Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: The Girl With All The Gifts

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

There’s nothing like a Wednesday for thinking about the books we want to read! My Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday post is linking up with two fabulous book memes, Wishlist Wednesday (hosted by Pen to Paper) and Waiting on Wednesday (hosted by Breaking the Spine).

My pick for this week is:

The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey
(to be released June 10, 2014)

Synopsis via Goodreads:

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her ‘our little genius’. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh. Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children’s cells. She tells her favourite teacher all the things she’ll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn’t know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

Intriguing? Oh, yeah. Not to mention the fact that this author (writing as Mike Carey) writes The Unwritten graphic novels, which I’ve been wanting to get to as well.

Fortunately, I was just approved for an ARC of The Girl With All The Gifts, and I’m really looking forward to reading it.

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

12May2014

The Monday Agenda 5/12/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Not a lofty, ambitious to-be-read list consisting of 100+ book titles. Just a simple plan for the upcoming week — what I’m reading now, what I plan to read next, and what I’m hoping to squeeze in among the nooks and crannies.

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

IShallBeNear Last week, I continued with my spotlight focus on I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe. My friend Mary wrote a guest review (see it here), and then I chimed in with my list of five reasons that everyone should read this book — like, NOW. Stay tuned: An author Q&A will be coming up this week!

The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegal: Done! My review is here.

Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman: After reading 20%, I had to put this one on my DNF shelf. The concept seemed interesting… but nothing was happening, and I just couldn’t take any more. If anyone else has read it and wants to convince me to give it another go, be my guest!

13th child The kiddo and I are happily reading our way through Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede, and loving it!

Fresh Catch:

A variety of goodies arrived this week, some bought, some borrowed:

Covet

Mistborn Spike

Plus this, which isn’t a book, but which makes my geeky little heart happy:

Elsewhere on the blog:

I whined a bit about trilogies… and apparently, based on comments here and via Twitter, I guess I’m not alone!

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

Then and Always: A Novel We Were Liars The Girls at the Kingfisher Club

This week, I’m looking forward to:

Then and Always by Dani Atkins. I’ve read about half so far, and I’m really liking it!

Next up: We Were Liars by by E. Lockhart.

And if there’s time: The Girls At The Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. A flapper-era retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses fairy tale? Yes, please!

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 84 – 88. Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!

Oh, and this was announced:

Basically, I’ll take any excuse for posting an Outlander picture! Thank you, Starz, for announcing the premiere date. I know where I’ll be August 9th! (Image via Starz)

What a week!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

6May2014

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: Just One Night

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Try not to squeal too loudly over this one!:

Just One Night by Gayle Forman
(An e-novella, to be released May 29, 2014)

Synopsis via Goodreads:

After spending one life-changing day in Paris with laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter, sheltered American good girl Allyson “Lulu” Healey discovered her new lover had disappeared without a trace. Just One Day followed Allyson’s quest to reunite with Willem; Just One Year chronicled the pair’s year apart from Willem’s perspective. Now, back together at last, this delectable e-novella reveals the couple’s final chapter.

Anyone who read Just One Day* and Just One Year* will need no convincing — we will finally (gasp!) find out what happened after that kiss! I may have jumped up and down just a teensy bit when I heard about this e-novella…

*If you want to read my reviews of the two novels mentioned here…

… click here for Just One Day
… click here for Just One Year

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

5May2014

The Monday Agenda 5/5/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

Last week, I declared I Shall Be Near To You to be my spotlight book of the week — one that I wanted to read slowly and give myself time to savor.

So how did it go?

In short, I adored it.

I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe is a beautiful, powerful book about an unforgettable young woman.

I’ll be featuring this book a few times in the coming week, with a review, a guest post, and possibly more. Stay tuned!.

The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegal: I didn’t get a chance to start this YA novel until this past weekend. I’m about halfway through, and I’m thoroughly entertained at this point.

The kiddo and I started Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede this week, and so far, it rocks! Where has this author been all my life? Clearly, I’ve been missing out.

Fresh Catch:

Books, books, books galore! I treated myself to a few books this week, thanks to strategic use of Amazon credits and a gift card! My catch of the week includes two beautiful hardcover books that I’d previously read as ARCs, plus a couple of others I’d had a hankering for:

84, Charing Cross Road

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

Savage Girl In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright, #3) Then and Always: A Novel

I have two books that I’ve been wanting to get to for a couple of weeks now:

Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman

In The Age of Love and Chocolate by Gabrielle Zevin

And if I have time after these two, my next choice will be Then and Always by Dani Atkins.

