Top Ten Tuesday • Sequels I Can’t Wait To Get

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

 

It’s probably still Tuesday somewhere in the world. Maybe. Possibly.

Top Ten Sequels I Can’t Wait To Get

1. Arsenic for Tea (Wells and Wong, #2) by Robin Stevens: January 29th 2015

More cute girl detectives! Poisoning! Bunbreaks! Plus, Robin Stevens’s tweets are adorable and she’s already teasing about book #3 which will be set on a train!

2. The Voyage of the Basilisk (Memoir by Lady Trent, #3) by Marie Brennan: March 1st 2015

One day I will cave in and get the whole series in hardcover because of those stupidly pretty wraparound covers. This book is set on a ship! And there are (more) dragons!

3. Who Buries the Dead (Sebastian St. Cyr, #10) by C.S. Harris: March 3rd 2015

I still haven’t grown tired of Sebastian and Hero.

4. Of Noble Family (Glamourist Histories, #5) by Mary Robinette Kowal: April 28th 2015

Last book in the series, which… feels about right. I’m curious to see how it’ll end (I predict babies) and I’m looking forward to whatever Kowal will write next. Her NaNoWriMo project looks awfully intriguing.

5. The Stars of Summer (All Four Stars, #2) by Tara Dairman: May 5th 2015

Seriously cute cover, and a cute food critic at summer camp!



Those next 5 books are so far into the future that they don’t have an official cover yet… Sob sob.

6. Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) by Marissa Meyer: November 24th 2015

I NEED THIS BOOK TO BE OUT BUT I DON’T WANT THE SERIES TO EVER END.

7. Hoarfrost (Whyborne & Griffin #6) by Jordan L. Hawk: 2015 maybe?

She has been writing a couple of books every year so first or second quarter of 2015 is not impossible.

8. Captive Prince: Volume Three by C.S. Pacat: 2015 hopefully?

But it’s still being written so your guess is as good as mine.

9. The Bastards and the Knives (Gentleman Bastard, #0)by Scott Lynch: 2017 possibly? who knows?

I should’ve listed Gentleman Bastard #4 rather than #0, since that’s a prequel technically, but #0 will have the Sanzas! And Bug! So I’m a lot more excited about that one, and also I haven’t read book #3 yet, ooops.

10. The Winds of Winter (A Song of Ice and Fire, #6) by George R.R. Martin: NEVER

Are you reading any of those series? Which ones are you most looking forward to?

Top Ten Tuesday • Characters You Wish Would Get Their OWN Book

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

Top Ten Characters You Wish Would Get Their OWN Book

You’re getting five from each of us this week! Be excite! (Be even more excite that we actually managed to eventually un-distract ourselves from our distractions.)

<.< Look, the thing is, Gail Carriger writes amazing characters, across all her books, and I love them dearly. It’s only normal for me to be wanting more about them! >.>

1. Genevieve Lefoux. Viiiieeeeeeevvvvvvveeeeee! I really really love Vieve, sorry not sorry, and ugh I wish we got more about her. Especially after the things that happened in Heartless and Timeless. I mean. Really. Seriously. I just want more Vieve. Vieve as a child, Vieve as a teenager, Vieve as an adult. Vieve. Give me Vieve.

2. Lord Akeldama. We know so little about him and he’s so interesting and flamboyant and ughhh, just give me more, okay? I want to know more about him and his history and his agendas and everything.

3. Sidheag Maccon. Pardon me, I mean Lady Kingair. I like saying that. Mhmm, Lady Kingair, fabbest of the fab Scottish folk. I don’t even like wolves and werewolves but I would not mind reading about her life with them. At all. Sidheag is amazing in a bajillion different ways.

And then of course, there’s Harry Potter…

4. Padma Patil. Or any other Ravenclaw who is not Luna, tbh. I love Luna, but damn I just want some stuff about life at Hogwarts from a POV that isn’t Harry’s and frankly Luna’s is probably too cray (although maybe we’d find out that she listens to Stevie Nicks or something similarly beautiful). What’s life like at Hogwarts for the other students? What is living in Ravenclaw like? Just give me all the information!

5. Daphne Greengrass. Cause I want a Slytherin POV. They can’t possibly be all evil (well… they can, in JKR’s Gryffindor-favouring world but JKR is simply wrong on this) and I wonder what it’s like to be a Slytherin? And they can’t all be obsessed with Harry, the way Draco is, so you know? What do they do, what’s it like having Snape as a Head of House, what’s it like being hated by everyone, etc? Just gimme anything that is not a Gryffindor POV. (Though I would read a book about Fred and George.)

