IMM: July Update

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by Kristi of The Story Siren, which highlights books that have been received  during the previous week.

Hello! Happy 1st of August! I haven’t done a IMM post for a while but that doesn’t mean I had been nice and didn’t add something to The Pile. It’s completely the opposite. This month of July I had been extra naughty and devise a number of schemes how to smuggle these books inside the house without getting noticed:

The month started with me getting invited to a dinner hosted by Scholastic Philippines. After a great dinner and a nice chat with my fellow bloggers, they people of Scholastic gave us personalized tote bags containing several books. My bag contained the entire set of Stuart Hill’s The Icemark Chronicles Trilogy[The Cry of Icemark, Blade of Fire, The Last Battle of Icemark] and Rachel Ward’s Numbers and its sequel, Numbers: The Chaos.

My book club also held its 5th meet-up this month. It has been a tradition in our group to bring books you want to give away. The people in our group are very generous and we always end up a having a gigantic pile of books. There were games held to decide who gets to choose what books from the pile first. We really had a huge pile this particular meet-up that even though the team I’m in lose the game, there were still lots of good titles left after the team winners made their picks. I was able to pick sequels of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series: Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots. I already have read The Eyre Affair and I thought it was pretty cool so I’m really happy I got the sequels for free. I also got a copy of Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List.

Meet-ups are also the time for borrowing and lending books. Chachic lend me her copy of Fiona Wood’s Six Impossible Things. I’m really interested reading this book but it’s an Australian YA novel and it’s pretty hard finding a copy of Aussie YA books here in my place. I’m thankful I know someone who collects these books and generous enough to lend her copy. My bookish big sister, Tina volunteered to lend me her copy of E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. People are singing their praises to Frankie so I’m stoked to read this. You don’t get to read awesome girls in YA that frequently. I also borrowed another hard-to-find book from Ariel which is Brom’s The Child Thief. Because of this gigantic book I finally understand  the reason why Ariel created foot-long bookmarks that he gave away last December.

The much awaited NBS Cut-Price Sale finally started last weekend and it didn’t do good to me. At all. It’s only the first weekend and the damage is pretty huge already. There’s about three weeks more. Good luck to me.  All the books above except Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls are bought only for Php99($2). It’s a long list so excuse me if I’ll just enumerate them:

• Green Witch (Green Angel, #2) – Alice Hoffman
• When You Reach Me – Rebecca Stead
•  The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J.K. Rowling
• Marcelo In The Real World – Francisco Stork
• Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1) – Paolo Bacigalupi
• The Demon’s Lexicon – Sarah Rees Brennan
• The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

Finally, my copy of Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion that I won from Janicu’s Book Blog arrived. Everyone is basically saying that this is the most awesome zombie book to date. I love a couple of zombie books — Charlie Higson’s The Enemy and Jonathan Maberry’s Rot and Ruin among others — and I have yet to see if this will be added on that list.

So that’s the loot for the past month. I will really be trying to avoid bookstores for now. But I won’t promise anything.

On other news…

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In My Mailbox: February 14

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by Kristi of The Story Siren, which highlights books that have been received  during the previous week.

I don’t buy books this many within a month’s time and much less in a week, but how can I resist buying if all the three leading bookstore chain here in my place held a weekend sale? I actually bought at least one book from each bookstore.  Here’s what I got:

The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud – I recently enjoyed a book with footnotes(kudos to you if you can guess what it is) and many tells me that this series has funny footnotes, too. I didn’t realize that I picked up the 2nd book instead of the first one. Fail.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde – I’ve already read two Jasper Fforde novel and I am really impressed with the guy’s imagination. I will never dare to miss the chance of reading Jasper Fforde’s first Young Adult fantasy novel.

If I Stay  by Gayle Forman – I think starting the year with a book about a dying teenager is a bad idea. If I Stay and Before I Die shares the same prominent theme that is death at a young age. If I’m still a teenager, I would be really nervous about this.

Before I Die by Jenny Downham – I want to read Downham’s new novel, You Against Me, but since it’s not yet available here, might as well start with her debut novel.

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly – This book gained a lot of praises the past few months and I haven’t read any historical fiction for quite a long while so I picked up this book. There’s time-travel involved in here and I’m a sucker for time travel books.

The Tomorrow Code by Brian Falkner – Time Travel Book #2. Does YA books published in New Zealand still counts as OzYA?

Everlost by Neal Shusterman - Neal Shusterman is a Hit or Miss author, and many claims that Everlost — along with Unwind and The Schwa Was Here — is one of his Hit books. Another book about dying. Uh-oh…

That’s about it. I think I should ban myself from bookstores for the mean time. What about you, what books did you got recently?

Image courtesy of ulaulaman.tumblr.com

Happy Valentines, everyone!