November Book Haul

This month I got sixteen books, including seven eBooks. I won another book from Goodreads First Reads this month, and one of the two other books I won last month finally arrived, so I'll start off with those two.

Goodreads First Reads: 

First off, I won 'The Ghosts of Heaven' by Marcus Sedgwick. I don't exactly know what this novel is about, but I heard that there's lots of overlapping timelines and that sounds really unusual, as I haven't read many novels that have that. My best friend always tells me to read books by Marcus Sedgwick, but this is the first novel I'm going to have read from him, so I hope it's really good.
Secondly, I won 'The Woman Who Stole My Life' by Marian Keyes. Again, this will be the first Marian Keyes novel I've ever read, but her writing has always really interested me, I just haven't ever gotten around to reading any of her books.
Hopefully I'll have read and reviewed the Marian Keyes and Marcus Sedgwick books before Christmas, and hopefully the final Goodreads First Reads book I won will arrive at the start of December.

eBooks: 

If you haven't heard of 'The Leftovers', I'd be surprised. It's been an amazingly popular TV series on HBO, and it's been renewed for a second series, so you can only expect the hype to grow. I haven't yet watched 'The Leftovers', but the fact that it was the 99p Kindle Daily Deal meant I couldn't resist purchasing it. 'The Leftovers' tells the story of a town who have been left devastated by a rapture-like event in which twenty percent of the worlds population disappeared. We pick up with the characters a year after this event has happened, to see how they're coping at being left behind and losing their family members and friends. If that doesn't appeal to you, I don't know what will. It sounds absolutely superb. I don't know if it's going to be as good as I'm hoping it is, but if it anywhere near reaches my expectations I'll be so excited. 

'The Giver' is another big adaptation that's come out this month and despite the fact that I hadn't heard of it until I saw the advertisements for the film, it looked good enough that I bought it when it was on daily deal, but this is definitely not a priority read for me because I really don't know that much about it.

The last e-book that I bought because of it's adaptation was 'The Strain' by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. All I know about the TV show is that a plane lands with over two hundred dead bodies on board, but a few survivors, and I know somewhere in the story vampires get involved, but other than that, again, I really don't know a lot about this novel, but it looked like it would actually involve scary vampires rather than friendly ones so I was interested.

Another e-Book that I bought this month was 'White Hot Kiss' by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I bought this novel before I finished 'Don't Look Back' (so at a time when I was feeling much more optimistic about Jennifer's writing) but this seems to be more of a new adult book than a young adult book, and it's about demons so it sounds much more interesting than the last novel that I read from her. Fingers crossed this book will be better. 

Yet another e-Book I bought this month was 'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' by Laini Taylor. I have wanted to read this book for a very long time, so when I saw it only Kindle for just a couple of pounds I knew I had to get it straight away. I haven't managed to start reading it yet, but it's very high up my most anticipated list. If you haven't heard of this trilogy I don't know where you've been because people in America have been going crazy about this, and from what I can gather it's kind of similar to Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter series's - there are demons and people who can see them and people who can't, and we're following a girl into this mystical and dangerous world. I can't wait to read this, because it just looks So. Good.

The penultimate e-Book I bought in November was 'The Jewel' by Amy Ewing. I've heard great and terrible things about this book, but I thought I'd give it a shot for myself because it was only just over a pound on my Kindle and one of my book clubs is reading this in January, so I thought I'd buy it in time to join in with their read-along. It sounds similar to 'The Selection', in that there are a bunch of girls competing for the love of a guy and the chance at a better life (and may I just add that the American cover is way better than the English cover which, even though I purchased on Kindle meaning I don't need to look at the cover, really annoys me). I'm not sure if this really sounds like my sort of book, but I've purchased both this and 'The Selection' on the Kindle recently, so I'll give them a whirl at some point and see which one I prefer.

The last e-Book I bought this month was 'Red Rising' by Pierce Brown. Again, I don't know too much about this book but it's the Goodreads Chapter 5 Book Club book to read in December so I thought I would buy it in case I wanted to join in with their read along, because it was only 99p on Kindle deals. From what I can gather, this book is about space, being set on (or partially on, I'm not quite sure) Mars. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about this book, but sometimes it's worth stepping outside your comfort zone to attempt something different.

Books: 

The first book I bought this month (well, technically last month) was 'Black Ice' by Becca Fitzpatrick. The reason I didn't put it in my book haul for last month was because I didn't actually have my copy, because Becca was doing a signing in Swindon which I missed because I was in London watching twenty one pilots - but Waterstones kindly held on to my copy and got it signed and personalised for me! It also came with this super cool 'Black Ice' wristband, which I have to say made my year.

It sucked that I didn't get to meet Becca, but I love this book more than I love most things in life, and even though I'm kind of scared to read it in case I ruin my copy I think it's so worth it because the book trailer looked amazing so I've been excited for this release for quite a while.

The first books I actually bought and paid for in November were 'Fangirl' and 'Eleanor and Park' by Rainbow Rowell. I read and reviewed 'Fangirl' at the start of October and I enjoyed it that much that I couldn't resist buying my own copy after returning the book to the library. It's a really cute book that tells the story of two twins and their adventures at college, one of them going out to parties every night, the other staying in her room all of the time and writing fan fiction. I don't know much about 'Eleanor and Park', but I've heard that it's also a very cute book about falling in love for the first time, and I really enjoyed Rainbow Rowell's writing style throughout 'Fangirl', so I had to buy this too.

Next up, I bought a set of books from The Book People again (it's hard not to, with the prices that they offer - amazing!), this time a collection of poetry from Shakespeare, Yeats and Blake respectively. They are all the Vintage red spine editions, which is the main reason that I purchased them, but I also love Shakespeare's sonnets and have been trying to get into more poetry since I've had so much spare time on my hands, so I thought this five pound collection was the perfect place to start.

The last book I bought this month was 'Catch-22' by Joseph Heller. Again, this is the Vintage red spine edition, which I bought on special offer from the HMV in London (at the same time as meeting Olly Murs, which was bizarrely awesome), and I've always wanted to read this novel but I've never had the time to really sit down and tackle it, so this gives me the perfect opportunity to read it. From what I can gather, 'Catch-22' is set in wartime and the main character wants to get out of flying missions in an attempt to preserve his safety, but the only way to get out of the missions is to make a formal request due to insanity, but by making the request you prove yourself to be sane. The book is all about this contradiction and how he can get around the problem while still managing to avoid the flights, and I think it's such an interesting premise and I can't wait to read it.

So that's all the books that I bought this month - next month will involve any books I might be getting for Christmas presents, but other than that I won't be buying any other books because I need to save up money for presents for my family - so hopefully I'll see you in a month!