The wonder that is BookBub…

(Not a Sponsor)

My discovery of the lovely service that is BookBub has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because I’ve found so many titles to fill my Nook. A curse, because I keep adding titles to my Nook.

Actual depiction of the inside of my Nook.

I have a propensity for collecting books. I go to book sales, I fill my Nook with free titles, I make long lists of what to track down at the library, and every now and then I buy brand new ones at Barnes & Noble. Whether I’m collecting just titles and authors, or gathering actual books, it doesn’t seem to matter. Sometimes I wonder if I like collecting them more than reading them…

So, when I got my Nook a while back, I wanted to use it primarily to read indie books, since so many of them are strictly ebooks. One day, I stumbled upon BookBub, which so graciously offered to dig around barnesandnoble.com for me and present me with free and discounted ebook titles from the genres I’m interested in. (Just to be clear, BookBub is a free website/service, not a sentient being, where I signed up, chose where I wanted to shop from, and what authors and genres I like.)

Every day I get a little email with a list of titles for my perusal. So far, I’ve mostly stocked up on freebies and the occasional $.99 title.  I already have more than 75.

I absolutely love being presented with book options every day, but I’m a little worried about my current rate of digital hoarding. But, when you hoard towers of digital books, you don’t have to worry about them falling on your head, so that makes it ok, right?

Book Sale Haul VI

Wow, I’ve done six of these already? Time flies. I’ve been learning to restrain myself a bit more at these book sales, since I’m really running out of room, so this time I have 21 new books to share with you. Behold the literary splendor! (click for larger images)

Apparently I’m collecting The Wheel of Time books now…so far I’ve got 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 11. That’s a start.

Two more Shannara books for the collection and some fantasy/scifi…

Elizabethan espionage, Sherlock, thrillers, and Ian M. Banks since I really liked The Algebraist…

Tarot and math make an odd combination, but I’ve always had an interest in forms of divination, as well as a fear of math. It says it’s painless, so maybe I’ll learn something.

So there you have it, my restrained book sale finds. I’m pretty happy with it and since my personal library seems to be growing at an alarming rate, I’ve decided to focus on reading what I already have for the time being. There will be no more trips to the library for a while, since I get distracted so easily. I’m almost done with The Wise Man’s Fear so there will be some new reviews in the very near future, including an indie or two, so please look forward to them! Until next time…happy reading 😉

I got a nook for Christmas!

Now, I know e-readers aren’t a new thing anymore, but that doesn’t make me any less excited! This means that I’ll be doing more indie reviews in the near future. I’ve wanted to review more independent publications as a way of paying it forward, since, someday in the future, I just might manage to write something worth self-publishing. Whenever that happens, I would like people to read and review my work as well. The tricky thing will be sifting through the not-so-ready-to-be-published titles and finding the authors who really took the time to do it right, so if anyone has any recommendations for me please let me know!

I’m also looking forward to being able to read really long, and therefore quite heavy, books, like Brandon Sanderson’s Steelheart, without having it dig into my legs while I read it. As much as I prefer the real thing, this little device will come in quite handy.

The holidays have delayed me a bit, but I’ve got several new reviews coming up soon! I hope everyone had a lovely holiday season! And I wish you happy reading in the new year! 🙂

Snowpiercer

Based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige

I’ve never reviewed a movie on this blog, and it’s not something I plan on doing regularly, but there was something about this one that I just had to share.

I may love books, but what I really love are stories and imagination and that comes in so many forms: books, movies, TV, games, anime, manga, and even in art. So when I come across an amazing story, whatever its form, I’m going to have to talk about it.

The entire movie had a short story feeling to it, the kind of stories that examine the best and the worst in humanity in a new and interesting way. The premise is this: Human intervention in global warming freezes the world and the only people left are on a train that travels around the entire world in one year. The passengers are organized according to class, which leads to the usual tension that brings.

Now this is a seriously violent movie, and normally that’s a bit of a turn off for me, but there was something so captivating about the world building and the characters that I didn’t care. It was quirky and dark with an epic feeling to it. The fight scenes were amazing, but the thing that kept me so interested was the train itself and the journey through it. Each car contained a new surprise, and since my interest in so many things is driven purely by curiosity, I couldn’t wait to see what they would stumble upon next.

It was a really brilliant movie, in my humble opinion, and everything I love about storytelling. Definitely worth seeing.

Book Sale Haul V

Here I present to you, once again, pictures of books. Enjoy!

Some lovely hardcovers…

The one in the upper right is Sapphique, the sequel to Incarceron. The X-Files book is there because I just couldn’t help myself, since I was a huge fan of the show.

