In My Mailbox 12

As you can probably see from the photo, I went a bit crazy buying books this week. I visited the same shop I went to last week, and they were still having the sale. So from there I bought:

Standoff by Sandra Brown

Skinny B, Skaz and Me by John Singleton

Johnny Be Good by Paige Toon

Die A Little by Megan Abbott

From BookMooch I received:

A Wartime Poetry Journal by Effie M. Roberts 

South Sea Adventure by Willard Price

A Place Called Hope by Audrey Howard

And then yesterday from the charity shop I bought:

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

The Sorrowing Wind by Mary E. Pearce

A grand total of 9 books in a week!

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren.

In My Mailbox 11

I told my boyfriend I wasn't going to buy any books this month, but these were in a sale at 49p each, how could I resist?

The One and Only by Sophie McKenzie

Exurbia by Molly McGrann

The Smoking Gun (Point Crime) by Malcolm Rose

Mooched from bookmooch.com:

Waiting in the Wings by Donna Hay

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren.

How I Choose Books

When I go book shopping I always seem to come home with quite random selections of books. After thinking about how I shop I realised that I do actually have a process for buying books, although it might be quite strange. This is how my process goes:

The first step I take when buying books is to decide on what genre I’m looking for. This is because the larger bookstores usually have the books shelved according to genre. So I head to the relevant shelves. If the books aren’t organised by genre then I’ll just jump straight to step two.

Step two is to scan the shelves searching for authors that I recognise, either because I’ve already read books they’ve written or because I’ve heard them mentioned somewhere and liked the sound of their books.

If I don’t find any books by authors I recognise, or I want something different, then I glance at the colours of the book spines. Usually if I’m looking for a light & fluffy read I’ll lean towards the lighter pastel coloured spines, if I’m looking for a crime/mystery or horror book it’ll be the darker spines that get my attention.

The next, and probably most important, step is to read the titles. If one jumps out at me I’ll pull the book off the shelf for a closer look. Titles that I tend to steer away from are anything that sounds boring and anything that conjures up images of space, future and science fiction in general (because I really don‘t like science fiction!).

Once I pick a book off the shelf, chances are I’ll end up buying it. However, before I make the final commitment I always read the back cover. If the synopsis grabs my attention, it’s a keeper. But really, reading the synopsis is just a formality, I’ve subconsciously already decided to buy the book the moment I picked it off the shelf.

The very final step is to check the price! I refuse to pay over the odds for a book, anything over £5 I usually don’t bother. But seeing as I mostly shop in bargain bookstores and second-hand shops this isn’t really a problem.

I don’t tend to look at front covers of books; if I do it’s only to see the price sticker. I don’t know why I don’t look at the front cover in the shops because I do look at them when I get home, I guess I just don’t like to be influenced by a cover picture as they can sometimes be quite misleading about the book.

So how about anyone else? What makes you choose which books to take home?

Swapping and Waiting

The other day I joined readitswapit.co.uk. You can view my swap profile here. It's a UK site for swapping books. The idea is that you list all the books that you have available for swap and then if anyone wants to swap with you, you can look at their available books and do a straight swap with them. It's great fun. I've swapped 6 books already and am hoping for more. Of course it's not very good for my TBR pile which just keeps getting bigger every day! But at least this way I'm also getting rid of some books that I'm unlikely to read again.

Now I just have to be patient until the postman brings my books. I'm waiting for:
Honeycote
Five Fall into Adventure
White Empress
Straight into Darkness
A Necessary Evil
Diary of a Hapless Househusband

Also I'm still waiting for Wickedoz, Tales of a Witch's Cat which I bought off ebay the other day. It was one of my favourite books as a child, and now I want to read it again.

Do you ever wish that mail arrived quicker? I think that's why I enjoy downloading ebooks. I like the instant-ness of them. But you can't beat the feeling of excitement when ripping open a new book parcel can you?

New Arrival

Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair

This book arrived today. I bought it from bookdepository.co.uk. I bought five books at the same time, but this was the first to arrive. I'm quite looking forward to this one. I love a good spooky story.

Synopsis from back cover: May Sinclair was an innovator of modern fiction, a late Victorian who was also a precursor to Virginia Woolf. In her Uncanny Stories (1923), Sinclair combines the traditional ghost story with the discoveries of Freud and Einstein. The stories shock, enthral, delight and unsettle.

Two lovers are doomed to repeat their empty affair for the rest of eternity... A female telepath is forced to face the consequences of her actions... The victim of a violent murder has the last laugh on his assailant... An amateur philosopher discovers that there is more to Heaven than meets the eye.

Specially included in this volume is 'The Intercessor' (1911), Sinclair's powerful story of childhood and abandoned love, a tale whose intensity compares with that of the Brontës.