After my disaster of last month, when I acquired 40+ books, I decided to go on a book buying ban in January and it actually worked out quite well. This haul only contains 11 books, which is a massive improvement from the previous couple of months. I didn’t buy a single book for myself, though I did receive some books that I preordered from Book Depository. I’m happy to say that I’ve read almost every single one of the books I acquired this month and you can check out my January Wrap Up here.
BOOK DEPOSITORY
- The Year We Fell Apart – Emily Martin
I have a review for this book. - The Love That Split the World – Emily Henry
- Passenger (Passenger #1) – Alexandra Bracken
Check out my review. - Truthwitch (The Witchlands #1) – Susan Dennard
I also have a review for this book.
These were all highly anticipated 2016 releases of mine and I preordered them in late November. They’re all super beautiful and I’m so happy to have them in my possession.
RECEIVED
- The Stars at Oktober Bend – Glenda Millard
- The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – Claire North
- Max – Sarah Cohen-Scali
Check out my 5 star review. - Not If I See You First – Eric Lindstrom
Check out my review here. - Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club (Lady Helen #1) – Alison Goodman
My review of this book is here.
I requested a couple of books from publishers and was so happy to receive them. Thanks to HarperCollins for Not If I See You First and Lady Helen. I received Max from Text Publishing. And thanks to Allen & Unwin for The Stars at Oktober Bend! Aentee @ Read at Midnight was kind enough to send me her copy of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. Seriously, can that girl be any more awesome?!
EBOOKS
- Chewy Noh and the March of Death (Chewy Noh #3) – Tim Learn
I have written a review here. - The Distance from A to Z – Natalie Blitt
The author of Chewy Noh sent me an electronic copy of the book for review. And I preordered The Distance from A to Z on iBooks a few weeks back.
Reading with Jenna || book blog 
All of those books look absolutely gorgeous. I can’t wait to read The Love That Split The World, I’m excited to know if you liked it, or not. Everyone seems to, so far 🙂 The Distance from A to Z sounds like a cute read, I hope it won’t disappoint! 🙂
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Sadly, I didn’t enjoy The Love That Split the World as much as everyone else seemed to. It was a nice read but I was so confused about everything that I couldn’t really enjoy the book. I rated it 4 stars but ended up changing it to 3.5 stars. The Distance from A to Z was a cute and quick read but it was nothing special, unfortunately. My biggest problem with that book was that it’s about a girl who meets a guy at a summer intensive French course. So a lot of the dialogue is written in French, with English translations at the end of each line. This really REALLY annoyed me, because I’ve taken French as a subject before and everything felt repetitive because of the translations. I think you might end up having a similar problem?
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Oh no! Well I just saw you published a review of TLTSTW, so I’m going to read it 😀
Really? Wow, that promises to be kind of annoying, yes… I don’t feel that enthousiast about reading it now, haha! Thank you for your thoughts on these books! 😀
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Girl, you have photography skills level 52882691. So neat and elegant!
And that, Chewy Noh and the March of Death has a very interesting cover!
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No way! I’m still a newbie at book photography and bookstagram. I still can’t do anything fancy or pretty so I just have to stick with simple 😀
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Nothing better than new books. I’ve heard a lot about Passenger and Truthwitch, so I’d love to take a look at those. Though, as you mentioned receiving books from publishers, how do you go about doing that? I’m a member of Netgalley, but I’m not sure where to go for physical books?
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Passenger and Truthwitch were both great. I enjoyed both of those a lot. In terms of requesting physical ARCs, each publisher has different rules and processes so I’d suggest checking out their FAQs for specific instructions. Eg. some will require you to request on a book by book basis. Others will add you to their database and send you a catalogue each month. But the first step would be to send the publicist an email with in-depth info about your blog, your blog stats, how often you post, how big your following is, etc. Hope that helps a little.
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Congrats on doing so well with your book buying ban! Getting 11 books and reading almost all of them is awesome. That’s pretty impressive.
