Sunday, July 03, 2011

TSS: More bookish news on a Sunday

Happy Sunday! I hope everyone has been enjoying the weekend. Welcome to another bi-weekly news round-up where all my bookish thoughts and news are gathered together in one place.

Book(s) I'm currently reading
: Argh! I'm feeling a little bit book-restless at the moment and have started several books. I'm hoping that one of them will stick. I'm currently reading David by Mary Hoffman, Here Lies Bridget by Paige Harbison and The Maze Runner by James Dashner. I think I'll give each book a few more pages before I take the pressure off and pick up something ele for right now. I think these are all wonderful books, it's just not the right timing for me.


Books I've finished reading recently: I don't know what it is, but I've been on such a paranormal romance kick lately! It's funny, I go months and months where I can't even stand to think of reading a paranormal, and then all of a sudden the urge just HITS me. Does that happen for you guys as well?

This past week I've read Die For Me by Amy Plum, Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon, Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris and Nightshade by Andrea Cremer. Phew. Hopefully my reviews of all of these books will be up soon.


Books I'm looking forward to starting soon: I'm still enjoying this paranormal urge, so I thought I'd do my best to clear out some of my TBR shelves.

My new shortlisted stack of books on my bedside table currently has Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan, The Dead by Charlie Higson, Raised By Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Finding Sky by Joss Stirling, The Dark Divine by Bree Despain, Burned by PC and Kristen Cast, Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick, and Forsaken by Jana Oliver. I would really love to clear all of that lot out! Operation Read Own Books has been failing MISERABLY in the last few months, it'll be nice to strike a few more titles off.


Books read in June: As the end of the month has come and gone, as per usual, here is the list of books that I've read in June. It was an OK reading month for me, though I'd (of course, always) hope to have read more of my OWN books. Some really great books there though.

Despite my normal intimidation towards chunky books I did read *6* books this month which were over 500 pages. I'm absolutely impressed with myself! I think I've finally conquered that particular fear of starting very large books.

* marks a British author and next to each book I've also listed how I've acquired the book.

1. The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter (swapped)
2. Flash Burnout by LK Madigan (purchased)
3. Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton (sent for review)
4. Hidden by Miriam Halahmy* (sent for review)
5. What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen (purchased)

6. Angel's Fury by Bryony Pearce* (sent for review)
7. Mad Love by Suzanne Selfors (sent for review)
8. Duty Calls: Dunkirk by James Holland* (sent for review)
9. Pretty Twisted by Gina Blaxill* (sent for review)
10. Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck (sent for review)

11. Tiger's Quest by Colleen Houck (sent for review)
12. Birthmarked by Caragh O'Brien (sent for review)
13. The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta (purchased)
14. Blood Red Road by Moira Young (purchased)
15. Die For Me by Amy Plum (swapped)

16. Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris (swapped)
17. Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon (swapped)
18. To the Moon and Back by Jill Mansell (purchased)
19. Nightshade by Andrea Cremer (gift)

My favourites of the month? Tiger's Curse, Tiger's Quest and The Piper's Son.


Plans for July: My plans for the following month usually remain much the same - do my best to clear some of my own books as well as keep on top of sent for review books. Catch up entirely with my for review pile once I've read a book. This month, as Lenore from Presenting Lenore is hosting Dystopian August again, I am aiming to tackle a few dystopic books. My goal is to get around to possibly:

0.4 by Mike Lancaster
Forsaken by Jana Oliver
The Dead by Charlie Higson
Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan
Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden
Exodus by Julie Bertagna
The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Books added to my wishlist: None this week :( I've been so behind on reading my favourite blogs this week and barely looked at any reviews at all. Do feel free to leave recommendations in comments!

Bloggy housekeeping: I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about reviews. There's been such controversy over whether or not bloggers should write their own product descriptions or not. I've always sat on the fence on the particular issue, but lately I have been finding it easier to write my own. This is on a trial basis and we'll see how it does. I am curious though, would you like me to include more information about the book in my reviews? Date of publication? Who publishes the book? Would a link to the author's website be of any use? What about book trailers? If I posted some good ones along with a review, would you watch it?

If I'm honest, I don't pay very much attention to book trailers. I know several bloggers feature book trailers every week and ... I never watch them and generally skip over those posts (I'll add that it's the same with Waiting on Wednesday posts or other such posts with very little content, now that it feels like confession time!) but if they were together with someone's thoughts on a book, would that make a difference to you? It might for me, so I shall possibly be attempting that in the near future.

Here are several that I came across this week and really loved:



Blood Red Road by Moira Young




Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini




Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck



Bookish news: Lots of fab news to share this week. Several awesome books have been cover revealed...

Kiss Date Love Hate by Luisa Plaja has this awesome cover, which I love.

What if you could change your friends' lives and loves through the settings of a computer game...?

