Category: hauls

Haul | Powell’s Book Haul

DeAnne3 Comments

Hey everyone! I’m currently on a little overnight trip with my partner because we had to travel for a medical appointment and since we were in Portland, Oregon anyways, we decided to pop into the Powell’s location at Cedar Hills Crossing in Beaverton. I didn’t have time or the energy to go to the main Powell’s location (and honestly, I wanted to go to a store that I knew would likely be less crowded than the main store) and I’ve been to the one in Beaverton before and found it to be plenty big on it’s own.

Now that we’re back to our AirBnB and I’m exhausted I was wondering what I should share with you when Rich said “show them what you got at Powell’s!” – so I’m going to do just that.

To be fair, I had saved up a good chunk of money for this possible trip, so while there’s a lot I still stayed within my budget. Here’s what I got!

My travel Caticorn says hi! He goes on every trip with me to help with my anxiety and give me something to hug should I need it.

I also got a few fun goodies from the impulse aisle, because of course I did!

So there you have it, that’s what I got! I won’t be going to a huge book store again anytime in the near future, so since I budgeted and stayed within said budget, I’m ok with that. I definitely have plenty of reading material to hold me over!

Happy reading!

Book Haul | February 2021

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Hey everyone! I didn’t add a ton of books to my library last month, which is a good thing, but it also means this post will likely be pretty short. I got some manga from Amazon, had one Barnes and Noble trip and of course got a couple books from Book of the Month. This means I’ve only added eight books to my physical TBR from February.

Did you add any of these to your library? What books did you pick up?

Happy reading!

Book Haul | January 2021

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Hey everyone! That’s right, book hauls are back now too – at least for the foreseeable future. I won’t lie, going book shopping or ordering a couple books have been boosts to my mental health when I’ve needed it, so this month’s haul is pretty large.

In January I acquired 16 books – four came from book of the month (my pick, two add ons and my freebie from the finalists for being a BFF) a couple came from Amazon and then the rest were split between my local indie bookstore and Barnes and Noble.

I don’t know whether February will be better or worse, but I’m not going to beat up on myself if it’s worse. This is one of the few things boosting my mental health, so if it helps I’m not going to tell myself not to do it. Plus, I read way more books than I acquired – which I consider a win.

For those wondering where Calypso is in all this…she was supervising of course!

Happy reading!

Ebook Haul | 6/29

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Hey lovely people! I haven’t been buying a ton of physical books lately. I wouldn’t say I’m on a buying ban or anything, I’ve just been way too busy, not going out much and trying to read some of the books I already have. So for today’s post I thought I would share some of the ebooks I’ve picked up recently.

First I found a number of the Tor.com original short stories available so I picked up a bunch of them!

I also picked up The Empress of Salt and Fortune since I’ve been hearing amazing things about it. The others I have picked up have been a little random as I’ve been looking for things that would make me smile or laugh, so that’s what the rest hopefully represent. I’d never heard of the other three, but I read the blurbs and was interested in all of them.

So what have you gotten in ebook form lately? Have you found any amazing new-to-you reads?

Happy reading!

May Wrap Up and Haul

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So, it’s time to talk about May and in general it wasn’t a great month. I know a lot of people who are home more have been reading a ton more and plowing through their TBRs…not so much for me. The mental and emotional toll of 2020 has thrown me into a major reading slump, even though I’m enjoying a lot of what I’m reading. Safe to say this post will be a shorter one, but it is what it is.

I read a total of 18 books in May and most of those were either Kindle Unlimited graphic novels or review books. Review books were really my focus because of course I would like to stay caught up. Of all of them two were physical books, one from my TBR and one physical ARC that was kindly sent to me by Tor.

I had five 3 star books, ten 4 star books and three 5 star books, so I was obviously liking pretty much everything I read.

I only added three books to my TBR this month, so that was also a win. In May I wasn’t doing a ton of shopping and was just in a funk in general (my bank account thanks me) so I just didn’t buy a ton of books.

So that’s it for May! I’m hoping June will be far better and I’ll be able to get back in my groove of reading. What did you read this month? How many books have you bought in lockdown?

Happy reading!

Wrap Up and Haul | April 2020

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April was a very interesting month, to be sure. Whether you’re an essential worker, high risk, suddenly without employment or otherwise, it’s been a difficult season. I have been lucky enough to keep my full time job and have been allowed to work from home, which is good since I am part of the high risk population. Even with this my anxiety and depression have been increasing and my ability to focus on things such as reading has been hampered.

That being said imagine my surprise when I ended up reading the most books of the year so far in April! To be fair many of those that were not review books were either graphic novels or novella length so they were relatively quick reads.

In total I read 29 books, 16 of which were review books. The rest were ebooks. Yep, that’s right, I didn’t read any physical books from my TBR. The only physical book I was able to move to my read shelf was Night of the Dragon, which I read as an ARC and had pre-ordered a physical copy.

For star ratings I had five 2 star books, nine 3 star books, eleven 4 star books and four 5 star books. Overall a positive reading month in that respect.

Now onto the books I hauled. Overall not a ton added to the TBR list, but there were some. April is my birthday month, so in lieu of getting together for my birthday my mom paid for a Book Outlet order as well as a Thriftbooks order. In addition to those I did get some books from Amazon and Book of the Month.