Some lovely paperbacks…

I think I managed excellent restraint this time. I’m trying to be a bit more realistic about how many books I bring home, since I’m desperately out of space. But how can I not bring more books home? Books are awesome. Until next time…

Book Sale Haul IV

Another book sale has come and gone and once again I probably got too many books. Can you really have too many books? Anyway, I did manage to restrain myself a little better this time and ended up with 34. Click on the pictures to make them bigger. 🙂

I’m trying to collect all of the Shannara books.

I now have the first four Sword of Truth novels. (Since I got the first one last time)

The first five Age of Fire books. It was pretty cool finding all these in a pile together.

A couple of classics.

A few hardcovers. I always like to get books that are practically new.

Some trade paperbacks. I’m most intrigued by Jinn, since they just made it into a movie.

Random paperbacks. Stormlord Rising looks promising and The Name of the Rose has been on my list for a while now.

I got some good stuff, it was a lot of fun, and I can’t wait till the next one! Until next time…

Happy Reading!

Patrick Rothfuss has a way with book endorsements…

Mr. Rothfuss has graced the front cover of Stormdancer and the back cover of Libriomancer, two of my favorite recent reads. What I love so much about his quick blurbs is how they’re not your average endorsement. Normally, you get something like “a gripping tale of heroism” or “so and so has taken the fantasy genre to a new level” or whatever, but Mr. Rothfuss’ comments are much more personal.

~

Stormdancer: “What’s that? You say you’ve got a Japanese steampunk novel with mythic creatures, civil unrest, and a strong female protagonist? I’m afraid I missed everything you said after ‘Japanese steampunk.’ That’s all I really needed to hear.”

Libriomancer: “I picked up the book meaning to read a few pages. My first thought was, ‘This is a cool concept.’ The second thing I thought was, ‘This is really, really clever.’ The third thing I thought was, ‘I should have gone to sleep three hours ago.”

~

See what I mean? They’re personal with a touch of humor. It feels more like he legitimately enjoyed the novel and wants to convince others to read it, while other book endorsements just seem flat and stale. While I would have bought Stormdancer and Libriomancer regardless of what Patrick Rothfuss thought of them, these brief quotes convinced me to add The Name of the Wind to my short list. The man seems to love the kind of books I love, and seems clever and genuine as well, so how could I not enjoy his work?

If you are somehow lucky enough to be publishing a book, do everything you can to get Patrick Rothfuss to endorse it. Then you’ll be all set!

Liebster Award!

I have been nominated for a Liebster Award!

Thanks to Chibi Reader for nominating me!

If you are not familiar with it, the Liebster Award is a way to help promote new or unknown blogs with fewer than 200 followers. If you choose to accept the award, you must do the following:

* Link back to the blogger who tagged you.
* Answer the questions they asked.
* Nominate 5 blogs and let them know of their nomination.
* Ask them 10 questions.

That’s pretty much it, so I will get on with answering my questions…

1. What made you start reading?
Initially, my Mom read to me a lot when I was little. We took trips to the library on a weekly basis, and always brought home a stack of books. So I think that was the foundation, but it wasn’t until I happened to have some serious time on my hands that I started to really find my way back to books.

2. What is your favorite book-based movie?
I’m going to go with Howl’s Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki, although I never read the book. For the longest time I didn’t even know it was based on a book.

3. Books vs Movies : Do you know a movie that is better than the book?
I read Earthsea quite some time ago, then they made a TV movie out of it. Strangely enough, I liked the changes they made to the story in the movie for the most part. They improved the things I didn’t like…although they managed to make some of the straight forward things strangely complicated.

4. Top 5 books
Whenever I’m asked a question like this I promptly forget everything I’ve ever read, but I will do my best.
Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series
Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff
Mercedes Lackey’s Heralds of Valdemar Trilogy
Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber (even though I haven’t finished it yet -.-)
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Susan Collins
I’m sure I’ll come back to this later and feel stupid because I forgot an obvious favorite.

5. Why did you decide to create a blog?
I originally started this blog as a way to get more comfortable with writing. I had the storytelling part figured out pretty well, but my writing sucked, so I thought this would be a good, pressure-free way to practice. It also makes for a great way to keep track of what I read, and a way to channel out my feelings about a book, without burdening those around me.

6. What genre do you prefer to read?
I’m a Scifi/Fantasy kind of person, but I would say I read more Fantasy and Fantasy sub-genres than Scifi. I like imaginative things, and super cool world-building.