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 79 – 83. Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

29Apr2014

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: Season of Storms

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

My pick this week is an upcoming reissue of a book by a favorite author:

Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley
(Release date: September 2, 2014)

Synopsis via Goodreads:

In the early 1900s, in the elegant, isolated villa Il Piacere, the playwright Galeazzo D’Ascanio lived for Celia Sands. She was his muse and his mistress, his most enduring obsession. And she was the inspiration for his most stunning and original play. But the night before she was to take the stage in the leading role, Celia disappeared. Now, decades later, in a theatre on the grounds of Il Piacere, Alessandro D’Ascanio is preparing to stage the first performance of his grandfather’s masterpiece. A promising young actress – who shares Celia Sands’ name, but not her blood – has agreed to star. She is instantly drawn to the mysteries surrounding the play – and to her compelling, compassionate employer. And even though she knows she should let the past go, in the dark – in her dreams – it comes back.

Season of Storms was originally published in 2001, but will be reissued this year with a shiny new cover, thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark. I think this is one of the few remaining Susanna Kearsley books that I haven’t read, and with its new cover, will look perfect on my shelf next to all of her other gorgeous books. And lest anyone think I’m shallow and I’m basing this on looks alone… yes, I really do want to read the book!

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

28Apr2014

The Monday Agenda 4/28/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

Burial Rites The Here and Now She Is Not Invisible

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent: Done! My review is here.

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares: Done! My review is here.

She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick: Done! My review is here.

And don’t miss my review/blog tour post for The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore! If you enjoy Shakespeare with f-bombs, loads of hilarity, pirates, Marco Polo, and venomous sea serpents, then this is the book for you!

D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths My son and I are still having fun with D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths. Thor is kinda hilarious, to be honest. Always off fighting trolls and jotuns, that guy.

Fresh Catch:

Upon the recommendations of several BBFs who usually have impeccable taste in books, I picked this one up at the library this week:

Hawkeye, Vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon (Hawkeye (Marvel NOW!) #1)

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

I’m shifting my approach to upcoming reading for this week. There’s one book I especially want to focus on as my top priority, so I hereby declare that this week I have…

… a spotlight book!

Drumroll, please! My spotlight book for the week of April 28th will be:

I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe. I first wrote about this book several months ago in a wishlist post, and I finally have a copy! I’ve heard so many wonderful things about this book (thanks to a lovely BBF, once again!), and I’m so excited to “clear the decks”, so to speak, and just concentrate on enjoying it.

I intend to take my time, so I’m not going to hold myself to a planned reading agenda of another 3 – 4 books that MUST BE READ. But… if I do finish I Shall Be Near To You early enough in the week to move on to other reading, then here’s what I’ll be choosing from:

Savage Girl The Break-Up Artist In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright, #3)

Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman

The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegel

In The Age of Love and Chocolate by Gabrielle Zevin

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 74 – 78. Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

23Apr2014

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

My pick this week confuses me. Read on to find out why!

The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit by Graham Joyce
(Release date: August 5, 2014)

Synopsis via Goodreads:

Critically acclaimed author Graham Joyce returns with a sexy, suspenseful,and slightly supernatural novel set 1976 England during the hottest summer in living memory, in a seaside resort where the past still haunts the present.

David, a college student, takes a summer job at a run-down family resort in a dying English resort town. This is against the wishes of his family…because it was at this resort where David’s biological father disappeared fifteen years earlier. But something undeniable has called David there.

A deeper otherworldliness lies beneath the surface of what we see. The characters have a suspicious edge to them…David is haunted by eerie visions of a mysterious man carrying a rope, walking hand-in-hand with a small child…and the resort is under siege by a plague of ladybugs. Something different is happening in this town.

When David gets embroiled in a fiercely torrid love triangle, the stakes turn more and more menacing. And through it all, David feels as though he is getting closer to the secrets of his own past.

This is a darkly magic and sexy book that has a strong suspense line running through it. It’s destined to continue to pull in a wider circle of readers for the exceptionally talented Graham Joyce.

Graham Joyce catapulted right onto my favorite authors list as soon as I read his incredibly haunting and atmospheric novel The Silent Land, which was published in 2010. More recently, I read Some Kind of Fairy Tale, which had some really unique and interesting elements, although it didn’t blow me away the way The Silent Land did.

