Places I Get Books!

Something that I have always been extremely passionate about are books. I've always loved the feel of a book in my hands, and I have therefore never been one for ereaders or apps on my phone. I just can't get away from the paper in my hand, and the joy of being able to have bookshelves upon bookshelves of books to choose from...I'm not the only one, right?!?

(Disclaimer) I have not been paid or asked by any of these places to endorse them, I just love them all and I want more people to buy books. These are just my favourite places to go for me to get books.

One of my favourite places to go to to buy books is definitely Chapters. I live in Canada, and that is the most popular bookstore here. Chapters, Indigo and Coles are all one company, but each store has a different feel to them. Coles is the smaller ones, inside of malls and other places, Indigo is more focused on design and their house decorations and style, and Chapters has more books than both of them. Chapters is very homey, and they always have a massive selection of books. Chapters is a regular book store, so a lot of the books are full price. I always go there for any new releases that I want, and they also have a lot of awesome sales going on that are always awesome to check out. (Their top best selling books are usually 40% off!! Like what??) And their discount/bargain section is always, ALWAYS worth checking out. I usually can find one or two gems in there every single time I go.

I also get a lot of my books from Book Outlet. They're an online website and also a warehouse located in St. Catharines, and their prices are insane! (Check them out here to see what I mean! bookoutlet.ca ) They always have such cheap books, and twice a year they have a massive sale. Over March break they have a box sale, where you go in and they give you a large box, and you fill it with as many books as you can for $30 CA! Which is insane and very dangerous...I easily get $1000 plus every year worth of books. Also on boxing day every year, they have everything in their store at 50% off of their already insanely cheap prices, which is amazing. A lot of their books are not really new, but they have an awesome selection, and they are getting newer and newer books.

The library is also an amazing place for me to get books, especially if I'm not 100% sure if I'll really like it. I go to the library a lot to just look around, do some homework, and to just de-stress. The library is a great place to go to for books if you're on a budget, don't have a lot of room for a lot of books, or just need a place to relax and study!

The last place I go to for books are local bookstores. They usually don't have a lot of the new releases I want, but some of them have a really good selection and it's always very important to check out local stores and support them, otherwise there will be less and less places to go to for books in the future.


I hope this helped some of you guys in any way!

April 2016 TBR

Last month I barely read anything, so this month it's time to pick up the pace again!! Hopefully I can read all that I want to and be able to stick to my TBR.

Here's what I plan on reading this month!

1. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

I've slowly been reading this for my English class this semester, and I'm about 3/4 of the way through it. I'm really enjoying it, and I plan on finishing it this weekend and I'll hopefully have a review up next week!

      2.  King Lear by William Shakespeare

I'm also reading this for English class, as I need to write a comparative essay between this and We Were the Mulvaneys. I absolutely love Shakespeare, and I'm also really enjoying this! I plan on finishing this one next week.

      3.  Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

I just bought this last month, and I need to catch up on my classics reading goal for this year. It looks really interesting, and is hopefully a light, quick read for whenever I need to take a break from the large book We Were the Mulvaneys.

      4.  The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

I read this when it first came out, and I've been in love with the story ever since. I absolutely LOVE Maggie Stiefvater's writing style, it's so different and so true-from-the-heart. It's also time to give this beauty (I mean, have you seen these covers?!?!) a reread just in time for the final book in the quartet to come out this month!

      5.  The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater

I loved this book almost as much as The Raven Boys when I first read it, and I haven't been able to read it again since. I'm really looking forward to rereading this one as well in preparation of The Raven Kings!

      6.  Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle #3) by Maggie Stiefvater

When this book first came out, I was in a massive reading slump and I haven't been able to force myself to read it, just because I heard that the ending was very sad and a massive cliff hanger, so I've waited until the final one is almost out before I decided to read it. I'm super excited to finally get to it!

      7.  The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) by Maggie Stiefvater

ONE OF MY MOST ANTICIPATED READS OF 2016. ENOUGH SAID.

March 2016 Wrap Up

March wasn't the best month for reading wise or just life wise, because I was so insanely busy the whole month. I didn't get to read as much as I had hoped for, but I was still able to read three pretty good books.


I read:

• ★★★★★      Champion (Legend #3) by Marie Lu
• ★★★☆☆.5   The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
• ★★★★☆      The Dark Days Club by Allison Goodman

The first book I read this month was Champion by Marie Lu, the final book in the Legend trilogy. I absolutely loved Champion, and the entire trilogy. The characters were amazing, the plot was intriguing, and I loved every second of reading it. The ending was really painful though, and it was really saddening to read, but it also was wonderful because it leaves the story in a way that you, the reader, are able to interpret it and create the ending how you want it to be. I highly recommend this entire trilogy!

