Stacking the Shelves: The June FairyLoot Swagtastic 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.

Full disclosure: this isn’t my entire haul. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. I’m writing this post early on in the week because things are going to get busy. So, I just thought I’d share what I have as of Monday morning and save the rest for next week’s Stacking the Shelves post.

First up is a bunch of swag. I purchased a mystery print pack and a Red Queen House Calore coin from Faecrate last month that finally came in. This purchase was originally made in the hopes that I would receive the Hades & Persephone/Dara & Nahri City of Brass print. However, I found The City of Brass print for sale on Mercari, so I purchased it before I received the mystery pack, just in case. I’m glad I bought it there, since I did not receive it from Faecrate.

The prints that came in the mystery pack are okay. There are a few that I like and a few that I’m just meh about. The good ones are for Six of Crows, Graceling, To Kill a Kingdom, and Vortex Visions, a book I’d never heard of until I received this print, but now I’m intrigued.

As for the meh ones, they’re mostly for books I haven’t read yet, like The Cruel Prince, Nevernight, and A Court of Mist and Fury. There’s also a Shadowhunters one and a Shatter Me one. I gave up on the Shatter Me series after book two, when I found out Warner would be the love interest in book three (ICK). Most of the ones in this pic will be put in my giveaway/trade bags either because the series isn’t one I care about or the artwork isn’t to my tastes.

Now, I have the June FairyLoot box. I actually received this last week, but I wanted to hold off on sharing the contents to give people more time to receive their boxes.

In the box, there were two books: Forest of Souls by Lori M. Lee and The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna. I’m actually excited for both books, though I don’t know when I’ll get to them. I may try to wait until next year or the year after, so I can binge-read if they’re part of a series. Also, the artwork in Forest of Souls is A+!

As for the bookish items, these were a lot better than last month’s, in my opinion. My favorites: The Bone Season socks (because socks are always useful, even if you haven’t read the series yet), Avatar: The Last Airbender coasters (not my favorite design, but still cute and useable), Blood Heir art print (haven’t read the book, but I’m a fan of this art style), Forest of Souls artwork, and The Shadows Between Us pin (mine came with two small nicks, but it’s not worth it to me to try to get a replacement). My least favorite items were the Alice in Wonderland tea strainer (super cute, but I don’t drink tea) and The Starless Sea iron-on patch (pretty, but I haven’t read the book and patches are a useless item). All in all, this box was much better than last month’s, despite the theme and fandoms not being as exciting.

What books have you bought/received lately?

Stacking the Shelves: The Swagtastic ARC-fest 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.

Besides a snow storm on Wednesday—that promptly melted on Thursday—nothing major happened this week. It’s been pretty quiet. I just went to work, went to the gym, and came home. Except for Wednesday night. I skipped the gym Wednesday night. I definitely didn’t want to walk home that night. Ick.

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

Martians Abroad by Carrie Vaughn

Game of Shadows by Erika Lewis

Spymaster by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes

Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald

So many ARCs this week! My boss told me to recycle all of the ARCs that were older than a year. Of course, I couldn’t just get rid of some of them. They were free ARCs! These are just some of the ones I was able to grab. The rest will come next week. (I couldn’t carry them all home at the same time. That would have been way too heavy for the subway.)

I traded with someone on Twitter for two Reign of the Fallen character cards and some extra swag. There’s temporary tattoos for Rebel of the Sands, Lady Midnight cards, The Crown’s Game stickers, and a Vicious card. The Empress of a Thousand Skies buttons and stickers were random. They just showed up in my mail. I think the author sent them as a thank you for participating in her book’s blog tour.

Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction

I actually purchased this one last month, and it just came in today. I bought it so I could get some help with writing my own book. (Yep. I’m writing a fantasy book. I’m 4,000 words in. I’ve got a long way to go…) The complete set of Reign of the Fallen cards was another trade on Twitter. Unfortunately, after I traded for the other two, someone with the whole set responded. So now I have duplicates of a couple of characters. Oh well…

Alright, this last ARC is the big one. And it is….

The Darkest Star by Jennifer L. Armentrout

I borrowed this one from work. It’s actually already back at the office now. I devoured it in two days. Jennifer’s books are super easy to fly through.