(Can you guess which blogger wrote which bits of this entry?)

6. John Granby. Also known as: my baby. Let’s be realistic, I have no idea when I’m going to read the next book, but you can bet than I will be pouting for 90% of the time wondering where Granby is. Will is an okay protagonist, but he’s just so nauseatingly proper all the time. I need Granby eyerolling at Will’s stupidity and fixing his problems for him to get through the books.

7. Emily Roland. Also my baby, and with good reason this time since she’s only like ten years old. I would read sequels about Emily fifteen years from now, riding dragons and kicking ass.

8. The Darkling. Yeahhh I haven’t finished this series either, but Alina is so boring. Good is boring. I wanna read about the Darkling being all shady and evil back in the past, before good showed up to ruin the day. I might be okay with a book about Nikolai too, but since he only just showed up in the book I’m reading, who knows. I’ll stick with the devil I know.

9 & 10. Aziraphale and Crowley. It would be kind of pointless to put them in separate bulletpoints. Word of god (heh heh) says that they’re living in a cottage somewhere now, but I wish I could read a book about all their past shenanigans. Or two books, one about each of them, but then there’s bits in which they interacted, so it makes sense to just have one book with the two of them. It would be a dream come true — every single historical alternate universe rolled into one. Where were Aziraphale and Crowley during the Elizabethan era? What did they do in Ancient Egypt? Did they like the dinosaurs? So many pressing questions.

Top Ten Tuesday • Books I Want To Reread

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

Top Ten Books I Want To Reread

	1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling Because I always want to reread Harry Potter. I used to read all of the old books when a new one came out, which means I read Philosopher’s Stone dozens of times but Deathly Hallows only once. I tried to reread them all a while back but I only got up to Prisoner of Azkaban before getting distracted. Rereading all of Harry Potter is tough, as Isa knows well.
	2. A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin Even less likely than Harry Potter. I might eventually reread this when The Winds of Winter comes out, if only because it’s been so long I’ve forgotten half of the plot threads.
	3. Discworld series by Terry Pratchett I love this one, but with 30+ books it will take me a while. Usually I just reread Monstrous Regiment, which is my favourite and also a standalone, so I’ve quite forgotten what happens in the other books. It would be interesting to go back to the very start, though.
	4. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman If my sister hasn’t stolen it. This one’s easy, I’m definitely going to reread Good Omens every couple of year because it’s one of those books I’ll never get tired of.
	5. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch Every time I try to reread this book I just go and reread The Lies of Locke Lamora instead. It’s like a curse. Red Seas isn’t bad, but I just love Lies so much! And I’m scared to read the third book because terrible things will most likely happen to the characters, so I’m stuck rereading the first book, in which terrible things still happen but at least I know about those in advance.
	6. Know Not Why by Hannah Johnson Another of the “must reread once a year” books. I’ll save it for a rainy day, because it’s just adorable and always warms me up from the inside of my cold frozen heart.
	7. Temeraire series by Naomi Novik Like with the Scott Lynch books, I started rereading this series but didn’t make much headway. I’ve got to reread the first books if I want to find out what happens to Granby in the newest book, though, so sooner or later I’ll get around to them.
	8. All of Emilio Salgari‘s Corsairs books and Sandokan books I’m sure they will be quite terrible but they’re my childhood. Unfortunately my paperbacks are literally sellotaped together and I’m not sure I’ll find an ebook version. I’m not sure I even want an ebook version, I like my cheap paperbacks with the footnotes explaining about how Salgari basically didn’t research anything and just made up stuff. But the paperbacks are falling apart, so it’s a vicious circle.
	9. Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat Except the author is still finishing the third book and if I reread the first two now it’ll be painful because I’ll be left with the cliffhanger. It’s not a really awful cliffhanger, but still…
	10. Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl I’ve read it only a few months ago but it’s such an adorable book, I think it’s be another book I’ll reread again and again. I liked the light-heartedness and the humour.

Do you reread books? Which series would you reread?

Top Ten Tuesday • New Series I Want To Start

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

Top Ten New Series I Want To Start

The prompt said new as in within the last year or two, but I am trying to keep my TBR small and I don’t have that many new series in my TBR. So I just did new series as in within the last decade or two. Those have been recced to me at one time or another but mostly I have no idea what they’re about…

The Shadow Campaigns • The Knots Duology • The Dagger and the Coin • The Assassini

Spiritwalker • The Poisoner Mysteries • The Iron Seas

Mercy Thompson • The Saxon Stories • The Steerswoman

Have you read any of those series? Which new series are you planning to start?

