Last year was my first winter holidays season as a book blogger (my blogging before was just personal bookish things), and most of my new blogging buddies were nudging me to read a Christmas book . I was willing, and even found a free Christmas ebook about a witch and downloaded it. However, being new to blogging had its special flavor of ARC chaos, and I never got around to reading it.
I saw this on Katherine's blog I WISH I LIVED IN A LIBRARY. It is from NETGALLEY. I think it was a Read Now, but I am not sure. This is going to be my second read.
When I was looking for free Kindle Classics with 99¢ added narrations, I saw this and realized I had never read it. I will be listening to the narration. This is the last "for sure" book. The last two will be maybes.
When I searched A VERY COCO CHRISTMAS to add it to Goodreads, this was right underneath on the dropdown list, and I love creepy so on a whim I checked it out and it was a free Kindle book. Ha ha. So I got it. It is 200 pages though, but even if I don't get to it for the read-a-thon, I still might find time to read it. It is a Middle Grade.
TELL ME TUESDAY is a feature that oozed from my post Twitter party fried brains. It is a floating feature (depending on your reading style), where you tell us what you are reading now, and why, and what you will be reading in the future from your tbr pile, and why. I am oh so curious why people read what they read. So tell me!
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I am listening to THE GOLDEN COMPASS (Northern Lights) by Philip Pullman, via a library audiobook. We saw the movie at the theater and I did not know it was based on a book series until seeing the credits. I know, I know, please don't sigh so loudly. I borrowed the book from the library right after seeing the movie, but those were busier days when library books most times went back to the library unfinished. My sister brought me the audiobook after her last library trip because we had been talking about the new television series the BBC is doing. I thought I had read only about ten percent of the book, but I had read about 30 percent. I am finally at a place past what I remember.
It is a full cast narration and I am loving it. I bought the trilogy as an ebook bundle for $3.98 last year, but hadn't gotten around to reading them. I think I will have my sister get the other two as audiobooks for me, also.
Yes, I have this in hardcover in all its pulchritude and eccentricity, but I am just not in the mood for reading a physical book. At this point I don't want to start something new anyway because the Ho-Ho-Ho Read-A-Thon starts Thursday, and I am going to be jamming on holiday books for a week.
This is my first read-a-thon book. I got this as a free ebook last year; a lot of people were bugging me to read a holiday book because I had never read one before. If you want to see what other holiday reads I have planned there is a Ho-Ho-Ho Goodreads shelf widget on the sidebar.
THE SUNDAY POST is a weekly feature hosted by Kimba at the Caffinated Book Reviewer. It is a chance to recap the previous week, share news, showcase books and/or bookish things we have received, and tell about what is coming up on our blog in the next week. You can view the guidelines, HERE.
I tell you about my ILLUMINAE experience, my new KINDLE FIRE, and more missing eARCs. Yikes!
WEDNESDAY'S WEIRD WORD
I finally remembered to put my, THE INFINITE, review up! There is a special going on for both of the series ebooks. They are $1.99 and added narration is $1.99.
I nabbed SIMON VS. THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA (shouldn't that be Sapien's) thanks to a blogger I follow on Twitter. It is still $1.99, I checked just now. It is one of the books up for a Goodreads award, and everyone has been telling me to read it.
RI, over at HIVER ET CAFE has a wonderfully informative blog post aboutFOUNTAIN PENS. I have always been interested because of the beautiful color inks you can use. I learned that you can buy cheap disposables to try to see if you like writing with them.
Once again, CAIT from PAPER FURY was making us laugh with her about our common blogging experiences. This time it was all about MISTAKES.
And just in case you have been living under a rock somewhere, there was big news on the JKR WIZARDING front. The first official pictures from the set can be found, HERE. The story catalyst is the magic NEWT is trying to get through American Customs in a briefcase. But the big buzz forming lines on both sides of yea and nay is the fact that the American word for muggle is no-maj. JKR also announced that she is getting ready to write another Children's book.
TELL ME TUESDAY
HO-HO-HO READ-A-THON POST
BEAUTIFUL BOOKS For Writers
THE SUNDAY POST
* There may be a review. I posted a review of a book I love which is a sequel to a book I loved, on Halloween Day. The author was retweeting everyone's review posts and putting the links on her Facebook page, that is, everyone's but mine. It was a 4.5 star review so it wasn't the rating. I know my reviews are not standard form, but exposure is exposure; at least I thought it was. I took the post down out of embarrassment, and now I am pondering whether to redraft it in a more formal format, or just repost it and say whatever. What do you think?