What books have you bought/received lately?

Stacking the Shelves: The Snooze You Lose 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.

This week was a very good book week. Well, technically, I got these last week, but I couldn’t carry them home to take pictures until now. The point is, though, that you get to look at some pretty books, and you can tell me which one(s) I should prioritize reading next. ;)

All the Feels by Danika Stone

Off the Ice by Julie Cross

Friends and Traitors by C.J. Hill

Love, Fortunes, and Other Disasters by Kimberly Karalius

Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid

Battlemage by Tarau Matharu

Windwitch by Susan Dennard

The Lyre Thief by Jennifer Fallon

Roar by Cora Carmack

So all of these were nabbed at Macmillan’s annual Winter Book Collection. If you volunteered to work the book collection, which is basically an event where everyone donates the books they don’t want anymore, you could grab books you wanted along the way.

The first day, I grabbed Off the Ice, Windwitch, The Lyre Thief, and Roar (pictured below), along with some Christmas gifts that I can’t share. ;)

The second day, as a reward for helping, volunteers could pick out of the kids’ books. I guess this was for volunteers who wanted to get children’s books for their offspring. Since I have no offspring, I mostly got YA books, aka the rest of the pictured titles. I had to be aggressive to get some of these. People were trying to take books out of my box. :P

Now, before I ever started working at Macmillan, I entered a giveaway for some Cora Carmack swag. And somehow, I won! It didn’t get here until today. I thought that was amazing timing, though, considering I’d only come into possession of a copy of Roar one day before.

Thanks Cora for the amazing art and swag! The canvas piece is currently the only piece of artwork I have on my wall. It also matches my aesthetic!

What books have you bought/received lately?

Stacking the Shelves: The Buttons Edition

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

I probably won’t be buying any books over the next few months. I’m trying to save money for when I move. That being said, I do actually have something to share with you.

These are the buttons fans got for pre-ordering the fifth book in the Falling Kingdoms series, Crystal Storm. These were delivered a while ago, but I had them delivered to my parents’ house because I thought they would arrive over the winter break—they didn’t. They’re very pretty, but I still don’t think Cleo is who’s depicted on the first book.

What books (or swag) have you bought/received lately?

Stacking the Shelves: The My First Tote Bag Edition

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

I didn’t buy any books this week! It’s an April miracle!

Another miracle for this week was that I won Bloomsbury’s #GirlstoRead Instagram giveaway for Women’s History Month. I ended up getting some awesome swag and books. Thank you, Bloomsbury! 

Sacajawea, Mary Todd Lincoln, Judy Blume, Sonia Sotomayor, Dolley Madison, and Coretta Scott King by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by Matt Collins

Also, this is the first book tote bag I’ve ever had! I mean, I have a couple I bought from Barnes & Noble that have The Jungle Book and The Great Gatsby covers on them, but those don’t count because they’re not YA and I had to buy them myself. Plus, this is a Throne of Glass tote! And it has Chaol’s name on the back (which I didn’t post because I’m lazy)!

The Winner’s Kiss by Marie Rutkoski (Borrowed)

I forgot that I put The Winner’s Kiss on hold at my local library. I originally did this because of the cover change. I thought I was going to have to wait for the third book to come out in paperback, and then buy the entire series again. Thankfully, the cover was changed back. However, I plan on buying my own copy of the book for the Fierce Reads signing coming up, so I’m not sure if this copy will be the one I read or not.

The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook by Dinah Bucholz

I almost forgot this thing. I borrowed it from my professor for a cooking research project I'm doing over fandom food. Believe me, it isn't as fun as it sounds.

What books have you bought/received lately?

Pinterest Sunday: Photo Bookmarks

I have decided that Sundays will now be Pinterest days. What does that mean? It means every Sunday I’ll be sharing a bookish craft with ya’ll that I found on Pinterest.

Obviously, none of these craft ideas were created by me, and I’ll give the creator the credit he or she deserves. I just want to share some cool and fun—and maybe even new—craft ideas with you. And maybe I’ll even scrounge up the willpower to actually do the craft one day. Who knows?

