September 2019 Book Haul

I think I am going to start back with my book hauls again. Now that I have the note feature on my tablet I can more easily record when I acquire books. So let's start these up again. Hopefully I can keep up with this.

I acquired 17 books in September. 

#1: The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow

Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the deaths of one-third of the world’s population. Seventeen-year-old Janelle “Ellie” Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. Deemed dangerously volatile because of their initial reaction to the invasion, humanity’s emotional transgressions are now grounds for execution. All art, books and creative expression are illegal, but Ellie breaks the rules by keeping a secret library. When a book goes missing, Ellie is terrified that the Ilori will track it back to her and kill her. Born in a lab, M0Rr1S (Morris) was raised to be emotionless. When he finds Ellie’s illegal library, he’s duty-bound to deliver her for execution. The trouble is, he finds himself drawn to human music and in desperate need of more. They’re both breaking the rules for love of art—and Ellie inspires the same feelings in him that music does. Ellie’s—and humanity’s—fate rests in the hands of an alien she should fear. M0Rr1S has a lot of secrets, but also a potential solution—thousands of miles away. The two embark on a wild and dangerous road trip with a bag of books and their favorite albums, all the while making a story and a song of their own that just might save them both.

I got this from NetGalley in return for a review. In all honesty, I didn't even read past the line where it said "...the invading Ilori..." it has aliens. And books. I don't really want to know more. I prefer going into my books blind. It looks very interesting and reading more of the synopsis, it looks like something I will love because it's random. There are aliens, humans, beaker-babies that are neither alien or human, I can't wait. It looks beautiful. This book is being published by Harlequin TEEN on 25 February 2020. Let's see if I like it?


#2: The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup 

If you find one, he’s already found you. A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen. His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene. Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago. A tragic coincidence—or something more twisted? To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the Chestnut Man’s gruesome clues. Because it’s clear that the madman is on a mission that is far from over. And no one is safe.

I thought I would give Book of the Month club a try and since they are running a special for your first month, I was like yeah why not? I picked this one because I remembered the synopsis from one of the Goodreads Giveaways (that I did not win) and it looked really interesting. I like chestnuts, and I'm wondering if this will forever put me off of them. It sounded like something that I would love. It's one of those thrillers that leave you at first going "But....why?" I'm struggling right now to fathom why the killer would be leaving behind chestnut figures. I want to know if there is any sort of backstory for that given in the book. Unfortunately I may not get to this right away, as I have a set TBR for the next few months for read alongs. I do plan to read it as soon as the opportunity presents itself. 


#3: The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee

The longest-living Avatar in this beloved world’s history, Kyoshi established the brave and respected Kyoshi Warriors, but also founded the secretive Dai Li, which led to the corruption, decline, and fall of her own nation. The first of two novels based on Kyoshi, The Rise of Kyoshi maps her journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice who is still feared and admired centuries after she became the Avatar.

I adored the book I won from Goodreads by this author and I do actually enjoy Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra from Nickelodeon. They were amazing stories and now that this is out and is considered canon, I have to read it. It looks really good and I can't wait to get into it after my other reading is completed for the month. 


#4: My Hero Academia #5 by Kohei Horikoshi 

The final stages of the U.A. High sports festival promise to be explosive as Uraraka takes on Bakugo in a head to head match! Bakugo never gives anyone a break, and the crowd holds its breath as the battle begins. The finals will push the students of Class 1-A to their limits and beyond!

Yes. We all know I've been reading this series and watching it. My first completed "proper" cosplay is actually of the cover character from volume five. This is the series that actually prompted me to get into cosplay and go to conventions, so of course I want the manga to go with the anime. I have been on the hunt for volume 5 for a few weeks. I don't get many chances to actually go into a bookstore that has manga, and every time I would go in, they would have 1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 14, 16, 17. They never had volume 5 available. Finally the other day when we went to check out a sale, I found volume 5! I have already read it and you can see my review in my Wrap Up.


#5: My Hero Academia #6 by Kohei Horikoshi 

In the aftermath of the sports festival, the class 1-A students begin their internships. Midoriya goes to study under Gran Torino, who was once All Might’s mentor. Gran Torino appears to be a washed-up nutjob, but the old hero still has more moves than a football team, and Midoriya has a lot to learn! Elsewhere, the League of Villains enacts another sinister plot and unleashes a terrifying new enemy!