7. If you had to go to a desert island which book would you take with you? You can only choose one!
Roger Zelazny’s Great Book of Amber, partly because I haven’t finished it yet, and because it’s long. Technically, it’s ten stories, so it’s more of an anthology, but I think that counts…or am I cheating?

8. Who is your favorite character ever from a book?
I don’t think I’ve really found a favorite character yet, but if I absolutely had to answer, I’d say either Sirius Black from Harry Potter or Buruu, the storm tiger from Stormdancer.

9. If you created another blog, what would be its main focus?
Funny you mention that, because I did create another blog. In addition to my love of books I’m also a fan of Japanese and Korean music, dramas, anime, manga, etc, so I made a blog about all that Asian pop culture stuff. It’s called The Rational Fanatic.

10. What is the best thing about having a blog?
Feeling like I’ve accomplished something. While finishing a book is its own little accomplishment, it seems to evaporate into the ether too easily. Once the book is back on the shelf, or back to the library, there’s nothing left to really show that I finished it. When I scroll back through my book reviews, I get to see all that I’ve read, and revisit those books that I tend to forget the moment I start the next one. Getting a like or a comment is just icing on the cake.

Now, I would like to nominate the following blogs:

Letters & Leaves

Undercover Bookworm

Clement’s Game

So Many Books, So Little Time

Crap books

Congratulations!

Here are your questions:

1: What inspired you to create a blog?
2: What is the next book you’re looking forward to reading?
3: If you could, what fictional universe would you live in?
4: What was your favorite book as a child?
5: What are your top 3 favorite authors?
6: What is the last book that gave you a book hangover?
7: Storytelling comes in many forms, what is your favorite story that didn’t come from a book? (ex. TV, Movie, Video Game, etc)
8: What genre do you read most often?
9: Have you ever met an author? If not, who would you like to meet?
10: If you wrote a book, what genre would it be?

 Well, that’s it. This was a really long post but I had a lot of fun choosing blogs and putting this together. Until next time…

Authors love books and their characters do too.

It’s something of a trend I’ve noticed lately, but so many of the books I have read, or want to read, have something to do with books or libraries. Books about books. Even if the story isn’t primarily about books the characters are book-lovers and/or end up spending lots of time in a library. Somehow, these things always sneak in. Is this merely coincidence? I don’t think so.

The real question is this. Is it that true bibliophiles generally become writers and therefore write about what they know and love? Or is it a prerequisite to becoming an author that you love books so much that you must put them in your novels? I’m well aware, though, that there are plenty of stories out there that have nothing to do with books or libraries, it’s just that more of them seem to have one of those elements than I would have expected.

Perhaps writers simply know their audience. Those of us who are avid readers are inclined to identify with characters that like to read too much and would love to track down forgotten tomes in mysterious libraries. I suppose it isn’t really surprising that the two go together, but I hadn’t made the connection until somewhat recently. Maybe that makes me unexpectedly dense. It’s certainly possible, but I just thought I’d highlight this little observation for those of you who hadn’t noticed either and leave you with this question:

Which came first, the book-lover or the author? Ponder it if you will, and feel free to leave your answers below. I’m curious to know what you think. 😉

Book Sale Haul III

It’s that time of year again and I think I may have overdone it… Displayed before you is a grand total of 58 books. Yup, that’s right, 58. This is the most I’ve ever gotten before. I blame it on the never-ending selection of paperbacks they had this year. This was all under $30 by the way, which is why book sales are so great. XD

In the past two book sale posts I’ve done, I made a full list of all the titles, but 58 is just waaaaay too many to list, so I tried to take a decent picture instead. Hopefully you can read the spines well enough (click the image to make it bigger) even if a couple are a little blurry. If you want to know more about a specific book, just leave a comment, let me know where it’s located in the picture and I can give you the title and author.

I got a lot of books that are first in a series, several titles that are already on my book list, and even a steampunk novel!  I’ve got a complete Mercedes Lackey trilogy, the first two books of Tad Williams’ Shadowmarch series, a couple omnibus editions of series I hadn’t heard of before, and three books in the Vampire Earth series by E.E. Knight. There’s also some Lovecraft, a science fiction novel translated from Japanese (Yukikaze, the one that looks upside down) and a book entitled The Voyage of the Narwhal…that one I got just because I couldn’t resist the title, although it happens to be about exploration in the 19th century.

Even with all these books crowding my book shelves, I’ll be back for the sale in September. I can’t help it. If I have to, I’ll just start stacking them on the floor. As long as it doesn’t go quite this far, I think I’m ok.