim whilst picking up Inkheart. The reviews on the spine looked good, the blurb looked interesting and generally I was just hoping to find another good book that was super cheap. I’m not sure how good it’ll be, but for £1.99 I can cope :)

Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin - I discovered this through twitter after the author won the Man Asian Book Literary Prize (she’s the first woman winner!) and then read the excerpt. As soon as I started the long excerpt (which I can no longer find.. sorry) I knew I needed to buy the book, so by the time I got to the end I was already ordering it off of Amazon…

P.S. Isn’t it interesting that the American version is “Please Look After Mom” whilst the English version is written “Please Look After Mother”? Haha my inner nerd finds cultural discrepancies within the same language interesting. I wonder if the translations inside differ at all or if it was just to make the cover seem less American for us Brits…

P.P.S. If I haven’t said it already, buying books from your local charity shop is an awesome way of discovering books (or even finding old books that are no longer in print) without breaking the bank. Plus by buying from a charity shop of your choice you’re supporting an awesome cause and keeping that shop alive!

In My Mailbox (1) - Radiya

In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren ! :)

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Sing You Home and Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult (Sing You Home was free as part of an exclusive deal Sainsbury’s were doing :) )

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan (my old English teacher gave this to me to read :D )

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Adored by Tilly Bagshawe

The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope (Part of my exam text for A2 English Lit)

The Rover by Aphra Behn (also part of my exam texts for English Lit)

Her Own Rules- Barbara Taylor Bradford

In My Mailbox (3) - Yasmina

In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie; Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick and A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. I have looked for the black cover of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian everywhere for months now and I guess it’s not being printed anymore so I had to buy this one :/

The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards; Sing You Home and Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. I actually got these 3 books for £7 in total from Sainsbury’s. Keeping Faith came free if you bought Sing You Home. I was so excited I had to get it.

Gone, Hunger and Lies by Michael Grant

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E Smith, The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson and Department 19 by Will Hill. I have already posted a review on The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight so click here to read it. I bought The Name of the Star and Department 19 for £1 each see post about that here.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Ok so I read a review or two on 1Q84 and fans of Murakami’s work have said that his previous books are much better. I’ve seen a ton of quotes from Norwegian Wood floating around which made me decide that I want to read his earlier work before I dive into 1Q84.

Legend by Marie Lu. I’ve heard great things about this so I’m looking forward to reading this, I wanted the hardback copy but I couldn’t find it anywhere.

Everneath by Brodi Ashton and Fever by Lauren DeStefano. I’m excited to read both of these books, Fever because I loved Wither so much and Everneath because it’s about Greek Mythology! I took Ancient History as A Level so I know about this story already and I’m looking forward to seeing what Brodi Ashton made of it.

Radiya actually bought me Everneath for my birthday which is why it’s wrapped in ribbon and I pre-ordered Fever a while back and it just happened to turn up on my birthday. Therefore these are my birthday books!!

In My Mailbox (2) - Farhana

In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren.

I’m 80% sure I won’t be buying any other books this month, so I decided to do my post now in an attempt to prevent myself from buying more later! Haha :)

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I’ve been a fan of Battle Royale since the first movie came out so I’m looking forward to reading it! Especially since I’ve read The Hunger Games and know they’re supposed to be extremely similar. I can’t wait to decide for myself how similar the two are especially since there was a lot of talk of plagiarism [!]

On a side note, I bought the whole Hunger Games Trilogy for less than £14 at Waterstones whilst they had £10 off the box set!! Yay for cheap books whilst supporting my local bookshop! (although I guess a book does lose it’s value when there’s a Stephenie Meyer quote on it’s spine!)

Blood Witch; Dark Magic and Awakening all from Wicca by Cate Tiernan.

I’ve finished the three Wicca books and I’m itching to buy some more already! They weren’t amazing, (in fact there were some moments where I was left feeling slightly embarrassed at the writing) but they moved the plot along so I’m happy I read them!

The Girl with the Glass Feet by Ali Shaw and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

I bought these two on a whim because I was trying to hunt down a couple of other books to go with my 3 for 2 offer at Foyles whilst buying Yasmina 1984.