Top Ten Tuesday • Books For Readers Who Like Character Driven Novels

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

Top Ten Books For Readers Who Like Character Driven Novels

Just a quick list of books this week since I don’t have time for my usual word vomit. Those are all books where I would happily read about characters watching paint dry, because the characters are that interesting.

A Game of Thrones • The Lies of Locke Lamora • The Scorpio Races • Chalice

Keeping The Castle • Venetia • Know Not Why

Murder on the Orient Express • Cut to the Quick • The Casual Vacancy

Do you like character-driven books? What are your favourites?

Top Ten Tuesday • Books On My Fall 2014 TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

 

I’ve been quite bad at keeping up with my Summer TBR… I did read a lot of books, but not the ones I planned to, because there was always some shiny new release or ARC tempting me. So this Fall 2014 made up half of guilt trips (i.e. the books I should have read months ago!) and half of shiny new releases that I will read promptly because I’ve been waiting for months for them to be published.

Top Ten Books on my Fall 2014 TBR List

1. I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld #38) by Terry Pratchett
2. Sworn in Steel (Tales of the Kin #2) by Douglas Hulick
3. Abhorsen (Old Kingdom #3) by Garth Nix
4. The Pirate’s Wish (Ananna Duology #2) by Cassandra Rose Clarke
5. The Devil In Music (Julian Kestrel #4) by Kate Ross

   

6. Reunited by Hilary Weisman Graham
7. Scene of the Climb by Kate E. Dyer-Seeley
8. Black Dog (Bannon’s Gym #1) by Cat Grant
9. The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry
10. Bloodline (Whyborne & Griffin #5) by Jordan L. Hawk

   

Have you read any of those books? Which books are on your Fall 2014 TBR list?

Top Ten Tuesday • Authors I’ve Only Read One Book From But NEED to Read More

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

Top Ten Authors I’ve Only Read One Book From But NEED to Read More

What a devilish theme this week! There are so many authors I want to read more from, and sometimes I just physically can’t… So here are my ten authors, sorted quite handily by their books that I have read. Warning: there will be lots of whining about books I don’t have.

You need to write more books!

Hannah Johnson • Madeline Miller • Molly Beth Griffin • Yangsze Choo

Stunning debuts, all four of them. Hannah Johnson wrote Know Not Why, which is one of my favourite books ever; she was working on a second book but I believe grad school kept her busy. Madeline Miller wrote The Song of Achilles, a very nice (in a heartbreaking sort of way) retelling of Achilles and Patroclus from Patroclus’s point of view. Molly Beth Griffin wrote Silhouette of a Sparrow, aka “the lesbian flapper romance” to me and Isa. Yangsze Choo wrote The Ghost Bride, a dreamy paranormal story set in 19th century Malaya; she’s working on a new book, or at least she was two months ago. Crossing my fingers for more books from one (or all!) of those authors.

When’s your second book coming out?

Robin Stevens • Tara Dairman

The good news is, those authors are both writing series so there are more books forthcoming! The bad news is, only the first book is out yet. Robin Stevens writes about the sleuthing efforts of Wells and Wong. (You might have seen me or Isa rant about Murder Most Unladylike before — boarding schools! bunbreaks! shenanigans!) The second book will be out in January, and Stevens has just posted a teaser as well as revealing the setting of the third book, so I’m very excited to read more from her! Tara Dairman wrote All Four Stars, a book about a precocious restaurant critic that really deserves five stars rather than four. I have discovered (through the rather effective method of whining on Twitter while tagging the author) that a sequel is coming next summer, which is awesome news whenever I don’t think about how next summer is so many months away.

I’m not sure I’d like your other books…

Patrice Kindl • Anita Amirrezvani

Keeping The Castle is a charmingly funny gem of a romance — Isa read it for Pick-For-Me and she liked it so much I ended up reading it too. It’s not Patrice Kindl’s first book, but it is her first book in over a decade and I’m not sure I want to read her older books because I saw from some reviews that they’re quite different. If she put out a new book, though, I’d definitely read it. Anita Amirrezvani wrote The Blood of Flowers — one of the first books I wrote a review for, because I just had so many feelings after finishing it and I had to write them down. Looking back, it’s quite a disjointed and rambly review, but it was a start. Amirrezvani wrote a second book Equal of the Sun, but the summary just doesn’t grab me because I prefer to read historical novels about common people rather than about rulers.

Going to add all of your books to my TBR!