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I’m super impressed with myself too XD I wasn’t sure how I’d manage but I did pretty well. I don’t think I’ll go on anymore bans because they just make me want to buy more the following month. But I think I’ll try to read more books than I acquire each month? That way, my TBR will be shrinking but I still get to buy new releases!
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Sounds like a good plan. I need to work on reading more of the books I acquire each month as well.
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40+ books in a month!! OMG, I’m jealous. Although that also seems a bit overwhelming, lol. 😀 Anyway, looks like you have a great book haul! I was at Barnes & Noble the other day and saw a bunch of these. I will have to check them out at some point.
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It was totally overwhelming. I felt so bad because a lot of those books will sit on my shelf unread for ages and ages. I’m super happy with this month because I read 10 of the 11 books I acquired. I enjoyed most of the books in my haul, so I hope you check some of them out!
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Great haul! I’m anxious to read a few of these.
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I enjoyed most of these books so I hope you check some of them out! Which ones are you interested in?
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Great book haul!
I need to get my hands on The Love That Split the World!
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I’m happy that I did so well this month with not buying books. Hopefully that carries on to February!
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What a great haul! Definitely an improvement from last month, you went down from 40 to 11, that’s a decrease of 29 books! Woo hoo!
Seeing book hauls makes me sad, because I’ve been so broke for the past month or two that I haven’t been able to buy books! *cries*
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I’m super happy with my improvement as well 😀 But I’m also aware that 11 books is a lot for some other readers. But I guess, as long as I read more books than I acquire, I’ll be happy. Nooooo, not being able to buy books is just the worst! I hope you manage to get a few great books from the library though! I think the Perth Writer’s Festival should be coming up soon? You should totally go and get some freebies 🙂
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Considering the fact that I have bought ZERO BOOKS in the last two months *cries* I, at the moment, feel like 11 is a lot, but hey, if I had the money, I’d probably have bought that amount as well!
Trust me, I’m going to buy ALL THE BOOKS when I get paid this week 😍
Oooh Perth Writers Festival?! I haven’t heard of that 😱😱 I will DEFINITELY go to that if i haven’t missed it!
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You should definitely check it out! I might be next weekend? There are lots of free events and it would be super cool to check out, especially since you’re an aspiring writer!
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Yep, it’s next week! I’m so excited for all the events, they all sound so great! I might even buy tickets for one of them which sounds really worth the money 😍
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Harry August is a beautiful and captivating read, if you’re the kind of person who loves slow-paced books 👍
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I love slow-paced books and I’m super excited for Harry August. I’ve heard such wonderful things and Aentee was so kind to send me her copy that I’ll definitely be reading that one soon.
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Awesome book haul Jenna! I really want to read Love that Split the World and I can’t wait to read Truthwitch and Passenger.
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Eeeeeeeeep Jeann. I hope you get your hands on those soon! I liked both Truthwitch and Passenger, but preferred the latter since I love historical fiction so much. They definitely won’t disappoint! TLTSTW was kinda so-so for me. It was just a really confusing book so I didn’t fully enjoy it.
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Great haul! I’m currently reading Truthwitch and really enjoying it! I really want to read Passenger, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and The Dark Days Club as well! Happy reading!
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Glad to hear that you’re enjoying Truthwitch! I really liked that one but I enjoyed Passenger just a little bit more. I also thought that The Dark Days Club was a fantastic beginning to a series.
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Pretty books here, pretty books there. Pretty books everywhere. (Imagine me singing that, lol.) And you do realize that the results of our book buying bans are the amount of books most normal people haul, right? XD But, still, good job Jenna! 😉
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HAHA I’ve noticed that. I was like YAY ONLY 11 BOOKS. But wait… some people only haul like 5 books a month. It’s okay. At least we tried, right? I think I’m happy as long as I read more than I acquire. That way my TBR will still be slowly shrinking. We’ll see how I go.
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