The next book I read was The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I found the beginning to be a little slow and difficult to get into, and the book was so short so there was a lot of information very early on in the story. Once I got into it though, I began to enjoy it. The stories and the people are all very touching, but they were all very saddening. I was hoping for more of a lighthearted story, but it was heavier than I had anticipated. I enjoyed the book, but I feel that if I had known going into it that it was more sad then lighthearted, I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did. Overall, it was a good, very well written book.

The last book I read this month was The Dark Days Club by Allison Goodman. I loved her books Eon and Eona, and I was really hoping that I would love this one too, and I wasn't disappointed. I loved the setting and the life that she portrayed in this book. The era was amazing to read about, and I loved how she made it just relatable enough, but still kept it in the 1800s so well. Allison Goodman describes everything in her books so well and so beautifully, that you feel like you are right there in the story. Her characters were amazing, and I loved every second of reading it. I highly, highly recommend it!

March 2016 Book Haul

March wasn't the best book month for me, but I still managed to get a hold of 9 new books.

I got:

Young Adult:

1. You Are Here by Jennifer E. Smith
2. Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Adult:

1. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman

Classics:

1. Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
2. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
3. Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
5. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

March 2016 TBR

I never did a TBR for February, but this month I have a feeling I know exactly what I want to read, so here we are! My March TBR!

I plan on reading:

1. Champion (Legend #3) by Marie Lu
2. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
3. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
5. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. LADY MIDNIGHT BY CASSANDRA CLARE

I'm really hoping to get to all of these amazing books this month, as I have March Break coming up next week (trying to hold on till then) and I'm hoping to do nothing but read!

February 2016 Book Haul

I got a total of 10 books this month! Waayy more than I had planned on getting, but I had leftover gift cards from Christmas, so I don't have a problem with the amount I got.

I got:


Young Adult:

1. Cold Spell by Jackson Pierce (Fairytale Retellings #4 - Hardcover)
2. Warrior by Ellen Oh (The Dragon King Chronicles #2 - Hardcover)
3. Champion by Marie Lu (Legend #3 - Paperback)
4. To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han (Paperback)
5. Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay (Hardcover)
6. Visitors by Orson Scott Card (Pathfinder #3 - Hardcover)
7. The Dark Days Club by Allison Goodman (Hardcover)

Adult

1. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (Mass market paperback)
2. Goldon Son by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #2 - Paperback)

Classics

1. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (Paperback)

February 2016 Wrap Up

I read four books this month, which isn't too bad for me! I didn't get the chance to read my classic for this month though, so that means I'll need to read two next month to make up for it.


I read:

• ★★★★☆     Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid
• ★★★★★     Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler
• ★★★★★     Legend by Marie Lu (Legend #1)
• ★★★★.5☆  Champion by Marie Lu (Legend #2)

The first book I read this month was Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid. I read his first book, Let's Get Lost, back in August and I absolutely loved it, so I decided to pick this one up and give it a go! Although I enjoyed Let's Get Lost more than Never Always Sometimes, I still absolutely LOVED this book. It has so many great characters and although they can be extremely frustrating at times, I found that they all had really good reasons for being the people they ended up being throughout and at the end of the book.

I then read Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, and I was so pleasantly surprised by this book. I was expecting more of an angry telling, or a book that was more depressing then anything else, but it was so much more than that. Yes, the book was depressing at times, which it should be (it's about a high school breakup, of course it's a sob story), but I also found it to be light-hearted, flirty, and funny. There was just enough goofing off, happiness, and friendship in this book that it almost (ALMOST) balanced out the amount of  times that I cried while reading this book. Being through a high school breakup myself, it's easy to see where every character is coming from, and how everyone thinks as each choice is made, and as each action is taken in the story. I loved it!

I then read Legend by Marie Lu, and I have nothing but high praise for this book. I picked it up on a whim one weekend, and I finished it in two sittings. I flew through it; it has just enough funny parts and shocking parts, that every single page you read makes you want another chapter. The whole thing was written so wonderfully, and everything that happened in it was important. Not only that, but every single detail, every single character, had a purpose to the story. There was no extra part that I feel could have been left out, and I don't feel like more could have been added. It was the perfect amount of detail, of characters, of action, for it to feel like a realistic dystopian (which are hard to come by these days). The story was also so different, and so refreshing, that it was wonderful to see how different a dystopian book could be compared to all of the other dystopian books that are currently out. I have fallen out of the dystopian genre over the last couple of years, but I am so glad to have finally found a book that has made me want to get back into it.

I then quickly read Prodigy by Marie Lu, (the second book in the Legend trilogy) and I loved it, but not quite as much as I loved Legend. I really wanted more Day and June, but I understand why we didn't get as much. I also found them to be a tiinnyyy bit annoying at times, and overreact about some things as well as underreact about others. I did enjoy the book though, and I feel like it was a necessary book to have in between the other two, and I am looking forward to reading Champion!