WARNING:There are noSPOILERS for THE INFINITE in this review, but if you haven't read GATES OF THREAD AND STONE, this review will spoil the ending for you, and believe me you DO NOT want that because you need to be hit full force with the FLOOD OF EMOTION the author creates at the end of that novel! I am so old and jaded that books do not usually make me cry anymore, but GoTaS made me full on hugging the tissue box SNOT CRY! You can read my FIVE STAR review of GATES OF THREAD AND STONE, HERE.
"In this thrilling sequel to Gates of Thread and Stone, Kai must decide how much of her humanity she’s willing to lose to protect the only family she’s ever known."
This Young Adult novel is Fantasy with some Science Fiction, and a little Steampunk thrown in for extra flavor.
As you can see there are new places on the map and you know what that means! EXPLORATION and NEW CHARACTERS. ♦PLUS♦ NEW MONSTERS AND NEW GRAYS! This is all the review you need.
Ha ha, but I will give you more...
MONSTERS
Horrifyingly LETHAL monstrosities!
SCOUTS
They look like a combination of a CHEETAH and a WOLF to me.
If I had a GRAY, this is what it would be.
There are new lands on the map, and one particular setting set my imagination on fire. Lee has a skillful way of giving the perfect amount of description to set the stage for allowing the reader's mind to take flight. There are new characters, and one of them is an immortal. And yes, Reev and Mason are back causing emotional overload in Kai's already chaotic life.
My favorite couple is back, KAI and AVAN, although, after the gut twisting events at the end of GoTaS, it is not the same relationship they had before. The author's romantic writing style is still perfection for my non grind-grope-groan romance tastes. I would rather hyperventilate over MONSTERS and GRAYS; ha ha!Sultry I think is the best word to describe Lee's love scenes. Slow and smoldering.
The first book, GATES OF THREAD AND STONE, read more like an Adult Fantasy for me, so it was a total package weighing in at five stars. THE INFINITE will be coming in at...
There was a little bit too much fashion and make-up in this second book for my tastes, so it wasn't quite the perfect package for me this time around, but I know that those things are a welcome addition for most YA readers and will have them loving this story even more.
TELL ME TUESDAY is a feature that oozed from my post Twitter party fried brains. It is a floating feature (depending on your reading style), where you tell us what you are reading now, and why, and what you will be reading in the future from your tbr pile, and why. I am oh so curious why people read what they read. So tell me!
Go have a peek at their latest grabs and tell them yours.
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I have A LOT TO TELL you this week because I did not do a The Sunday Post. Halloween week is very busy for me, so I needed some me time on Sunday.
My Halloween reads were a bust. I was listening to my audiobook of DRACULA because I realized I had seen umpteen movies, but had never read the novel. The writing was so "flowery" I was too easily distracted. Don't get me wrong, the writing was good and the full cast narration, including Tim Curry and Alan Cummings, was fabulous. However, I multitask when listening to audiobooks and doing things like: cooking, folding laundry, and washing dishes while listening to elegant prose made me...
wasn't scary (it was supposed too be) and fell flat at the end.
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My son bought me one of the new $49.99 Kindle Fires. Its name is Steve (Steve K. Fire); he works great, has emojis, and the new Word Runner feature where the text flashes one word at at time. I got the ebook of CORALINE for $1.99 the other day and I started reading it with the WR. It has a bit of a strange feel, but I am going to read the entire book this way to see if I can get used it. Anyway, Steve was 1/3 the cost of Fhkeindle the demon Kindle Fire HD, and is light years better. It is one inch smaller, but that makes it lighter and easier to hold in one hand.
WORD RUNNER DEMO
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Then came another eARC fiasco, but this time with two Netgalley books. After I finished SLADE HOUSE, I went to read THE WORLD OF POO by Terry Pratchett and once again, it was N-O-W-H-E-R-E. Now I know it was downloaded to my Kindle because it was on my carousel AND I remember reading the first couple of pages. Plus, I am almost positive I downloaded the third book in a series by Sarah Fine, titled FATED, and it was missing, too! Faye from THE SOCIAL POTATO was telling me her eARC of INHERITANCE OF ASHES from Netgalley disappeared as well. Have some publishers figured out how to make email downloads self destruct? Before it has always been that eARCs do not delete from Kindle because they are sent as documents to your Kindle email account.
So I thought, oh well, this book is only 129 pages long, so the ebook can't be more than $2.99. WRONG! The ebook is $11.99! Now I am really angry that it vanished.
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So, even though I was adamant that I was not going to buy a hardcover of ILLUMINAE, and that I was going to wait for an ebook special because the publisher sent me a rude email, and when I was telling someone on Twitter about it, one of the authors told me to, "just buy it" (which stuck in my craw because of all the work we put into our blogs and all the side tweeting, tumbling and Facebooking we do), I saw it at our grocery store and bought it. The sticker said it was on special for $16.99, and it was just so damed pretty and weird. The dust cover is transparent.