I’ve started Fahrenheit 451 already and I’m really enjoying it so far! :) Within the first 12 pages I fell in love with Bradbury’s writing style! There are so many sentences that I’ve liked as quotes on Goodreads, that I’m sure I’m about to like the whole book! xD

I haven’t started The Girl with the Glass Feet yet since I haven’t had time. The description made it seem like an adaptation of Cinderella which tickled my fancy at the time (considering the majority of the other books on 3 for 2 were Charles Dickens!)

And that’s it! :) Now let’s see how long I last before I buy some more books! :P

In My Mailbox (2) - Yasmina

In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren.

Ok I know I said that this would probably be a monthly post but I just bought a whole bunch of books this week so I had to post them.

The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery & Howl by Allen Ginsberg (Graphic Novel) I had to buy these books when I saw them in Foyles, mainly because I haven’t read The Little Prince yet and this graphic novel of Howl looks AMAZING!

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox & Fallen In Love by Lauren Kate

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

Pure by Julianna Baggott. You can barely see the writing on the cover. There was a completely black version too.

1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell. Farhana bought me these, she owed me a copy of 1984 because I gave her my copy years ago.

In My Mailbox (1) - Farhana

In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren.

The majority of my books this month are eBooks (because 1. I have many Classics that I’ve bought because of uni and never picked up again, 2. I prefer to use eBooks in class since it’s easier to search for things, make notes etc. 3. it’s cheaper!!) but there are 3 paperbacks too. :)

Starting with my eBooks! Pictures are in the form of screenshots from my Kindle - who is named Augustus ^^

 

Emma and Persuasion by Jane Austen. I’ve read just over 10% of Emma but I haven’t started Persuasion yet.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens, Silas Marner by George Eliot, Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy, Dracula by Bram Stoker. I’ve read about 20% of The Woman in White but it’s so ridiculously long… I’ve also read “The Haunted House” from Three Ghost Stories.

 

The Europeans; The Bostonians; Washington Square (not shown)by Henry James, Those Extraordinary Twins; The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Call of the Wild; White Fang by Jack London, House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, The Awakening & Other Short Stories by Kate Chopin, The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, My Antonia by Willa Cather, The Virginian by Owen Wister and McTeague by Frank Norris. And all of these are for one class T___T Luckily I have no exams in this class..

Oxford Latin Course: Part II by Maurice Balme & James Morwood and Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu by Various Poets.

Lastly, the only books I have to show that aren’t for Uni purposes!

 

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. Probably the prettiest book I own haha. It completes my Lord of the Rings set and is the only book I’ve read from it. x__x

and of course some more eBooks! :P

   

The Summoning; The Awakening; The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong. I’m not sure how much I’ll like these so I decided to get eBooks instead.

 

   

Darkfever; Bloodfever; Faefever; Dreamfever; Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning. Goodreads recommended the series to me, so I thought they might be good to read.

This is probably the largest one of these I’ll ever do, but we’ll see. Haha xD Until the next post!

In My Mailbox (1) - Yasmina

First off I want to say I have noticed huge amount of book blogs posting In My Mailbox posts which I believe was started off by The Story Siren. In My Mailbox is where you post pictures and maybe a small synopsis of the books you have received, bought or borrowed lately.

Okay so I’m just going to go ahead and post pictures of all the books I have bought in the last 2 months which have only recently been taken out of their amazon boxes or Waterstones/Foyles bags lol.

Harry Potter Page to Screen by Bob McCabe & Harry Potter Film Wizardry. I know everybody already knows about Harry Potter Page to Screen but Film Wizardry is awesome too. It had the Hogwarts Letter and Marauder’s Map inside as extras!!

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J K Rowling. I know I should have bought this a long time ago but I would always forget :S

The Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen & Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales. These are extremely hard to come by in the UK so after a lot of searching I managed to find them for around £15 each.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern & Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green (signed) & The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Ben Selznick. I’m going to read The Invention of Hugo Cabret after I watch the movie because I’ve heard wonderful things.

White Cat & Red Glove by Holly Black

The Playbook by Barney Stinson & Palo Alto by James Franco. I still need to buy The Bro Code.

Maze Runner & The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

Heroes of Olympus - The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan & Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes & Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson & A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French

The Special Foyles Editions of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. 

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell & The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett & Emma by Jane Austen. I had to get these books when I saw them on Tumblr, they’re beautiful.

Before I fall and Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver

Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick & Power of Six by Pittacus Lore

Hopefully this will become a regular monthly post on the last Sunday of the month and I’ll most likely have only one book to post about.