Robin McKinley • Maggie Stiefvater

No excuses here: those are well-established authors who need no introduction. Who published lots of books, and all I need to do is get some of those books and start reading. (Well… a suggestion about where to start reading, or rather where to continue reading, would be helpful.)

What are your one-book-need-more authors?

Top Ten Tuesday • Characters That Would Be Sitting At My Lunch Table

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

Once again I forgot about TTT, so I’m catching up with last week’s theme today. It’s actually rather fitting to have a back to school theme because for the first time in twenty years I won’t be going back to school this autumn. It’s a weird feeling, and I don’t miss school in the least, though it’s way better than job hunting! Anyway, if I was going back to school, and if this school was full of awesome fictional characters…

Top Ten Characters That Would Be Sitting At My Lunch Table

• Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series. I’ve always been hanging out with the rejects and the bookworms and neither of them would complain if I wanted to finish a book during lunch. Or I could borrow a copy of The Quibbler from Luna!
• Matilda Wormwood from Matilda. Obviously. The original bookworm.
• Tiffany Aching from the Discworld series. Her obsession with cheese is kind of off-putting, but she has a lot in common with younger!me. We could have deep and meaningful conversations in which we roll our eyes at adults and we mispronounce words because we’ve only ever seen them written down.
• Alice from Alice In Wonderland. We could have so many conversations about our weird dreams!
• Jo March from Little Women. I didn’t know any other writers in high school but I would have loved to, so we could read and comment each other’s stuff.
• Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong from Murder Most Unladylike. Okay, so I’d rather hang around with Hazel because Daisy is kind of a mean popular girl, but the two girls are inseparable so I’m treating them as a package deal. I think I’d get on famously with them because I also love mysteries and I would do anything to join their detective society.
• Truthful Newington from Newt’s Emerald. Newt can also join our detective society. She’s smart and resourceful and definitely someone I’d want to be friends with.
• Brienne of Tarth from the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I was trying to stick to characters that were vaguely of school age, but I can’t leave Brienne out. Rather than sitting at my table, I think I’d go sit at her table and I’d clown around trying to get her to laugh. Because she’s awesome and she shouldn’t feel crappy because of what some stupid boy is saying.

Which characters would be sitting at your table?

Or, if you’re up-to-date and doing today’s question, which underrated authors are in your top ten? I already talk a lot about my favourite underrated books so I won’t be doing this list, but I like finding new reads in other people’s lists.

Top Ten Tuesday • Books I Really Want To Read But Don’t Own Yet

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

Top Ten Books I Really Want To Read But Don’t Own Yet

It wasn’t easy, but I managed to limit myself to five books who haven’t been released yet. Probably the only advantage of being an adult is that I have a kindle and a credit card and I’m not afraid to use them. There’s plenty of books I don’t own, but if I really really want to read a book, I’m getting that book.

Le ombre della Senna (Sherlock, Lupin & Me #6) by Irene Adler
Downton Abbey: The Complete Scripts Season Two by Julian Fellowes
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The Irene Adler book doesn’t have an ebook edition, and I haven’t passed by the bookstore in a while. I want the Downton Abbey scripts, because the first two seasons of the show were excellent, but I’m not sure I feel like supporting a franchise that’s been steadily disappointing me for the past year. Ready Player One is the newest addition to my TBR.

The Sands of Time (Hermux Tantamoq Adventures #2) by Michael Hoeye
A Coal Miner’s Bride (Dear America series) by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

The problem here is that those books are kinda old and difficult to find. Or I’d have to get them shipped from the US, paying twice as much for shipping than for the book, which bugs me. I have #1 and #3 of the Hermux books, courtesy of some scatterbrained relative who gave them to my brother for Christmas years ago, and they were fun reads. I’d like to find out the rest of the story. The Dear America series is a recent find, I haven’t read much historical fiction set in the US and the books are surprisingly deep for middle grade novels. I’ve been reading the ebook reprint so far, picking the historical periods I’m most interested in, and I’m sad that this particular book hasn’t been reprinted since a few people say it’s their favourite.

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry
Arsenic For Tea (Wells and Wong #2) by Robin Stevens
Who Buries the Dead (Sebastian St. Cyr #10) by C.S. Harris

I’ve been looking forward to The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place since I saw it, and it’s coming out next month finally! I hope it’ll be as good as the first Wells and Wong book, whose sequel should be released in January. Murder mysteries and boarding schools are an awesome combo. And, speaking of murders, Who Buries the Dead will be out in March: it’s the longest mystery series I’m still reading, but the character development really makes it worthwhile and I can’t wait to read what’ll happen next.

