Stacking the Shelves: The Dirty Dustjackets Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

Well, it's been... a week. Work is so stressful lately. Ugh. I want it to stop. Other than that, things have been pretty good. A couple of household machine malfunctions have put a wrench in my life, but not anything too terrible. And thankfully, one of them is covered by my landlord. The other one, I need to potentially make a repair appointment for, which will be icky, but doable.

But on to this week's haul. First up, I have the October FairyLoot Adult book, Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy. I just read a review copy of this. Check out my review here. And it was great! I also really like the FairyLoot edition too. It's similar to the regular cover, but the inside artwork is very pretty. I'm honestly not sure if I want to use the reverse dustjacket art or keep it as is. Decisions, decisions.

Next up, I have more FBAA series copies. I impulsively bought the FBAA series off of Mercari, so I could use it for a dustjacket set that will potentially be releasing at some point. (Hurry up, A Touch of Magic Designs! You've been teasing this for like three years!) There was also a used copy of A Light in the Flame on PangoBooks for $9. With shipping and tax it was a little bit more than that, but still much cheaper than a new hardcover. And I definitely needed it. I actually need two more copies of ALITF for all the dustjacket sets I have. Ugh. ALITF and A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire are the hardest copies to find used at a decent price for some reason.

Speaking of dustjacket sets. Here's why I need one of the other ALITF copies. My Dirty Diction Flesh and Fire dustjacket set came in, and they're lovely. The scenery on the backs is my favorite part. I hope DD does an FBAA set sometime. Not super soon, but maybe like end of 2025, beginning of 2026. My wallet needs a break from buying all these extra copies and dustjackets. Please.

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?

October Wrap-Up & November TBR

I am too tired to really do a meaningful introduction to this wrap-up, so you get me babbling for a while. This week has been crazy with major work deadlines, so my personal life kind of went non-existent for a couple of weeks. No good gym workouts, no reading. But! I did manage to do a cleaning/organizing task I'd been putting off for so long. Yay!

In this wrap-up, I’ll list the books I read, the books I reviewed, the books I bought/received, and my TBR for next month. Now, let’s get this bookish party started!

Books Read in October

Tryggred by the Orc: 4 stars (ebook)

Fortuna Sworn: 2 stars

Goldfinch: 4 stars

Sorcery and Small Magics: 4 (my review)

I only read four books in October, and they were all read in the first two weeks of the month too. The last two weeks were just too crazy at work, so I had to watch mind-numbing videos on my phone to clear my head. But, hopefully now that the deadlines are done, reading can commence once again. As for the books I read, two of them were Kindle Unlimited reads: Tryggred by the Orc by Finley Fenn and Goldfinch by Raven Kennedy. However, Goldfinch I technically own copies of, so that counts as a physical book I checked off my list. Lol. Then I slogged through Fortuna Sworn for book club. Ugh. It was just not my vibe. I also read Sorcery and Small Magics for review, and I really enjoyed it. Both of those two books were physical copies, so yay! Knocking books of my physical TBR one at a time.

Books Bought/Received in October

Well, here's the icky math part of the post. Gosh. I don't even want to know the damage this has done me. I'm for sure going to have to sell some books because this is nuts. I bought a total of 42 books in October and received 14 that I didn't pay for in the month, which basically means they were preorders/books ordered in September. Altogether, 30 of the books actually made their way to me in October.

For the 14 books I received, they were all preorders or orders that just didn't get delivered until this month. They include the Waterstones editions of Goldfinch, the FairyLoot edition of The Half King by Melissa Landers, the LitHaven editions of King of Battle and Blood by Scarlett St. Claire and The Book of Azrael by Amber Nicole, Arcane's The Ever Seas duology, the Spanish editions of the first three books in the FBAA series, and the five books in the Acrylipics FBAA set.

This is where it gets unbelievably ugly. I bought sooooo much. As for the 16 books I bought that I actually received in October, those consisted primarily of my 14 Barnes & Noble preorders/orders: Bloodguard by Cecy Robson, The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen, Legend of the White Snake by Sher Lee, Never Keep by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, Frigid by JLA, World After and End of Days by Susan Ee, Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker, Stone Cold Touch by JLA, and The Stars Are Dying by Chloe C. Penaranda. Three others were from trades. Those included Arcane ApollyCon editions of The Crown of Oaths and Curses by J. Bree and FBAA and the Primal of Life BOBAA edition. And then I have two Pango purchases: Oblivion by JLA, which isn't in the greatest shape, so I'm likely going to get rid of it, and Bride by Ali Hazelwood, the Target edition.