The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit sounds like something that will definitely appeal to me, with its mix of nostalgia, suspense, and oddness.

So why am I confused? When I went back to Goodreads today to grab the image for the book, I found another book with a different title listed on the same page. As far as I can tell, the book was published in the UK in 2013 as The Year of the Ladybird — and is simply being given a new title for its US release this summer… but it took me a little bit to figure out that these are in fact the same book. Whatever they call it, though, I’m in!

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

21Apr2014

The Monday Agenda 4/21/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

Another crazy week, with almost no reading time… frustrating! As a result, I barely made a dent in my intended reading pile for the week.

Far From You Burial Rites D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths

Far From You by Tess Sharpe: Done! My review is here.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent: I started this one much later than I’d wanted to, and so far have read about two-thirds. Beautifully written, but with a bleakness that makes it hard to sit through without getting up to look at the sunshine or smell the roses.

In the world of reading with my kiddo, we’re happily working our way through D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths, thanks to which we’re learning that Thor doesn’t really look like Chris Hemsworth and Loki isn’t really Thor’s brother. Crazy shenanigans! Lots of fun, too.

Fresh Catch:

So many goodies! This week was the Spring Book Sale sponsored by our local friends of the public library organization, and it was a blast. Thousands upon thousands of books for sale, all paperbacks only $2! Here’s what I picked up for myself:

Plus a few for my kiddo:

On top of which, I just happened to be ambling by the neighborhood used book store earlier this week — and stumbled across a copy of The Humans by Matt Haig, which I’d borrowed from the library last year and loved! What a lucky week for me!

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

The Here and Now She Is Not Invisible Savage Girl

First, I need to finish reading Burial Rites before my book group discusses it on Wednesday. After that, I’m really not sure what I’ll be in the mood for, but here’s what I’m thinking I’ll read… subject to my whims and fancies, of course:

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

She Is Not Invisible by Marcu Sedgwick

Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman

Random pop culture goodness:

I’m now caught up on the first two weeks of the new season of Mad Men. I’m not sure that I care that much any more, but for now, I’m still watching. I’m loving the new seasons of Game of Thrones and Orphan Black! Although I think I need a refresher on all the clones and what they were up to at the end of last season…

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 69 – 73 Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

15Apr2014

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: Shifting Shadows

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

My most wished-for book this week is:

Shifting Shadows: Stories From The World of Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs
(Release date: September 2, 2014)

This one is strictly for the fans! If you love the Mercy Thompson series, then you’ll be as excited as I was this week to learn that a collection of Mercy stories will be released this fall — to include a mix of new and previously published stories.

Synopsis via Goodreads:

A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, “one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today” (Fiction Vixen Book Reviews), and the characters she calls friends…

Includes the new stories…
“Silver”
“Roses in Winter”
“Redemption”
“Hollow”

…and reader favorites
“Fairy Gifts”
“Gray”
“Alpha and Omega”
“Seeing Eye”
“The Star of David”
“In Red, with Pearls”

I’ve read some — but not all — of the already published stories, and can’t wait to catch up on the ones I’ve missed and read some new ones as well. The Mercy series is one of my favorites, and since there won’t be another new novel until 2015, I’m delighted to get a story collection to hold me over!

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

14Apr2014

The Monday Agenda 4/14/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

The Ghost Train to New Orleans (The Shambling Guides, #2) Love Letters to the Dead The Serpent of Venice

The Ghost Train to New Orleans by Mur Lafferty: Done! My review is here.

Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira: Done! My review is here.

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore: Done! Be sure to check out my blog tour post on April 22nd.

Fresh Catch:

I behaved myself this week — didn’t buy, borrow, or request any new books! All bets are off for the coming week though — my library’s big spring sale starts on Tuesday, and that’s always dangerous territory for me!

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

Far From You The Here and Now Burial Rites

Coming up this week:

Far From You by Tess Sharpe

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

And for an upcoming book group discussion: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Random pop culture goodness:

Orphan Black returns this week!

Image credit: http://adn-z.deviantart.com/art/Orphan-Black-Simpsonized-393146267

And is anyone watching the AMC’s new series, Turn, about a Revolutionary War spy ring?

I saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier last weekend, and was super impressed with the way the movie’s events carried over into Agents of SHIELD.

And yeah, Mad Men is back too, and I’m not sure that I care…

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 64 – 68. Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.