Here is my confession: I went a little bit book crazy in
February. Seriously, don’t be expecting my book haul every month to look like
this because that would be a level of purchasing-ness my poor old bank balance
couldn’t sustain. & the books would overtake my house. & then my
boyfriend would leave. & it would be terrible. & I am spiralling, CALM
DOWN JOSEPHINE. My point is that I am constantly trying to not buy as many
books. I just….failed in February. The thing is, is that I put myself on a
book-buying ban in January. You know how it is, the post Christmas slump where
purses and banks are empty and every penny has to count. I did remarkably well,
actually. Not a single book did I pay for in January. And then February
happened and Jen sent me tweets like this one:
& suddenly I was falling into a pit of book buying
madness. & ended up with a haul that looks like this:
I love it all actually. I’m reading We Are
Pirates right now, and I talked about it in my February releases post. It’s just as crackers as I thought it was going to be. I ‘m really liking
it, although it’s taking an uncommonly long time to get through. That’s perhaps
more to do with my state of mind than the book though. I’ll be talking
about it as soon as I’ve finished as it’s my book of choice for February’s book
challenge, so you know, keep an eye out for that.
I’ve wanted to read more of Matthew Quick’s work ever since
I read The Silver Linings Playbook which I
loved, so there’s Leonard Peacock, on the pile hoping
to impress me just as much.
I had to buy The Girl Who
Circumnavigated Fairyland because I’ve been DESPERATE to read it
since Jen’s first ‘THIS IS OUR NEW BOOK JO’ text weeks ago. I feel like it’s
going to be a little bit like Alice and I am so excited.
All the Bright Places has been
everywhere lately, and I’ve heard all the good things about it so I’m curious to see what that’s like. It’s described as an exhilarating and
heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who wants
to die and it sounds like it’s right up my street.
Attachments which I’ve wanted
for ages because Eleanor & Park owns a piece
of my heart and I want all of Rainbow’s words, please. It’s set in 1999 when
the internet was still a new thing (I remember that so well) and it’s about Beth
and Jennifer who spend their days emailing and this one guy – a lonely IT chap –
who spends his nights reading those emails. It’s Rainbow’s first book for
grown-ups and I AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT.
Again, I Was Here has
been all over the place. The world is a little Gayle Forman crazy right now, I don't know if you've noticed. I
read this last Wednesday night. I liked it. It’s a quick easy read. It’s about a
girl trying make sense of the suicide of her best friend and whilst it’s not
the best YA I ever read, it’s definitely worth a look at. (Jen: lemme know if
you want it, I’ll post.)
And then Station Eleven
which I came very close to breaking the ban for in January and which I cannot
wait to read. I’ve heard only great things. A travelling theatre company
performing Shakespeare in a dystopian world. It pretty much sounds like
everything I like in a book. There's a lot of Emily St John Mandel hype about at the moment, and I believe her back catalogue is due for UK release later this month, so hurrah for that, and fingers crossed for Station Eleven; I so want it to be good!
Disclaimer and No Place to Die are both review copies which the publishers
have very kindly sent to me because they are kind and wonderful people. Disclaimer is due for publication in April and is a thriller
based around the concept of ‘what if you realised the book you were reading was
all about you’ DUN DUN DUN and it sounds creepy and thrilling and excellent; No Place to Die is
a detective story - a sinister crime scene and a hunt for a killer - and will be released this month. Keep your eyes peeled for more
info and reviews of both of those VERY SOON. They both look like they're going to be rather gripping, the kind of book you don't sleep til you've finished – I feel
like 2015 might be the year of the thriller. .
I got a couple of ebooks for review too, The A to Z of You and Me by James Hannah which I think is
going to be several kinds of excellent and hurty and will be released this month,
and AND (OH MY GOD SO EXCITED) the new Rosamund Lupton novel, The Quality
of Silence which is out in the summer and which I am incredibly
excited for because I LOVED Sister so damn
much (I liked Afterwards a little bit less, but
still, super excited for this.)
As for ebooks generally, because let’s be real, I didn’t only spend my
money on print books, I now have The Book of Strange New
Things (which, I didn’t get in hardback even though it's so pretty it hurts me because of the massive. I
was going to wait for the paperback but I’m kind of impatient) I also downloaded Etta and Otto and Russell and James and The Darkest Part of the Forest
both of which I talked about in my February releases post and which are SO different
but SO appealing.
WHAT A HAUL, am I right? Just writing this post has made me
want to take a week off work and read all the things.
