I have been awful this month!
It had been a very long time since I purchased this many books, but at this point, I feel that I may have gone out of control. I have already posted one quite big book haul from the beginning of the month, and I know I got at least 15 books in September, which I was allowed to do as there had been no books for months because of lack of summer money. However, at this point, I am putting myself on a small book buying ban. It is Christmas, so money needs to be prioritised, so I will only be allowed to get the books for YA book club in December and Dear Martin because I cannot wait for it… That sounds like I cop out, but it is not, because… well, it is, but I’ll be much better I promise.
So, on with the haul…
Last week I went for a coffee with my Auntie and we took a small trip to the bookshop. While there, I decided to purchase a couple of new books for myself, my Auntie got me a book I needed (thank you so much!) and we got two books for my goddaughter Alyson.
I got Monster by Michael Grant, which is a new book in the Gone series, and I loved that series so much! I’m not actually planning on reading this soon, only because I want to reread the Gone series before I do, and I just don’t have the time right now, but once I have finished my book chapter in January, I will be reading and talking about the entire series!
I also got There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins which I was excited to read as I adore horror movies, every subgenre of them, and I really wanted to read this during the readathonbyzoe and The Rose and The Dagger by Renee Ahdieh. I know that I wasn’t as fond of The Wrath and The Dawn as I hoped, but I felt that I definitely wanted to finish the story, and so I needed the book and will be reading it soon.
For Alyson, we bought The Sword of Summer the first in the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series by Rick Riordan, and The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chianani which I was sure she would love because it has a similar vibe to Descendants, and to the Ever After dolls that she loves. But…Alyson complained about them so much, that I now have The Sword of Summer for myself… Bonus? Haha! W, are now all listening/reading The School for Good and Evil as a mini book club.
While getting the audiobook for The School for Good and Evil, I also got the audiobook for The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee, and I will be listening to this at some point, just not some point soon.
Yesterday was Young Adult book club at my local Waterstones/favourite shop. It was actually my first book club and I really enjoyed it. I had two of the books picked for next months, so I only needed to purchase one, which I was already planning on getting. However, some of the recommendations sounded fantastic, and I really wanted to read them. I don’t know when I’ll get the chance, but I hope it will be very soon. Also, people brought some old books to give away and PEOPLE BROUGHT SOME OLD BOOKS TO GIVE AWAY! Like, I love these women!
So the first book I picked up, and which I need to read for the book club in November, is 
Turtles All The Way Down by John Green. I have to be honest, I don’t love John Green’s books. I don’t dislike them, but I haven’t cried and don’t get the hype. I do like John Green, who is great on Youtube, and so on. Still, everyone has been talking about this so much, I need to try it, maybe I just haven’t found the right book for me?
The free book I got? Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley. I have wanted to pick this up every time I see it, but cannot think of when I am going to read it, since it was free and no one else wanted it, I thought why not?
The last two books I purchased yesterday where The Hate List by Jennifer Brown and The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed.These were recommended by the book club, and honestly, I want to read them NOW. I will probably be picking these up the moment I am finished with my readathon books because I am so eager. The Hate List is about a girl, and school, who are dealing with the aftermath of a school shooting, and The Nowhere Girls talks about a girl who has been expelled after reporting a rape to her school. Both books deal with extremely complex, hard and important topics.
After these books, a good question would be, why did I purchase more? Well… It is Dewey’s 24 hour readathon tomorrow and, after the really fun readathonbyzoe last week, Wayne is being super nice and supportive, and also enabling my book buying problem, by joining me this week too! On one condition – he wanted us to go and pick out some thrillers/spooky/mystery Halloween books, and then both try to read the same ones (at different times, because buying two copies would be excessive, obviously). We could then discuss what we thought. I know he will regret this, but I love that he thought this was a good idea at the time…
I always enjoy spending time with my other half, but when he takes me on bookshop dates, I literally can’t believe how lucky I am. We spent over 3 hours in the bookshop selecting what we would read, he not only put up with me today but actually joined in with my over the top book selecting method (I’ll tell you all about it in a moment), and we managed to just buy our books at 2 minutes before the bookshop closed, and tried to kick us out.
I have a kind of unique way of purchasing books which I have done since university. I would spend the who afternoon in the bookshop with my best friend, and we would have so much fun. I still do that now, but it is a bit excessive. To start with, I gather all the books that I’m interested in from the shelves/shop floor. Which usually results in this…
The neatly stacked basket on the right is mine, and the disorganised basket is Wayne’s.
The books are then all piled on the tables, and we go through each book individually, reading the blurb to see which ones we like. These books are then placed into the yes, no, and maybe piles. We then discard the no pile, and focus on the yes and maybe pile. I check the Goodreads rating for the book, we read some 3 star reviews, as this usually tells us some good things and some bad things, and then we decide if we are still interested.
If we are still interested, or unsure, this is the point when we open the book and read the first paragraph or two. I like to see if I’m gripped straight away, what I can generally expect of the writing style, whether it is a first or third person, and so on. Sometimes choices are mood dependent, or we’re specifically buying certain types of books (like today), but this usually helps me be much more definitive.
At this point, the yes pile is pretty much set, the no books have now been discarded, and the maybe pile is very low. So we make our cases, do we really want to read those maybe books? Why have they remained maybes? This really helps me to choose what I want to read, what I’m only reading because other people talk about it, and what I am intrigued by but may not be in the mood for right now.
The last step of these book trips is usually trying to convince Wayne that the 3 books I am allowed to get should really be 6, or 7, or 8. I also suffer a lot of book guilt at this point. Do I really need this book right now? Am I going to read this book in the next year? What are we not going to be able to eat/heat this week because I got this book? (this is the only reason why I put some of the books back)
And then I have my final pile!
I am not going to be talking about all of these in this post because, at this point, this post is epic… But I will be going through them in my TBR post for the readathon tomorrow, as most of this feature there. However, the books I purchased were… Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie, The Diviners by Libba Bray, The Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd, Out of the Ice by Ann Turner, Right Behind You by Lisa Gardner, The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund, and Ink and Bone by Rachel Cain.
I am looking forward to reading The Crow Girl as it drew me in straight away, but it is too long for a readathon so I will be picking this up on some dark and rainy weekend and digging in. Finally, I have never read a Rachel Cain novel, as I am not fond of reading vampires (especially YA vampires), but Ink and Bone sounded amazing, and it mentioned a library and books, so I am all in with that!
So that is the end of my massive, terrible book haul for this month. I am not going to be buying any more books now… No more book hauls until the new year…
Happy Reading!
Afternoon Literature 