Hello and welcome to a post where I am sharing the books I am adding to my owned TBR. I have actually been reading a bit this past few months so of course I wanted to reward myself with some new books to add to my stacks. Most of the books I have been reading have been through my library digitally, but I recently went on a little adventure and came across a really lovely local bookstore and I wanted to support them. So, I ended up getting these lovely book. Also, I am adding a bonus of a preorder at the end of this post.
I have to say, the cover of this book really pulled me in. The cover is a really lovely dark red berry color, with an illustrated girl on the cover in the same color dress. Oddly, you don’t see her face at all as the title is on top of it located on a doodled cloud. Then I ended up picking up the book and looking at the description. It follows a house wife (name is unknown at this time) who has visions and leaves her life behind. It sounded interested and spontaneous. Bonus, the book is under 150 pages. When I got home I added the book to my goodreads and I ended up noticing that this books ratings are not the highest and had only one written review, but I am still intrigued.
When I walked into the store I really wanted to get a nonfiction read or a horror book. Sadly, their horror was VERY limited. Only about 20 books and I will be honest I read them all. So, I ended up picking up the above talked about book and then walking over to the nonfiction and this title grabbed me right away. In recent years I have realized I really enjoy learning about the history of medicine. I have read and loved The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris. While The Icepick Surgeon is medical related, it explore the lengths people will go in to try to prove something. Some of the things in this book are medical, but it seems to focus on science in general.
Now, I wont go too much into this book due to the fact it is the second book in a series. The first book followed Jade Daniels a high school student who LOVES horror. She watches and consumes it to not focus on her not so great home life. But, this knowledge ends up coming in handy since she is about to be in a horror story herself. She deals with quite a lot and can be difficult to read for some. I will say, reading this I can see that Stephen Graham Jones loves horror himself with constant nods to other works. I highly suggest checking it out because I have not been this excited for a horror series in a long time.
Hello and welcome to a tag I should have done months ago, I am so sorry Whitney, but better late than never. At least I am hoping. I was so happy when Whitney tagged me back in March, this is such fun tag and I am glad I am able to be apart of it. Now on to the rules and prediction prompts!
As I said in my post, To Be Read | August 2020, I planned on reading this book in August. I did come across some excerpts I read when I was in school and they were all annotated. I didn’t read the annotations, but I am curious of how my annotating will vary this time as opposed to last time when I am done reading.
I am not quite sure this counts as cheating, but I am about 50% done with this book already and I am really enjoying it. As long as nothing unforeseen happens, I am probably going to be giving his book 5 stars. It is a great collections of short stories with a unifying thread. It is whimsical, magical, and thought provoking.
I am going to be honest with this one. I don’t really think it is going to be a 1 star read, but I think it is going to be the lowest rated out of my current TBR. The reason being it has a 2.4 rating on goodreads… that is the lowest one I have. I do have hope though that maybe I will like it better than others.
Next Love Interest
Jo & Laurie byMargaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz
This is the only book on my owned TBR that has a hint of romance to it. It is a historical fiction/retelling/continuation of sorts of he lives of Jo and Laurie from Little Women. Which, if you did not know is my all time favorite book and series. Yes, there are more Little Women books!
I think the next book I will be buying will actually be a pre-order of this book. It does not come out until October 6th, 2020. I went to a digital author book talk and the author recommended quite a few books, many I read, but this one stood out to me!
Next Book That Will Leave you With a Book Hangover
While I do enjoy this series I always have a book hangover of sorts when I finish ones of its tomes. I tend to read two per year because that is all I can handle. I am planning on reading this one at the end of August or in September. I still cannot believe I have made it to book 6 of this series.
Hello and welcome to the March discussion post. I have been loving these the past few months. Being able to hear your options and talk about books just makes me want to blog more. I started bookishluna because I wanted to talk books and to see all the support through comments and taking part in my polls has been great. Thank-you for talking books with me. If you want to read my previous discussion post you can find them here; Lets Talk | Reading Formats , Lets Talk | Big Books.
Last month we talked about big books, this month lets talk about preordering books. But, before we move on to this months discussion topic I want to go over the poll results.
The Results
The poll this month shows that most people like big books. I will admit I was thinking that more people would say no because they can be intimidating. Either way, if you like big books or not, we can all agree that books are amazing.
What do you think about the poll results?
When you preorder a book, you are taking a chance, it could work out in your favor or not. A big fear of mine is preordering a book and absolutely hating it. We have all been there, we read a book description or review on a fell bloggers page and thought, “This book is for me”. We preorder it and wait. When it finally arrived we happily open it and maybe share our bookmail on our social media accounts. Then when we go to read the book it falls flat for one reason or another. This is large con when it comes to preordering books. There is no guarantee we are going to like the book.
The pros to preordering are numerous. Sometimes there are preorder goodies, I know when I preordered The Song Rising by Samantha Shannon I was sent a beautiful full colored map of the world. I still have it displayed. Other times there may be exclusive covers, extra art, stickers, and other bookish goodies. Another bonus of preordering books is they are sometimes cheaper. This is not guaranteed, but in some cases if you preorder in advance online they prices may be cheaper. But, I will admit I am an advocate of preordering at a physical books store, chain or independent if you have access to that. When you do this, chances are you will not get a discount.
Another pro, which I find the most powerful is that it supports the author. It helps them get better release day/week numbers which helps them gain support for publishing another book. Now obviously, you can do this by going to the store on opening day, but I am horrible about remember release days. This way you don’t need to remember, it either shows up at your door or you get a phone call saying you can pick up your book.
If you want to hear it from an author you can see that Melissa Albert herself says the best says to support an author when you preorder or buy it in store on the appropriate date. Buying them before release date does not support authors. So if you see a book out before their release date, it does not help their numbers. If you want to ensure you get a copy asap preorder it online or at a bookshop. I myself have seen them out before their date and have gotten super excited because I feel like I have found buried treasure. After realizing it does not help authors I will no longer buy books early.
Thanks again for letting me use your tweet!
Now I want to take a moment to say that you can support authors by requesting their books at the library, I don’t always have money for book and I know a lot of people are also in the same boat. Now, I did a bit of reading and the amount of financial support authors get from library sales differ from author to author. I recently read a great post on the topic, How do authors make money from library books? I was curious because I wanted to know that these authors still get the support they deserve when I put a book on hold. It seems that they do, but in different ways.
For me preordering books is something I do when it meets my criteria. For me to preorder a book it has to hit at least 2 of the following; I have read 1 or more of the authors works already and enjoyed them, the description of the books pulls me in, and/or I read a review by someones I trust or know I have similar tastes too. Having this criteria has helped me greatly. I am very rarely disappointed by books I preorder anymore.
Of course there is an exception, if I have read the book as an ARC and I loved it, I am going to preorder it as well. While I do want to support authors, I want to be as sure as I can be before spending money on a book. They can be expensive and sometimes my disposable income in limited.
(Some) Books I have Pre-Ordered and the Criteria They Met
Illustrated editions of Harry Potter: I read them all in original format
The Hazel Wood By Melissa Albert: Received as an ARC and reviewed
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black: I read 2 books by her and the description sounded amazing.
The Dire King: A Jackaby Novel by William Ritter: I read the other books in the series and loved it, plus the description sounded like it was going to continue being amazing. (P.S this series is one where I loved every book)
I currently have Stephen Kings newest book The Outsider that comes out May 22nd, 2018 preordered. I have read at least 8 of his books and really enjoyed them. On top of that the description gave me the creeps, which is the point of a Stephen King book.
What do you think about preordering books?
Do you preorder books? Let me know in the poll below.
Bookish Luna 