Top Ten Tuesday: The next 10 ARCs I plan to read

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a FREEBIE. I love freebie weeks — it’s such fun to see all the unique top 10 lists everyone comes up with.

My top 10 topic? It’s all about the ARCs.

I’m working hard on getting my reading life organized, keeping track of my pending review copies, and making time for all the other books I want to read too. I’d taken a rather big pause in terms of requesting ARCs last year, but somehow I’ve ended up with quite a few for the first half of 2017. So, without further ado, here are 10 upcoming books, to be published between February and July, that I plan to read on or about their respective release dates. The ARCs are just sitting there on my Kindle, calling my name…

Going by release date:

1) Always by Sarah Jio (2/7/2017)

2) The Gilded Cage by Vic James (2/14/2017)

3) The Mother’s Promise by Sally Hepworth (2/21/2017)

4) Next Year For Sure by Zoey Leigh Peterson (3/7/2017)

5) Mister Memory by Marcus Sedgwick (3/7/2017)

6) The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See (3/21/2017)

7) Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel (4/4/2017)

8) The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion (5/2/2017)

9) Coming Up For Air by Miranda Kenneally (7/1/2017)

10) South Pole Station by Ashley Shelby (7/4/2017)

Are you planning to read (or have you already read) any of the ARCs on my list?

What’s your freebie topic this week? Please share your link!

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Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I host 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!

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18Jan2017

Thursday Quotables: Waistcoats & Weaponry

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Waistcoats & Weaponry by Gail Carriger
(published 2014)

I’ve finally returned to Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series, and I’m finding it absolutely delicious. After all, what’s not to love about a floating finishing school that specializes in the arts of spying, seduction, and assassination? All this, and proper deployment of handkerchiefs and eyelashes too.

It was a drizzly January evening, 1853, the sun recently set, and Professor Braithwope was currently twirling back and forth along the thin plank that stretched from the forward-most squeak deck’s railing to the pilot’s bubble. He was leagues up in the air.

Sophronia had watched the professor run that particular plank with deadly grace the very first day she came aboard Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. She’d never anticipated watching him dance along it. Admittedly, he danced with no less grace than he ran, performing some sedate quadrille with an imaginary partner. However, he was doing so while balancing a flowerpot on his head, one that contained Sister Mattie’s prize foxglove. Before his troubles, Professor Braithwope would never leave his room without a top hat occupying that sacred spot on his glossy brown coiffure. But for months his behavior had become increasingly erratic; witness the fact that he also wore an old-fashioned black satin cape with a high collar and scarlet lining. His fangs were extended, causing him to lisp slightly, and he punctuated his quadrille with a maniacal laugh that, if inscribed for posterity, might have been written as “Mua ha ha.”

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Add your Thursday Quotables post link in the comments section below… and I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week too.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

28Dec2016

Thursday Quotables: RIP, Carrie Fisher

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
(published 2008)

I happened to read Wishful Drinking last week, finishing just a couple of days before the news of Carrie Fisher’s medical crisis. Having just read her new book, The Princess Diarist, I definitely had her on my mind, and I’m one of the millions of fans worldwide just heartbroken by her death. Here’s a lovely bit from Wishful Drinking, which includes her thoughts about her obituary, which I’ve seen repeated multiple places on social media since yesterday.

Anyway, George comes up to me the first day of filming and he takes one look at the dress and says, ‘You can’t wear a bra under that dress.’

So, I say, ‘Okay, I’ll bite. Why?’

And he says, ‘Because… there’s no underwear in space.’

I promise you this is true, and he says it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and he didn’t see any bras or panties or briefs anywhere.

Now, George came to my show when it was in Berkeley. He came backstage and explained why you can’t wear your brassiere in other galaxies, and I have a sense you will be going to outer space very soon, so here’s why you cannot wear your brassiere, per George. So, what happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So far so good, right? But then your body expands??? But your bra doesn’t- so you get strangled by your own bra. Now I think that this would make a fantastic obit- so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.

With gratitude for Carrie Fisher’s ability to make us laugh, think, and feel. What an amazing woman, gone too soon.

2016, are you done yet? Go away.

Updated to add: Just as I was about to post this, I saw the sad news about Debbie Reynolds. No words.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Add your Thursday Quotables post link in the comments section below… and I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week too.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Save

21Dec2016

Thursday Quotables: William Shakespeare’s Star Wars

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher
(published 2013)

For good, goofy fun, I don’t think I could do any better this week than William Shakespeare’s Star Wars. I’ve been picking it up and reading bits and pieces in between other books – so far, I’ve read acts I and II, and it’s pretty amazing. A love for Shakespeare and a love for Star Wars are both essential, needless to say. Random lines, for your enjoyment:

C-3PO:

I prithee, lockest thou the door anon!

Han:

-Now are we follow’d hard upon
By an Imperi’l cruiser. Verily,
These passengers of great import must be
For they by the th’Empire hotly are pursu’d.
Chewbacca, prithee, swift make our defense
And angle the deflector shield whilst I
Make plan the calculations for light speed.