There were more books in the Book Outlet order (picture on the left) but they were books I had already read so they went on the read shelf and don’t go into my TBR. The same goes for the Thrift Books order, but that order was another big batch of Nancy Drew books to add to my collection.

So that covers everything! Hopefully May will be a better month mental health wise (I know so many people are suffering right now with similar things) and will lead to me knocking more books off of my TBR!

What did you pick up this month? Happy reading!

March Wrap Up & Haul

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March was a difficult month, I’m not going to lie. While I’m not going to go into details as to exactly what I went through, let’s just say my anxiety and stress were maxxed. Still, I managed to read 22 books this month. Twelve were review books (inlcuding one print ARC), 2 were print books on my TBR and eight were on my kindle.

While I didn’t read as many physical books as I would have liked, I’m happy with the amount I read.

As to the number of books I brought in, there ended up being 12. I’ve already read two of them (Love Looks Pretty on You and Night of the Dragon though I read Night of the Dragon in April).

So that was March. It was a hard month for everyone I think, but now we’re moving forward.

No wrap up and haul would be complete without an appearance by Calypso, so here she is supervising my pictures as usual!

Happy reading!

February Book Haul

DeAnne2 Comments

It’s that time of the month again where I go through my stats to see how I did. When it comes to new books, my goal is always to bring in less than I read each month. With that in mind, I keep track of everything that I bring in each month, but the only ones that count towards my new books/read books ratio are the ones that actually get added to my TBR.

Firstly I do have a few books added to my collection that I’d read before purchasing them, so they don’t count towards my challenge. This month I added a few more Nancy Drew books to fill in some holes in my collection as well as a copy of Snug, which I read as an eArc and wanted a physical copy of.

Next I bought the rest of Heather Graham’s Krewe of Hunters series that I was missing so I have all of them available to me. I also picked up three books from Book of the Month this month. My regular book was You Are Not Alone while the other two were add-ons. I then picked up two graphic novels, but managed to read both of them in the month of February, so that one was a win.

And then…a few trips to Barnes and Noble and Amazon happened. Oops? I picked up a number of books that I’ve been meaning to get for a while as well as some new releases that I’ve been looking forward to. I won’t lie, some of this pile was a present to myself out of my tax refund, but I’m hoping March will be a much smaller book haul month cause I need to get to my physical books!

Finally, no book haul post would be complete without Calypso’s help. She likes to keep me on my toes when I’m trying to take pictures!

Happy reading!

January Wrap Up and Haul

DeAnne5 Comments

It’s hard to believe that January is already over, but here we are. It flew by super fast and thought I didn’t get everything I wanted done, I do feel like I made great progress for the start of the year.

In total I read 21 books, 16 of which were review books I had on my list. So, that means that only 5 were non review books with 4 being physical copies that got taken off my TBR shelf and one that was on my kindle. (Sidenote: Don’t Read the Comments was read as an ARC, but I loved it so much I went out and bought myself a physical copy,.)

I’m really happy with my ratings for this month as I didn’t have anything lower than 3 stars. My breakdown was six 3 star books, 13 four stars and two 5 star books.

Now to my haul, this month I brought in 10 physical books that were added to my TBR. This included three from Book of the Month, the rest either came from Amazon or my local bookstore.

I’m trying to fill in my holes in the Krewe of Hunters series from Heather Graham, so that’s why I have a few from that series. I’ve been reading them since the first series that started with Adam Harrison Investigations, but I’ve fallen quite a bit behind.

Overall I’m happy with the way January shaped up, I didn’t bring in a ton of books and I got a decent amount of my review books taken care of. After the slump that was the last three months of last year I am trying to get all caught up.

And again, Calypso couldn’t resist helping me when I was taking pictures for this post!

Happy reading!

November Book Haul

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Well, November was an interesting month. I was super busy with a trip (which contributed most of the books for this month) and a ton of stuff at work. So without further ado, let’s get into it.

In early November I went to the Portland Book Festival. Thankfully I had stashed some money so I didn’t have to hugely worry about my budget. I picked up a number of books directly at the festival. It was great meeting authors and publishers but it was also definitely a strain on my anxiety since there were tons of crowds. Still, I had a great time.

In the same trip my boyfriend and I went to the main Powell’s and I had a shopping spree there. Thankfully he’s used to me roaming bookstores for extended periods of time so he let me wander. I managed to do quite a bit of damage there as well, but I had known ahead of time that the Portland trip would definitely be the bulk of my purchases for the month.

Then there were my Book of the Month books, I chose Get a Life, Chloe Brown and then added Song of the Crimson Flower as an add on. I always do either one or two of their selections, you can’t beat the prices.

I had told myself that those were going to be all the books that I got this month but then today found myself in Barnes and Noble. I wanted to pick up Queen of Nothing since I wanted all my editions to match, then let myself pick up a few more.

So that’s all the books I picked up this month. Since today is the last day of the month I know there won’t be any others being added to the list. I had known that this month would be pretty full and budget busting. I’m hoping I can decrease the amount in December. I don’t have any major buying plans, so most of what I get will likely be gifts.

What did you pick up this month? Happy reading!