Winter (Lunar Chronicles #4) by Marissa Meyer
Captive Prince: Volume Three (Captive Prince #3) by C.S. Pacat

And finally, the books that are so far from publication that the covers are just mockups (sob sob). They’re the final book in their respective series and I need them yesterday! Winter should have been released in early 2015 but that got moved to November 2015 because Marissa Meyer wants to release her other book first and I’m just sitting here and despairing because I need to know how it ends I need to know everyone will be okay. I have no idea when Captive Prince #3 will be out and that physically pains me.

Which books do you want to read but don’t own yet?

Top Ten Tuesday • Books I’m Not Sure I Want To Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

Top Ten Books I’m Not Sure I Want To Read

Books you may have bought but aren’t sure if you are into it anymore, books you wanted to read but heard mixed things about, hyped books you aren’t sure about — basically any book that has you going, “TO READ OR NOT TO READ?”

This topic would have been easier to do last month, because I recently went on a cleaning spree and removed a lot of books from my TBR. I’m also in a reading slump lately, in which I can’t seem to enjoy any book so I just resort to reading old favourites over and over again… so lots of whining in this post, be warned!

The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard #3) by Scott Lynch • Victory of Eagles (Temeraire #5) by Naomi Novik

Anyone who knows me will be laughing because I love both series to pieces. In fact, Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora is my favourite book ever, the one I keep recommending to everyone, and the second book was also quite good. I waited years for the third book. So why is it that, almost one year later, I still haven’t cracked open The Republic of Thieves? Beats me. It’s going to sound really stupid, but I’m just afraid that it will not measure up to my expectations, or that I won’t like the new characters, or (even worse) that I’ll love it to pieces but then I won’t have the next book until 2026 or so.

Similar thing for Victory of Eagles, though the big problem is that I read the series for a minor character and I don’t know if he’ll be in this book very much.

The Wise Man’s Fear (Kingkiller Chronicle #2) by Patrick Rothfuss • Kushiel’s Avatar (Phèdre’s Trilogy #3) by Jacqueline Carey

The problem with The Wise Man’s Fear is that it’s a monster of a book, almost a thousand pages long, and I read the first book in the series so long ago that I don’t remember it at all and I’d have to read it all over again to understand the story. I’m just not sure I’m committed to reading two massive fantasy books, especially since the third book isn’t out yet and by the time it’ll be published I’ll have forgotten the plot of the first two books already. Maybe I’m waiting for the third book to be published before going on an epic fantasy marathon?

I did start reading Kushiel’s Avatar but halfway through I lost interest. Do I want to give it another try? Do I want to re-read the whole series? Again, so many pages, so daunting.

In the Night Garden (Orphan’s Tales #1) by Catherynne M. Valente • Witch High by Denise Little

I got both Orphan’s Tales books a couple of Christmases ago but I never got around to reading more than a couple of pages. There’s just something about Valente’s writing style that makes it difficult for me to get into her works, even though I really love fairytale retellings.

Sorry for putting Witch High up there, Isa! I heard good things about the books and it was a rec, but I got burned by anthologies once too many. I’m sure I’ll like some of the stories but I’m also sure that I’ll dislike some of the stories and this gives me pause.

Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins • The Pirate’s Wish (Ananna Duology #2) by Cassandra Rose Clarke

I’m the worst for including those, only a couple of months ago I was excited about Rebel Belle being out and now I just don’t know. It might be the pink cover, I still have a knee-jerk reaction to everything pink because of the amount of pink crap I was given over the year, since, you know, pink is a girl colour so all girls love pink… Anyway, I digress. I heard mixed reviews for this book and I don’t know if it’ll be my cup of tea, even though I liked Hawkins’ Hex Hall books.

Clarke’s first book was barely okay for me, but part of that was because the ending was so abrupt. It was literally one book that had been split in two for publication. One hand The Pirate’s Wish should finally provide some resolution, on the other the first book was a letdown because it just served to introduce the characters and setting for the second book. So I’m not really itching to read this book.

The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd • Cold Magic by Kate Elliott

Both books come highly recommended by friends, both have awesome female characters, both have an historical setting… I’m just not getting “must read this now!” vibes from either book, though. I’m wondering if it’s because the high page count is scaring me off, since becoming a blogger I felt the pressure to produce blog posts semi-regularly and I think I might have started to subconsciously pick shorter books so I can finish them quickly and read more books. Maybe I’m just getting lazy and I prefer to stick to formulaic romances because they don’t require me to think? Why am I not reading these books? I don’t knowww!

To read or not to read? And which books are you on the fence about?