books and beautiful teacups! :)
Books bought/received:
~ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (op-shop purchase)
~ The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide (birthday gift from my parents)
~ Murder of Crows (Others #2) by Anne Bishop (birthday gift from a dear friend)
~ Tin Star (Tin Star #1) by Cecil Castellucci (birthday gift from same dear friend!)
~ Collected Poems of Gwen Harwood (library book sale purchase)
~ The Stranger (Last Man #1) by Bastien Vives, Michael Sanlaville, and Balak (for review)
~ The Girl at Midnight (The Girl at Midnight #1) by Melissa Grey (for review)
Books read:
~ The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
~ Of Silk and Steam (London Steampunk #5) by Bec McMaster
~ Vision in Silver (Others #3) by Anne Bishop
~ The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
~ The Stranger (Last Man #1) by Bastien Vives, Michael Sanlaville, and Balak
~ The Girl at Midnight (The Girl at Midnight #1) by Melissa Grey
~ Little Women (Little Women #1.1) by Louisa May Alcott (re-read)
~ Good Wives (Little Women #1.2) by Louisa May Alcott
Eight books this month, with two of them being review books! All of these books were ones I had preordered, received for review, or already had on my own shelves (how odd...) and so that's kind of a heartening thought.
After the Perth Writer's Festival last month, where I got to meet Elizabeth Gilbert, I got to thinking about the fact that I never finished reading my copy of The Signature of All Things. I kept looking at it on my shelf and eventually decided to pick it up again and I ended up finishing it! And I absolutely loved it. It really got me interested in the scientific world again - a place that I had idly looked into here and there since finishing my Psych degree, but not felt capable of venturing into. I am sure there is something there about my health and science not helping me so much with that, but either way, Liz Gilbert helped me get back to a place of awe and fascination, which I am so thankful for.
Both Of Silk and Steam and Vision in Silver were preorders that arrived this month (Of Silk and Steam was bought for me by Xin as a lovely gift) and I loved both of them. It seems that the London Steampunk books might be done now, but Bec McMaster keeps saying she has a few other things in the works, so I am really hoping for more. I love the characters and the romance in these books.
The Others books by Anne Bishop just get better and better, and I am loving the character building and the world. There is this tension underlying everything in these books that is difficult to read at times, but just so addictive. Can't wait for the next one - Marked in Flesh.
The Guest Cat was such a sweet surprise gift from my parents, and I enjoyed it very much. A short book, but with lots of charm. I find writing by Japanese authors to be so different from the writing I am used to, and there is a certain flavour to Japanese writing that is hard to recreate. Or perhaps I just read a lot of similar authors! Either way, I enjoyed this and it left me feeling sad, but content.
My two review books this month were quite different, not least because The Stranger is a graphic novel while The Girl at Midnight is not. I won't say anything about them here as their respective reviews will be up on my blog in good time. I will say I enjoyed them both, though.
Finally, I have been looking at the classics on my shelf for some time now, and slowly realising just how many of the classics I own are actually unread. It led me to creating a separate shelf on goodreads called 'classics-challenge', currently (at time of writing) with 17 books on it [You can find it here, hopefully the link works!]. I would like to get through at least half of them this year, and decided to start with a re-read of Little Women, so that I might continue on with the series and finally read all the books. I have already finished Little Women, and am on to Good Wives (which is really Little Women part two, rather than a separate book it seems, but there you go) and I am hoping to get onto Little Men very soon.
As for my buying habits, I have been pretty good, but also not so good. While I only bought two books for myself this month (the others being gifts or review books), I did purchase a book without having a book-buying-token to spend. I decided that I would need to read four books to make up for it, and then resume my read-three-get-one-token system as before. This may also force me to read more classics, which I am pleased about!
Anyway, what are you reading at the moment? Have you got any classics that you would like to read (or re-read)?
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