Vader:

– Distract’d is my mind,
But through its cloudy haze the reason comes:
Unless I am in error, someone here
Has come. I have not felt this presence since
The days that are but dark in memory.
This presence I have known since I was young,
This presence that once call’d me closest friend,
This presence that hath all my hopes betray’d
This presence that hath turn’d my day to night.
This awful presence present here must be,
So shall I to this presence violence
Present.

Leia:

O help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, help.
Thou art mine only hope.

And the classic uncle/nephew dialogue:

Owen:

Luke!
Take thou these droids unto our vast garage.
My wish it is they clean’d be ere we dine.

Luke:

But unto Tosche Station would I go,
And there obtain some pow’r converters. Fie!

I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did! The Shakespeare/Star Wars books would make great stocking stuffers for any of the geeky, hard-to-please folks on your gift list this year.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Add your Thursday Quotables post link in the comments section below… and I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week too.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

14Dec2016

Thursday Quotables: Howl’s Moving Castle

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
(first published 1986)

How is it possible that I’ve never read this middle grade magical tale before now? Howl’s Moving Castle has some very clever, quippy use of words that makes it extra enjoyable, even for an adult reader. Here’s a bit of dialogue that’s given me my favorite new insult:

For a moment it seemed as if he he [Howl] was going to lose his temper too. His strange, pale eyes all but glared at Sophie. But he controlled himself and said, “Now trot along indoors, you overactive old thing, and find something else to play with before I get angry. I hate getting angry.”

Sophie folded her skinny arms. She did not like being glared at by eyes like glass marbles. “Of course you hate getting angry!” she retorted. “You don’t like anything unpleasant, do you? You’re a slitherer-outer, that’s what you are! You slither away from anything you don’t like!”

Ha! Take that, you slitherer-outer!

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Add your Thursday Quotables post link in the comments section below… and I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week too.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

7Dec2016

Thursday Quotables: Poison or Protect

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger
(published 2016)

A steamy, definitely-for-adults novella from Gail Carriger’s supernatural/steampunk world — great fun!

She was like opiates — expensive, intoxicating, and deadly in large doses.

And another little sample:

She had acquired female friends before, but in the manner by which she acquired pierced ears (necessary for her image and to prove to the world that she could).

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

30Nov2016

Thursday Quotables: The Sun Is Also A Star

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon
(published 2016)

There was so much lovely writing in this new YA novel. Here’s a little snippet:

“You can’t really be falling for me,” she says, quieter now. Her voice is somewhere between distress and disbelief.

Again I don’t have anything to say. Even I’m surprised by how much I’ve been feeling for her all day. The thing about falling is you don’t have any control on your way down.

Check out my review of this new release!

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

23Nov2016

Thursday Quotables: Thanksgiving

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Reblogging my Thanksgiving Thursday Quotables from last year, since I really don’t think I can do better than celebrating with Buffy!

In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I’d depart book-world for this week’s Thursday Quotables post and turn instead to one of my very favorite Thanksgiving moments, the “Pangs” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Willow: Buffy, earlier you agreed with me about Thanksgiving. It’s a sham. It’s all about death

Buffy: It *is* a sham. But it’s a sham with yams. It’s a yam sham.

Willow: You’re not gonna jokey-rhyme your way out of this one.

Giles – “…It’s very common for Indian spirits to change to animal form.”

Buffy – “Yeah, well it’s plenty uncommon for me to freeze up during a fight. I mean, I had the guy, I was ready for the takedown and I stopped. And ‘Native American’.”

Giles – “Sorry?”

Buffy – “We don’t say ‘Indian’.”

Giles – “Oh, right. Yes, yes. Um, always behind on the terms. Still trying not to refer to you lot as ‘Bloody Colonials’.”

Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving, filled with friends, family, laughter… and pie.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

16Nov2016

Thursday Quotables: Good Morning, Midnight

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
(published 2016)

I just finished this unusual book, which tells the story of a lone astromoner at the North Pole and the crew of a spaceship returning from exploring Jupiter, all of whom appear to be the last remaining human beings after an unknown event leaves them unable to communicate with anyone else. I liked this passage about the older man’s view of the world around him:

There was a time when the changes in the sky meant more to him than the ground beneath his feet, but not right then. He had been looking up for long enough; it felt good to think of the dirt instead, to imagine the life that would soon return to the land.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

8Nov2016

Happy Election Day!

Posted in Family & Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Due to my inability to think about much today except the election, my regular weekly features — Shelf Control and Thursday Quotables — will not be happening this week. If you’re participating in either meme this week, please leave your post link in the comments!

Meanwhile…

It’s a day of pride, excitement, anticipation, and anxiety. I don’t remember ever feeling this way on election day before. It’s scary, and exhilarating, and it’s history in the making.

Of course, here in California, there are other issues on the ballot besides our next President, such as school bonds, plastic bags, soda taxes, and…

Still, we all know what’s at stake. I don’t use my blog to get political, but today’s a big day, and I can’t wait to cast my vote for our next President.