The craft I want to share today was posted by Kate over at Nearly Crafty. I think all of us booklovers not-so-secretly also want to own the biggest supply of bookmarks known to man. (Every book should have its own bookmark, am I right?) So here’s another way to make your own cute bookmarks:

I don’t normally have kids, so I wouldn’t be using toddlers as my image. I was thinking of using a Jensen Ackles/Dean Winchester image, or maybe even a Toothless or Harry Potter image if I can find the right one.

I get colored printing at my school, so it wouldn’t be hard to print the images, paste them onto cardstock, punch a piece of string through, and voilà!

If you can think of any other cool images that could be used, or that you want to use, definitely let me know!

So, what do you guys think? Would you do this? Yay? Nay? Maybe? Sound off in the comments.

Also, if you’d like to follow me on Pinterest, you can do so here. Or, if you just want to check out what bookish crafts I have saved so far, you can go here. 

P.S. I found the image of Harry here. This is such a cool site with so many cool HP images.

My Swag and a Swag Giveaway

I’ve got swag! Obviously not the character-type, but the bookish type, because I think we all know I don’t actually have any swagger. I’m probably the least swaggiest of them all.

I thought it would be fun to show you guys some of the bookish swag I’ve collected over the past few years. I’ve also decided that I don’t need to keep some of this swag, especially the swag that goes with books I’ve never read or heard of before. This means there’ll be a GIVEAWAY at the end of this post! But first, take a look at my bookish goodies.

This first pic is just a bunch of random stuff. I’ve got some A Mad Zombie Party cards, some Unbreakable jewelry, and a lot more. If you’re curious about anything, just leave a comment and I’ll let you know what it is. I totally realize that these pics aren’t the best in the world. I should get a good camera instead of using my phone all the time.

Some postcards.

And these are stickers and bookplates. I need to put the A Touch Mortal one in my book, but I don’t have it with me. *sigh*

Here are my posters. I know, I know. You’re asking why I haven’t put them up yet. Well, I don’t really have the wall space. I’ll put them up once I have my own place and a permanent job. Basically, once I’m not in college anymore.

Oh, and here are some of the press releases I’ve collected over the years. I think I’ve thrown quite a few away, but I’ve stopped myself from doing that now.

BUTTONS! Everybody loves buttons. I actually don’t have a lot of these, but the ones I have are still cool.

These are my chapter samplers. I actually own most

of these books now, so I’m not 100% sure why I’m keeping them around. 

The swag type I have the most of is actually bookmarks. I have a ton of these suckers. I don’t use them in my books because I tend to lose bookmarks very easily. I actually use the cheap paper ones bookstores give out when you make a purchase.

So, there you have it, all my swag in its swaggy glory. I’m hoping that one day, when I have my own place and my own room solely dedicated to books, I can have room on my shelves to display this swag with its books, but for now, I’ll just stow it away and drool over it every once in a while.

Now, onto the giveaway!

GIVEAWAY

I have two swag packs to give away, so there will be two winners.

The first one has a Spellcaster bookmark, some Carry On tattoos, a Kiss of Frost bookmark, an On the Hunt postcard, and more.

And the second one has an Angelfire bookmark, some magnets, some Leah Cypess bookmarks (signed), and some Personal Demon tattoos.

In order to win, first make sure you follow the rules (see below), then make sure to fill out the Rafflecopter form. The main entry will be free, but there are bonus entries if you want more chances to win.

Rules

1.      Must live in the U.S. or have a U.S. address to ship the swag to.

2.      Must fill out the Rafflecopter form.

3.      Must be 18 years or older or 13 years or older with parental permission in order to enter.

4.      The giveaway opens on December 3, 2015 and closes on January 1, 2016.

5.      I am not responsible for lost/stolen shipping.
6. If a winner does not reply to me within 48 hours of receiving my email, I will choose a new one.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Stacking the Shelves: The Mad Swag Edition

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

No books this week. Boo. I did get some cool swag, though.

I pre-ordered Gena Showalter’s A Mad Zombie Party, just so I could get this swag pack. Okay, so that wasn’t the only reason. :)

What books have you bought/received lately?