Lex Murphy's group of friends have all dated, hated, ignored and lusted after each other for the last few years. If only there was a way of matching people perfectly to avoid all the unrequited love, dumping and drama! Then Lex's friend George is given a mysterious Sims-like game by his software-testing dad which involves building character profiles in the categories of Life, Looks and Love. Lex and George populate the game with avatars for all their mates, making a few 'wishful thinking' adjustments to the settings - and find that the next day these tinkerings have come true! But how long can this new calm, loved-up atmosphere continue?


Torn by Cat Clarke is absolutely beautiful, I love the colours.

Four girls. One dead body. A whole lot of guilt.

Alice King isn’t expecting the holiday of a lifetime when she sets off with her classmates on a trip to the Scottish wilderness, but she’s not exactly prepared for an experience beyond her darkest nightmares…

Alice and her best friend Cass are stuck in a cabin with Polly, the social outcast, and Rae, the moody emo-girl. Then there’s Tara – queen of mean. Powerful, beautiful and cruel, she likes nothing better than putting people down.

Cass decides it’s time to teach Tara a lesson she’ll never forget. And so begins a series of events that will change the lives of these girls forever...

A compelling story of guilty secrets, troubled friendship and burgeoning love.

and of course, everyone has seen Bloodlines by Richelle Mead by now, but I'm going to include it anyway.

LOVE AND LOYALTY RUN DEEPER THAN BLOOD…

Sydney protects vampire secrets – and human lives. As an alchemist, she is part of a secret group who dabbles in magic and serves to bridge the world of humans and vampires.

But when Sydney is torn from her bed in the middle of the night, she fears she’s still being punished for her complicated alliance with dhampir Rose Hathaway. What unfolds is far worse. Jill Dragomir—the sister of Moroi Queen Lissa Dragomir—is in mortal danger, and goes into hiding. Now Sydney must act as Jill’s protector.

The last thing Sydney wants is to be accused of sympathising with vampires. And now she has to live with one . . .


It was announced that Karen Mahoney has a new three book deal, excellent.

And of course, I'm hugely excited that John Green has announced the title of his new book, The Fault in Our Stars and will be signing ALL pre-orders for it. The book has already flown to the number one spot on the US Amazon site. Hugely exciting news.

And oh, that's enough from me today. Hope all of you are having a wonderful, relaxing weekend! DFTBA.

What book are you reading at the moment?

7 comments:

  1. I definitely have phases with books were it's only paranormal I want to read, or contemporary, and so on! " gorgeous cover this week too! I love both of them and can't wait for Torn!

    As for review styles, well I generally don't rewrite the publsiher synopsis, though sometimes I really feel the need to and so do then. Lyns does write her own. I think whatever feels right for you..there's no right/wrong way and I like how we all have our own way, it makes it more interesting.

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  2. I do tend to write my own synopsis of the book as I find it easier. Good luck with Dystopian month.

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  3. I loved reading all your news! Happy reading and I hope you enjoy your dystopian books.

    Thank you very much for posting about Kiss Date Love Hate, too - I really appreciate it! The cover that has made its way onto Amazon isn't the finished cover, though the final cover should be similar! Hopefully I'll have it in a few weeks. Anyway - huge thanks!

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  4. Vicki - I'm glad it's not just me who swings wildly between genres :) I remember you did a post awhile back about using product descriptions/writing your own. I don't think either is better than the other, I'm just finding that writing my own seems to unblock me in some way!

    Vivienne - Thanks.

    Luisa - I'm really looking forward to reading a huge stack of dystopian books, it sounds like a lot of fun to me :) Interested to see what changes to the cover ther will be! :)

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  5. I always write my own synopses at the start of reviews because I'm a blurb-hater. I find some of them to be actually inaccurate, but most of them I just don't like because they miss out the most interesting parts of the book or they put too much emphasis on one thing (IMO). I feel that with my reviews, the synopsis is part of the review, and is one more way for me to draw attention to the things I liked about the book. Sometimes I can really struggle when writing them though.

    I don't really mind whether publication information is there or not, I don't really care when a book is published because I don't buy many books as soon as they come out!

    I have to admit that I don't watch a lot of book trailers either. I sometimes put them at the start of my review posts if I've failed to find a tenuously relevant photo, but I prefer reading reviews and descriptions to be honest, it's much quicker!

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  6. Julianne - Thank you so much for your lovely long comment, it is JUST what I wanted. I found that I was writing my own synopsis as part of my review, but stuck the blurb on top anyway. So by removing the blurb from the reviews, I'm not doing things much differently to before, so I'm hoping nobody balks at the changes I've made! I've rarely seen people who are pro-blurb! :)

    I'm still on the fence as to whether or not to include publication info. Seems like a lot of work to do especially if nobody's interested?

    As far as the book trailers go, I think that I might include a trailer *occasionally* if I find a really good one, but using it wouldn't replace anything else, it might just be tacked on at the end. Won't happen very often as I don't actively seek out book trailers and I don't care for many of them! Thanks again for the in-depth comment :)

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  7. Aww, you're welcome! I think you're right, removing the blurb wouldn't be that big a change really.

    Thinking about if again, if people want publication info, they can probably find it elsewhere, if they want to buy the book they'll probably be googling the title and author to find the best price anyway.

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