HELLO EVERYBODY!
I hope you guys are all having a great day so far! I'm officially on summer holidays now as I finished all my year 12 work (YAY!) which I'm SO HAPPY about and I feel like I can properly relax now. I have so many incredible books to read, I have a book to write, Batman pictures to draw, a guitar to play, A BLOG TO RUN – ah, I'm so happy I finally get to do all my hobbies again! The weather has also been absolutely incredible in England lately, so I've been spending a lot of time outside which is always great!
I tried ballet this week and I loved it so much! The teacher is really sweet and the other ladies I danced with all seem so nice, too. I'm going to stick with the adult beginners class for now as I try to become more familiar with the movements etc but I hope I can go into one of the proper grades soon and do exams. I'll also hopefully be doing some private lessons in the summer which I'm SO EXCITED for! I'm also going to be volunteering 3-4 days a week during the summer which I can't wait for! I've been wanting to volunteer for awhile and I've been praying to God that I'd get a volunteering opportunity with children, animals or books and then I saw my local library was looking for volunteers to help with the Summer Reading Challenge over the summer. The Summer Reading Challenge used to be the highlight of my childhood when I lived in England when I was younger and I'm so unbelievably excited to be helping children sign up, help them choose books and discuss books with them. It's literally the perfect volunteering job for me! Thank you, Jesus!
I haven't got much else to tell you, so let's see the haul! It's quite big...but it is my book haul for over two months so that makes it at least a little bit okay, right?
I LITERALLY CAN'T WITH HOW PRETTY THESE BOOKS ARE. CAN YOU EVEN? BECAUSE I MOST DEFINITELY CANNOT.
I'm so proud of myself that I've practiced self-control when requesting books! I requested these months ago but they've finally been published so Abrams & Chronicle kindly sent them to me. I absolutely ADORED these books when I was younger! They're about two sisters who are ancestors of the Grimm brothers and they're basically fairy-tale detectives, they're friends (or enemies) with the characters from Grimm's fairytales and I just remember absolutely loving the world the author had created. I never read the whole series but now that all these beautiful new editions are out I'll have to start collecting them and reading them! I'll be reading these shortly – look out for my review!
My library has gotten SO MANY new books in and I've also been ordering in books from other libraries that I've been dying to read...and this is the result. I'm so incredibly excited to read them all! I can't wait to binge read VE Schwab's books, I'm SO FREAKING HAPPY that I'll finally get to read And I Darken and Carve the Mark and I'm also super proud of myself for branching out and reading some theology/nonfiction books - GO ME!
And I said I wasn't going to buy any more books. Why you gotta lie like that, man? DISHONOUR ON ME. AND MY COW. (If you don't get the reference the dishonour now falls on you smh).
*whistles* That's a lot of books and now we know why I literally have 65p to my name. But no regrets. These books were all a fairly good price, they are books I've really, really been wanting and I'M SO EXCITED TO READ THEM ALL. Also, can I just say I am SO FREAKING HAPPY that I finally have all the Lord of the Rings booksb. ALSO, time for a little story time regarding my purchasing of them. Okay so, I bought the first book in the trilogy AGES AGO and it was an edition that I hadn't seen before and it's not the most common edition of LoTR and when I was looking to purchase the other books, I couldn't find The Hobbit in that edition which made me SAD because I like my books to match. Anyway, fast forward to when we went to Cheltenham for the day and went to one of the charity stores there, I wasn't looking for anything in particular, I was just browsing AND THEN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING GRACED MY EYES. All the books (EXCEPT THE ONE I HAVE) were there, in the edition I had been wanting to collect in. And they were only £1.70 each. I swear I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. THEN, on this same very successful book buying spree, I found Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor for only £1.70 too! I'd actually reserved it at the library because I've been dying to read it but I just haven't gotten around to purchasing it so ANYWAY, I got that there too which was nearly even more exciting than finding The Lord of the Rings books there.
THEN, when I went to the YA section they had a US hardback of a YA contemporary (I'm a sucker for YA contemporaries) for only £1.20 - AND IT LOOKED BRAND NEW. AND IT'S SO PRETTY. AND THEEEENNNNNNN I also saw a copy of How Not to Disappear by Clare Furniss which I've been dying to read and I had reserved from the library just days before. AHHH. I HAD A LOT OF LUCK THAT DAY. AND THE NEXT DAY. Because the next day I went to a local charity store and found Daughter of Smoke and Bone for 50p. SCORE. I have got it in hardback but it looks like I'm collecting the paperback editions now so I got the first one again!
My dad very kindly bought me the new Skulduggery Pleasant book and A Court of Wings and Ruin after my exams had ended (thanks, Dad!) which I still need to get to. I'm kind of scared of reading the new SP book because Derek Landy likes to torture my babies and I'M NOT OKAY WITH THAT. Ahem. I also bought me Once and For All, Lock & Key and Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen because I LOVE SARAH DESSEN and YA contemporaries are my favourite books to read in the summer! I also purchased The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan because Rick Riordan is BAE. I seriously love his books SO MUCH. I also bought a few science books and a few other books such a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, Wild Lily by K.M. Peyton (WHICH LOOKS SO CUTE! It's about a teenage girl in the 1920s falling in love for the first time and it looks muchly adorable), The Kill Order (the only book in the Maze Runner series that I didn't have), Pride and Prejudice (trying to read more classics. I haven't had the best of luck with Austen but hopefully I will love this one?!), The Memory Keepers by Natasba Ngan which sounds SO GOOD, I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak (IT WAS 10p FROM MY LIBRARY SALE. 10P!), Agent 21 by Chris Ryan (also 10p and it looks SO GOOD) as well as The Catcher in the Rye because CLASSICS.
I hope you don't mind if I don't link them all because it's a lot of books. And I'm lazy.
So, if you need me, I'll be in my room (aka book cave) and reading until my eyeballs fall out or the sun dies, whichever comes first.
LET'S TALK! Did you buy a lot of books in June? Have you read any of these? What book are you most excited to read/what book did you love the most out of the books you recently bought? TELL ALL.