Book Haul #56: Small Press Expo 2019

I’m so proud of myself… and a little disappointed too.

I attended the Small Press Expo (SPX) earlier in September. It’s a comic book expo for independent publishers and creators that I’ve been attending since 2016 (didn’t go in 2018 — I was probably sick). I’ve enjoyed myself every year that I’ve attended, but I’ve yet to make it to any of the seminars!

In past years, I missed the seminars because I got distracted by the showroom floor. I’d spend hours there buying books and prints. This year, however, I got to the event late because I had to work before attending, so I missed most of the seminars and was too exhausted to attend the remaining ones.

Unlike the previous two years I attended, I didn’t buy everything I saw and overspend this time. 🙂 That’s why I’m so proud of myself. I had a budget and only went over it by $50. I consider that a success. 😀

But I am a little disappointed because there were SOOOO many things I wanted but had to prevent myself from getting because I wanted to stick to my budget. So although I was excited to attend the event and enjoyed myself while there despite my exhaustion, I was a little sad because I didn’t get everything I wanted. I may have sulked a bit like a little kid. (Lol!)

But I consider this event a success because some of the comics I hauled are ones I really, REALLY wanted, AND I got them signed!! 😀 Of course, I picked up a few prints as well. You can see them on my IG here. I’ll only focus on the books in this post.

(Title links below are to the publisher/artist’s website where you can see samples of the illustrations.)

Small Press Expo

Books

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Top Ten Tuesday #43: Fall 2019 TBR

Totally late, but whatever.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that was created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish but is now managed by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic:

Books on My Fall 2019 TBR

For me, a TBR list often becomes a list of books I really want to read and tell myself to read but never actually read, which is kinda what happened with my summer TBR. I read every other book except the ones on my TBR. Well, I did manage to read one — The Lost Years of Merlin — but that’s because I read it for a buddy-read. If not for that, it probably wouldn’t have been read.

Anyway, here’s what I might not read this fall.

“Cinderella: or The Little Glass Slipper” by Charles Perrault, illus. by Camille Rose Garcia

As a kid, my favorite fairytale was Cinderella. I would read the story over and over and would even write what I now know to be fanfic of it. I love stories about good people who are downtrodden and mistreated but are able to escape, work towards, or be rescued and carried off to a better life. For some reason, I strongly related to this. Life in Jamaica wasn’t bad, but it was (and is) hard, and I would often dream of the day my parents would come rescue me and carry me off to live with them in the fabled land of America, where anything is possible.

Now that I’m living in America and saddled with student loans, I now dream of the day that I win the lotto/find a long-lost rich uncle/get a huge raise that will help me pay off my student loans quickly.

My love for Cinderella did not fade over the years. It grew stronger. And although I hardly ever reread the fairytale, I easily fall for its retellings, like Cinder by Marissa Meyer, or stories that have characters who allude to Cinderella in some way, like Harry Potter. So, I was beyond excited when Millie from Milliebot Reads featured this edition of the fairytale in one of her Judging a Book by Its Cover posts. I knew right then that I had to purchase it. The illustrations and book design called to me. And when the NEWTs Magical Readathon came around, I took the opportunity to finally reread one of my favorite fairytales.

Top 5 Tuesday #17: Fall Reading Recs

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm.

This week’s topic:

Top 5 fall reading recommendations

Shadow Weaver by MarcyKate Connolly

A middle-grade fantasy novel with some horror elements, Shadow Weaver is about a girl named Emmeline who is best friends with her shadow, Dar. In this world, people are gifted (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with certain abilities after the passing of the Cerelia Comet every 25 years. Emmeline was gifted with the ability to manipulate shadows, but her abilities often frighten people and drive away close ones.

Friday Face-Off: Hair’s Gotta Be There

Friday Face-Off is a weekly meme that compares book covers to decide which is best. It was created by Books by Proxy and is now continued by Lynn’s Book Blog.

This week’s theme:

“Your hair is winter fire, January embers.”

A cover featuring hair

It was easier to think of a cover for this week’s prompt, but still I ran into a problem — I couldn’t remember the title of the book or the author or what it’s about. I only knew that it’s sci-fi and that I like the cover because of the hair on it. Luckily, I recalled that I first saw it reviewed on the Bibliosanctum. So with that clue, I was able to find Andrew Mayne’s The Naturalist.

Turns out that I was wrong about it being sci-fi (oh, memory). It’s actually a thriller about a computational biologist named Theo who gets caught up in an investigation of a bloody killing of one of his students. I’m not big on thrillers and mysteries, but the cover makes me willing to try it.

FACE OFF!

