Happy Friday! I’m sadly back from holiday and have readjusted to real life. I did manage to read two books this week, but also bought a whole bunch more. What TBR challenge?
Books I read
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
I was feeling like the only YA fantasy fan that hadn’t read Laini Taylor’s much-acclaimed Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I have a lot of thoughts on it – mostly spoilery – but I thought it was alright. There were parts I absolutely loved and parts I hated, but overall I liked it enough to get the second book (see below). A proper review is coming up next week!
How to Stop Time has taken me awhile to read, but ended up powering through at a terrifying speed – I went from 34% read to finished in about a day. I really enjoyed this book! It makes you laugh and feel feelings and takes you on a trip through time. I highly recommend it!
Books I am currently reading
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
A Conjuring of Light by V. E. Schwab
Gather the Daughters is a physical ARC (!!!) provided by the good people at Tinder Press (see below). It’s very intriguing and creepy and I sense already that things are not what they seem. I’m only about 80 pages in, but I plan to sit down with this book this weekend.
Ahh, A Conjuring of Light. The final book in V. E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series. I started out somewhat skeptical with A Darker Shade of Magic, but recognised the book’s potential. A Gathering of Shadows was a big improvement (review forthcoming, I completely forgot to write it), so I’m looking forward to finishing up the series. I’m not as keen on it as a lot of readers seem to be – it has a lot of problems for me – but I find it very compelling and am looking forward to finishing this book.
Also, my friend is reading it at the same time so we go to lunch and gossip about it (can you gossip about a book?)
Books I bought
My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor
Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay
Laura by Vera Caspary
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
When my mother and I get together, we are an unstoppable book-buying force. As soon as my family hopped off the train she informed me that she finished her book and needed a new one. We all marched into Waterstones and went a little book-crazy. I am particularly excited about My Best Friend’s Exorcism (look at that cover, I’m dying) and Old Man’s War, a series I’ve wanted to start for ages. Death on the Cherwell makes me smile because when my colleagues and I go punting – THE thing to do in Oxford, apparently – we go out on the Cherwell. This book centers around a body found…in a punt! This book will probably be passed around my department.
Book post!
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
The Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optimist by John Young
The Vorrh by Brian Catling
The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams
So apparently my BookBridgr requests all went through at the same time! I was so delighted to come home from holiday and see three packages waiting for me! Gather the Daughters is one of my current reads and is billed as a female dystopia in line with The Handmaid’s Tale.
The Vorrh and The Ninth Rain are both science fiction/fantasy novels that I cannot wait to get my hands on. The Vorrh in particular looks intriguing – it has tempted me at the bookshop before.
Finally, the lovely people at Floris Books in Edinburgh invited me to be part of the blog tour for the debut novel The Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optimist. I’m really looking forward to reading this, but I just KNOW this book is going to make me cry.
Books I’ll probably read next
The Diabolic by S. J. Kincaid
Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill
I’m a bit torn here. I finished up my ARC of How to Stop Time last night and need something new! I always try to have at least one ARC going alongside my physical books. I was originally thinking of reading The Diabolic first because it looks like in intriguing book I can tear through really quick, but I may actually go with Sea of Rust instead – I mean, just look at that cover. So many books, so little time.
*****
This is a LONG post! I could make it longer by chronicling my attempts to create a spreadsheet of all the books in my flat (I’m not kidding, it’s called The Insane Book Mastersheet and it has tabs and filters). But I wont bore you with that (unless you want to see it when it’s done, I’m really proud).
What I’ve taken away from this week is that I don’t read fast enough and I need to stop buying/requesting books.
I Should Read That 
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