Book Heaven!

​Hey, guys! Last month, I promised I’d show you what books I’ve been buying/reading, so here we go!

​Pictured above and below: book binge-buying rounds 1 and 2! I absolutely LOVE Ollie’s and their $2–$5 books!!! I’ve also made a few purchases on Amazon, some of which have yet to arrive. And I got a couple of 75-cent books from the library! I bought two books at full price from Barnes and Noble, beautiful books I really, really wanted...but I got mostly cash for my birthday, and had a bunch of it from Christmas too. I LOVE that my family just gives me money for presents – they know me! – so I can later discover books and buy them!! :D (And, thanks to Ollie’s and thrift/library buys, I still have some $ left!)

Yes, I’m building up my collection partly for TikTok purposes. I don’t own a lot of the books I have actually read and needed more fantasy/sci-fi on my shelves. (I have sooo much nonfiction on my three other shelves that won’t be shown in TikTok.) If you haven’t seen my posts about my and Thinklings’ #BookTok accounts, check ’em out at those links!

Before buying all these books, I googled them and read a bunch of reviews to see if they 1) get overall good reviews, and 2) seem like the kind of books I’d actually enjoy and recommend. If a book didn’t meet those criteria, I didn’t buy it. (Some of them, Deborah loves and recommended, and I know she has great taste.) I hope to be able to read all these books someday!! At some point, I’m going to stop myself from buying any more. ;)

​As for which books I’ve actually read...heh...well. I have what feels like 3 jobs. And I’m still sick. And I’m a rather slow, ADHD reader. It basically sucks. I’ll read a few pages, then come across something that reminds me of something else, and then my annoyingly hyper brain loves to dart down all these rabbit trails rather than continuing on down the path of the book, and I have to keep ripping myself out of those detours and back to the world of the book! *sigh* (Or The Boys, hubby and puppy, will be making all kinds of noises and distracting me! Grrrr. I try to read after Oscar goes to bed.)
 
I did finish Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund, a book I got for Christmas from my parents, earlier this month. My wonderful mom really knew I needed to read it, and it’s now at/near the very top of my list* of favorite Christian nonfiction of all time! This book is so comforting, yet doesn’t water down anything or ignore anything from the Bible. It uses a lot of content from several Puritan writers, and it unmasks a lot of lies that people (yes, everyone, even Christians) believe about God. Soooooo good. Definitely will reread it!
 
I just finished reading Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan. The book is as beautiful inside as outside! It’s so epic!! I made a TikTok video about it, which you can see here. (I also put the vid in my Instagram.) ​My ADHD is not as much of a problem with this book – so you KNOW it has to be good! LOL.

A few days ago, I started reading Six of Crows. I kept hearing people rave about it, and a fantasy heist story sounded super awesome, so I had to pick that one up next!! (It kind of makes me think of a combination of Skate the Thief and Bargaining Power!)

More books from Amazon, B&N, and the library! ... Yes, I love using this old chair for pics. It used to be my grandparents'!

​Well...I suppose I should also talk about my writing! How’s book 2 coming along? I keep sneaking in some work on it most nights, even if I’m so ADHD that I can only get 100 words out. But, hey, sometimes I manage almost 500! I’m in the middle of crafting a very tense, emotional scene that is kind of hard for me to write, not having a relationship in my real life like the turbid one I’m fleshing out. (No more, no spoilers!) Wow, this scene is tough, but I’m still enjoying writing it! I thought of a good metaphorical theme to incorporate, too – yay! It’s been a long time coming, something I’ve known was going to happen in the plot from very early on while working on book 1...I can’t believe I’m actually writing it now!
 
As of last night (April 27), my WIP (sequel to Hunter’s Moon) is ~75,000 words long. So 75% done, probably. Woot!! We all know the tortoise wins....

Another bit of writing I wanted to mention is this article I wrote for Shepherd.com about my 5 favorite werewolf books. Check out Shepherd; it’s a cool, newer site that’s aiming to do some things that Goodreads doesn’t. Things that are better for authors. (Don’t want to knock GR so won’t elaborate. And yes, I will still be using GR.)

I hope you’re having a lovely spring, and I hope the weather starts acting more like spring soon! (:

What are some awesome books you’ve been reading lately, or what book(s) are you dying to read next?


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*I don’t have an actual, ranked list. Ain’t nobody got time for that! I gotta keep reading!! ;P