 My preorders for the month/books that haven't arrived yet is where things get out of control. The list includes 27 books. Yikes. The preorders consist of the Arcane editions of FBAA 1-5, the ApollyCon Books for Days Crate preorder for A Shadow in the Ember and Kingdom of Crowns and Daggers, the two Arcane sub books for the month, the Bookish Box Lux editions books 1-2, two Owlcrate Carissa Broadbent books, and the author lux edition of Zodiac Academy book one. The remaining books are just ones that will arrive soon, if they haven't already. They include the FairyLoot Adult and Romantasy sub books, my B&N signed and unsigned editions of ASITE, a Pango used copy of ALITF, the B&N editions of Rachel Gillig's Shepherd's King duology, used Mercari copies of FBAA 1-5 for new dustjackets, and Harper L. Wood's special paperback edition of What Lurks Between the Fates.  

Currently Obsessed With

As for TV/films, I watched something new in October!

Well, technically it's not entirely new. I watched previous seasons of the show before, but the third season released. That counts as new then, right? Anyway, the third season of Heartstopper came out, and I watched it all. Other than that, I'm mostly watching Law & Order: SVU and the Eras Tour livestreams on weekends. I did watch Hocus Pocus with my sister. She came over to have a Halloween movie night with brownies and pizza about two weeks before Halloween actually happened. Ha ha.

November TBR

I didn't read like half the books on my TBR, so, surprise, surprise, there are a lot of repeats. I still need to finish The Prince's Poisoned Vow by Hailey Turner and Salt in the Wound by Sierra Simone. I started these a couple of months ago and never picked them back up even though I want to finish them. Ugh. I also need to read and review The Bound Worlds by Megan E. O'Keefe and Dragon Rider by Taran Matharu, which has been on my to-review list for months now. Oops. And then I added Fear the Flames as an ApollyCon read and Bloodguard as a book club pick. And I'm currently reading Lucinda Dark's A Sword of Shadow and Deceit on Kindle Unlimited.

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Okay, well, that's the month of October, plus some November sneak peeks, all wrapped up into one post. Do you have a wrap-up post for last month? If so, share in the comments!

Stacking the Shelves: The Holy Grail Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

It's been a busy week. Work has really sucked. Stupid deadlines. But, the major ones are over now, so my anxiety has settled down a bit. Hopefully, that means I can read more over the next few days. I was really feeling the brain fog this week. But, some amazing stuff arrived, and I can't believe my life right now. Gah!

So on to this week's haul. First up, I have something I never thought I'd be able to get my hands on. Ever. Somehow, someway, I managed to trade my Red Rising FairyLoot set for the super limited paperback Primal of Life Born of Blood and Ash book. How?! I don't even know. The day JLA hinted that maybe something was coming to the JLA Shop with these covers (details still to come, but it looks like fancy-edge hardcovers), someone commented on my ISO Facebook post wanting to trade. I was wary at first because I didn't want to give away my life savings, and I figured someone was just reaching out because they saw the JLA announcement, and they were trying to get their money's worth while they still could. But no. It was just a Red Rising fan who wanted that set more than she wanted to keep a BOBAA ARC. So I got it! My holy grail! EEEEK! Now, I just have to get my hands on the Primal of Death version somehow. Sigh.

Next up, I have another exciting book, Bloodguard by Cecy Robson. I've only had this book preordered for like two years. I'm glad it actually got released. It kept getting pushed back over and over again. This one always excited me because it's a gladiator-esque romantasy with a male POV and the cover reminds me of Red Queen. I can't wait to read it. I also received my Barnes & Noble preorder of the new cover of Frigid by Jennifer L. Armentrout. It has blue sprayed edges. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of sprayed edges on paperbacks. It doesn't look bad, but they don't really do anything for me aesthetic-wise. My FairyLoot September Romantasy book finally reached me too. It was delivered to my parents' house not very long ago. I guess the book, The Half King by Melissa Landers, got delayed for US customers.

 

 

Oh look, another B&N set of preorders arrived right as I was typing this up. Of course. Man, October releases have been insane. I can't wait for things to calm down book-buying-wise now that it's late fall/almost winter. Though book boxes don't seem to have the same schedule as regular publishing companies because Books for Days Crate is just determined to steal my money. But anyway, the Rachal Gillig B&N exclusive The Shepherd King duology set arrived today. I still haven't read my FairyLoot copy of book one, but book two sold out and I didn't buy it, so this was the next-best thing. My friend told me she really liked this duology. So I invested. It takes very little arm-twisting for me to buy books, though. Lol. The B&N exclusive A Shadow in the Ember also arrived. It's not a terrible copy, but it seems like the spine is a little loose and the dustjacket is just a tad off. I have another signed copy coming, so I don't really have to worry about it too much. I just hope the other one is packaged well.

And lastly, I have the Juniper Flesh & Fire series dustjackets. These things are stupid expensive. But, thankfully, Juniper was having a sale, so I just grabbed them to get it over with. Boy oh boy, do I need to stop doing that. October was an extremely expensive book month. I'm very scared to do my monthly spending roundup. Yikes. But anyway, I got the five dustjackets for each book in the series and the compendium, Visions of Flesh and Blood. I didn't take a picture of them all, though, because, besides the spines, they all pretty much look the same, as you can see. 

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?