Friday Finds #8

Yesterday, in preparation for Friday Finds, I started "organizing" my haphazard library of books. If you've followed me on Twitter @RaineReviews, you've seen the overflowing disaster that our one solitary bookshelf is.

I put organizing in quotation marks because I had a pretty....unique....system going: I made a stack for my favorite books, stacks for collections by the same author, a stack for books I was no longer interested in (oh my!), a stack for classics, and most importantly, a stack for my TBR list.

My hubby walked in on me surrounded by seemingly random stacks of books and just stared, a little bemused and a little amused. His response reassured me that I married the exact right person: "I'm going to build you some bookshelves." Hurray!!

And hurray also for separating my TBR books from the rest of my little library. For the first time ever, I have an actual physical stack of books to get through. 31 books. A lot of these are classics I collected while I was an English major, and even though I'm not in school anymore, I still think the classics are important, especially to my education as a writer. I'm loosely considering setting myself the goal of finishing this physical stack by the end of the year, but I haven't yet decided if that's a realistic goal. This would be aside from books I buy to read immediately, and any ARCs I'm sent, like, for example, this new addition to my TBR list (which is already in my digital library, and about to get opened!):

And I'm HOPING to get this bad boy from First To Read, if I'm lucky:

Yes, I'm keeping it short and sweet. I want my new shelves to at least LOOK nice for a little while before I overflow them with books. 

Do you, too, have a TBR pile somewhere in the house? Share a picture with @RaineReviews! I'll be posting pictures of my stacks all week, because what's better than a bunch of well-organized books?

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases the books you've added to your TBR list this week. Everyone is welcome to join in. 

Throwback Thursday #3: Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce

Okay, you've guessed it by now: Throwback Thursday is just an excuse for me to mini-review my favorite books. And by review I mean rave about. For example, today's throwback is one of my all-time favorite books.

Trickster's Choice 
By Tamora Pierce
Publication date: September 17, 2004
Scholastic Press
453 pages

Mini review:
The Daughter of the Lionness series is my favorite series by Tamora Pierce (and I've read them all). The main character Aly is, simply put, a total badass. She's incredibly intelligent, sneaky, kicks ass in a fight, and did I mention her razor-sharp wits? In this book, Aly literally builds herself from the ground up, going from slave to - well, I won't give it away, but let's just say that I was obsessed with being like Aly for years. Hell, thinking about TC is making me want to reread TC for the billionth time, just to read about Aly of Pirate's Sweep, and okay, maybe a little bit to read about Nawat, who is possibly the hottest male interest ever written in YA. Not only is he actually supposed to be pretty hot, but he is also totally guileless, which provides a nice contrast to the very guile-ful heroine. And of course, one of the best things about this book is that it's set in the fantasy realm of Tortall, which is the setting for several other series by Tamora Pierce (all fantastic and highly recommended by this blogger.) My only warning is that if you are very sensitive about issues of race, this may not be the fantasy for you, as it does talk about it a lot.

Definitely recommend TC to lovers of other Tamora Pierce books, Garth Nix's The Old Kingdom (Abhorsen) series, or C.S. Lewis's classic The Chronicles of Narnia.

Do you have a favorite Tamora Pierce series?

As always, feel free to join in on Throwback Thursday in the comments below or on your own blogs. And don't forget to leave a link here so I can go check it out!

Throwback Thursday is a chance to showcase great books read a long time ago, but remembered as clearly as if they were still on the nightstand with a bookmark between the pages. Write a short and sweet review and post it on your blog or on the comments to join in. Because sometimes the oldies deserve the spotlight too.

Beautiful Words #5

Oh, Neil Gaiman, you are so wise. Even if this quote is apparently paraphrased from a longer text by G.K. Chesterton, who is apparently responsible for converting C.S. Lewis to Christianity. 

Have you ever Googled something and ended up jumping from one unexpected fact to another and reading a bunch of random stuff? I learned about four nearly-unrelated people just because I happened upon this quote.  

Teaser Tuesday #4: The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle

This book hasn't been released in the US yet, so instead of the usual two-sentence teaser, here is a different kind of teaser: an interview with the author, Moira Fowley-Doyle, via Penguin Platform.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just grab your current read, open to a random page, and share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Friday Finds #7

It's that time of the week again...time to share the books we've added to our TBR list! Just in time for the weekend, too. Time time time. Where does it all go? Will there ever be enough time to actually finish my TBR list? Only time will tell...but for now, I'll tell you what:

I'm pretty happy with all four of these finds. If (okay, when) I decide to trim my TBR list, these guys will definitely make the final cut. Are there any books you're confident you want to read? Does your TBR list have levels? Ooooh, levels...guess I know how I'm spending the next six hours of my life. *organizational frenzy begins*


Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases the books we've added to your TBR list this week. Everyone is welcome to join in. You can comment on my post or on your own blog.

Friday Finds #6

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB @ A Daily Rhythm that showcases books you found and added to your TBR list this week.

This week I did a dangerous thing: I visited the library. We just moved to a new town, and the library is only five minutes down the road. (!!!!!!!!) This worried my husband a little bit because our new home is already overrun with books, which I of course unpacked right away despite our only having brought one bookshelf, and now we are likely to always have a few (dozen) library books floating around as well. Lucky for him, the library only let me check out two books this time because I'm a brand new member. Which brings me to my Friday Finds:

I'd heard about Grave Mercy a few years back when Figment.com held a giveaway for it, and I've been wanting to read it ever since. I was especially excited to check out Grave Mercy and Dark Triumph together, because I always like having the whole series on the off-chance that I love the first book so much that I go on a reading binge and just need to read them back-to-back. Plus, I was feeling a little stumped because I had just looked up A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas on the library catalog and discovered that there were 25 people on the waiting list. 25! If they each held on to the book for their 2 weeks, I wouldn't get to see ACTR for another year. Sooo yeah. I'm probably going to end up buying it. But in the meantime, let's read about assassin nuns. Woo. 

Want to share your Friday Finds? Comment below or join in on the Friday Finds fun on your own blog!

Throwback Thursday #2: The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

Welcome to a second round of Throwback Thursday! I'm so excited about inviting other bloggers to join me, I'm thinking about making a special linky button logo thingy. You know the kind.

In case you weren't around for last week's post, my Throwback Thursday is a chance to showcase great books I read a long time ago, but remember as clearly as if they were still on my nightstand with a bookmark between the pages, with a short and sweet review. Because sometimes the oldies deserve the spotlight too.

Today's throwback is:

The Amulet of Samarkand
By Jonathan Stroud
Publication date: January 1, 2003
Disney-Hyperion
463 pages

The review:

I absolutely love this book. There's nothing more charming than having two peculiar antiheroes as protagonists. Nathaniel is a spoiled, unlikable main character. Bartimaeus is a witty, yet incredibly likable demon. Set in the best parallel reality since Harry Potter, this fantasy book's quirky characters are sure to win you over. This book also has a pretty unique feature, at least in the world of novels: footnotes. If you're thinking about stuffy old academic papers written by squinty bearded men, and forced on millions of students every year - don't! Witty and incredibly funny, these footnotes are basically my favorite part of The Bartimaeus Trilogy. Definitely recommend this book to lovers of Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, or the show Supernatural.


That's it. Short, sweet, to the point. If you like the idea of Throwback Thursday, feel free to join in by posting on the comments below or on your own blog. Just make sure you leave a link in the comments so I can check out what past read you've been thinking about lately :)