US

Brazil

US | Brazil

Latvia

Czech

Latvia | Czech

Comics Roundup #32: “Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur” and “Moonstruck, Vol. 1”

Aww man. Comics Roundup #32 features two comics that were disappointments for me. I really thought I would love them both, but they left me feeling bored. The upside, though, is that I really love the art and characters in one of them, which made me enjoy it a little.

I read both of these for the NEWTs Magical Readathon.

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Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Vol. 1: BFF by Brandon Montclare & Amy Reeder, illus. by Natacha Bustos with colors by Tamra Bonvillain

Genre:

YA sci-fi

Series:

Marvel-verse
Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, volume 1

Pubbed:

November 2015

Quick summary:

This is the first volume of a comic book based in the Marvel universe. It’s about Lunella Lafayette, a preteen genius who’s bored at school because she’s preoccupied with worrying about her latent inhuman gene. She befriends a dinosaur who was sent through time to protect an orb that Lunella calls an Omni-Wave Projector from prehistoric savages. The two get up to crazy shenanigans to get and protect the orb all while wreaking havoc on the city in their attempts to do so. (Goodreads)

Comics Roundup #31: “The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil”

This is one of many books I added to my TBR during my booktube craze. Back then, I’d get excited about whatever book was mentioned by a booktuber, buy it, and promptly throw it on my bookshelf to forget about it. That’s what happened to this one until I finally decided to read it for the NEWTs Magical Readathon.

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The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins (illus.)

Genre:

Fantasy

Series:

n/a

Pubbed:

June 2013

Goodreads summary:

On the island of Here, livin’s easy. Conduct is orderly. Lawns are neat. Citizens are clean shaven — and Dave is the most fastidious of them all. Dave is bald, but for a single hair. He loves drawing, his desk job, and the Bangles. But on one fateful day, his life is upended… by an unstoppable (yet pretty impressive) beard.

An off-beat fable worthy of Roald Dahl and Tim Burton, Stephen Collins’ The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil is a darkly funny meditation on life, death, and what it means to be different — and a timeless ode to the art of beard maintenance. (Goodreads)

Let’s Rewind: August 2019

August was a great month. I relaxed, I enjoyed time with friends, I participated in a fun readathon, I worked my ass off at my jobs, and… I was exhausted by the end of it hence the tardiness of this post.

Let’s Rewind is my version of a monthly wrap up but instead of talking about only books, I include all types of other stuff, like articles… bookish news… commercials… random-ass links… movies… art… podcasts… cartoons… and whatever else happened to me in the month. You know, the usual stuff that people talk about in monthly wrap ups. So read on to see what I did and read this month. You might stumble upon something that interests you.

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August got off on a great start in my personal life. A friend, who’s also a bibliophile, and I decided to take a Reading Retreat at a seaside town in Maryland. It was wonderful. (And, as we were planning this trip, we realized that Reading Retreats are becoming more popular. We found various posts on the internet about ideal spots for Reading Retreats.) The plan was to go away for the weekend and read a book or two. But instead, we read only a page or two, lol! 😀

Friday Face-Off: A Cover with ‘Curse’ in the Title

Friday Face-Off is a weekly meme that compares book covers to decide which is best. It was created by Books by Proxy and is now continued by Lynn’s Book Blog.

This week’s theme:

Unlucky for some

A cover with ‘curse’ in the title

After spending a couple minutes convinced that I don’t know any books with the word “curse” in the title despite the many fantasy and horror novels I know of or have read, I remembered my post for last week’s Top 5 Tuesday where I listed the series I’d love to complete. Lois McMaster Bujold’s World of the Five Gods was one of them.

I read The Curse of Chalion two years ago and loved it so much that I reread it by audio book about a month after completing the physical copy. It’s one of my favorite fantasy books. It’s about a veteran who returns home seeking a peaceful life but is instead thrown into the midst of political intrigue. I’ve since forgotten what drew me to this book, but I ended up liking it because of the writing and the protagonist and how gods and religion functions in the fantasy world. It was a good read.

I decided to go easy on myself for this week’s post and focus on just two covers. These are both covers for U.S. editions of the book. The first one, the one on the left, appears on my audio book but is sometimes the cover for physical editions of the novel, and the second one, on the right, is the cover of the physical edition I own.

FACE OFF!

Top 5 Tuesday #15: Best Covers of 2019 — so far

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm.

This week’s topic:

Top 5 covers of 2019

I am so gleeful about this week’s topic because it’s all about book covers and if there’s one thing about books that I love more than reading them, it’s admiring beautifully designed book covers. So, of all the books I’ve read so far in 2019, here are my top 5 favorite covers.

Fitz and the Fool trilogy by Robin Hobb

cover design by Dominic Forbes | cover illustration by Jackie Morris | calligraphy by Stephen Raw