I'm happy. They had volumes 5 & 6 there. So I grabbed it while I had the time and the money to get my hands on it. This one introduces one of the characters that I adore because of how just...random....Gran Torino. I never understood the fish cake thing, but it is what it is. Now then! I cannot wait to get into this story and continue on. I remember how the anime dealt with Stain, hut I want to know how the manga treats it and if it's similar or different from how they handled it in the show. 


#6: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

It's official: the evil Lord Voldemort has returned. His influence is suddenly everywhere in the Wizarding world, and his former allies, the Death Eaters, are returning to his side in droves. In response, the Order of the Phoenix, which worked to stop him during his last rise to power, has reconvened. This time, all of the adults Harry trusts have joined in. And even though Harry is at the center of many of their plans—Voldemort is intent on killing him, after all—they want so badly to protect him that they are keeping him completely out of the loop. Problems are cropping up at Hogwarts, too, where government officials are meddling in just about everything. And just because Voldemort and the Death Eaters are threatening open warfare does not mean that fifth-year students get out of their exams. Meanwhile, Harry's powerful connection to Voldemort seems to be growing even stronger, as he realizes that he has direct access to the Dark Lord's mind. It's time for Harry and his friends to take drastic action, but the course they choose will have terrible unforeseen consequences.

I have read these before. Hell, I've owned these before in hard cover, but I gave them away and I realized recently how dumb of an idea that was and now I'm slowly purchasing the whole series over again. Now I just need volumes 6 and 7 to complete the original canon series. Not sure if I'm going to buy the screenplays or not. I don't really think of anything past Deathly Hallows as canon, but that's just me. Hopefully I can get the other two volumes before the end of September and I can have all the cool things!


#7: Irena's Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo

In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While she was there, she began to understand the fate that awaited the Jewish families who were unable to leave. Soon she reached out to the trapped families, going from door to door and asking them to trust her with their young children. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city’s sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings. But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept a secret list buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend’s back garden. On it were the names and true identities of these Jewish children, recorded so their families could find them after the war. She could not know that more than ninety percent of their families would perish.


#8: The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive. One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.


#9: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.


#10: Chilling Ghost Stories by Bernhardt J. Hurwood

Ghosts are abroad! Things walk in the night! Here are sixteen shivery, quivery stories to haunt the dark hours - famous stories unchallenged for sheer spookiness. These are stories that dare you to put them down unread. Stories included: The House That Didn't Want Anyone to Live In It, What the Gravedigger Saw, The Pirate Ghost of Gombi Isle, The Midnight Ghost, The Haunted Clock, A-Ling and the Evil Spirits, The Magician, The Thing, The Woman in Green Velvet, The Phantom's Gold, Riding a Tombstone, The Headless Princess, The Woman Who Climbed From Her Grave, The Banshee Whose Feelings Were Hurt, The Ghost Who Helped a Ghost, and The Poltergeist with the Heart of a Genie.

I grabbed this from yard sale in my town for a whopping ten cents. Because it's September and October and Halloween are right around the corner. Who doesn't want creepy ghostie stories right now? It's only 110 pages, so it's something I can read between the other books on my massive October TBR for the Let's Read Voltron challenges. It looks fun though. I can also sub it in for "blue cover" in Lance's prompts. 


#11: A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

First published in 1955, A Night to Remember remains a completely riveting account of the Titanic's fatal collision and the behavior of the passengers and crew, both noble and ignominious. Some sacrificed their lives, while others fought like animals for their own survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in lifeboats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; and hundreds of steerage passengers, trapped below decks, sought help in vain. 

I am a big fan of historical books as well as fiction. And for ten cents, who could pass up a book about the sinking of the Titanic? It is a huge shipwreck that still has the minds of people enthralled even though I'm pretty sure that no one actually involved are alive any more? I will have to look that up. Anyway, it was cheap and looked interesting. 


#12: Where is Joe Merchant? by Jimmy Buffett


Five years ago, rock star Joe Merchant committed suicide, yet he keeps popping back into the tabloid headlines. Where is Joe Merchant? That's what his sister Trevor Kane, the hemorrhoid ointment heiress, wants to know. For South Seas psychic Desdemona, Merchant is the missing link needed to connect her with other worlds. And the mystery of the presumed dead but oft-sighted rock star's disappearance is pulling renegade sea plane pilot Frank Bama into the perilous path of psychos, wackos, pirates, and dictators--on  wild ride from Key West to the Caribbean to a lush tropical paradise where anything can happen...and everything does.

For those of you that don't know (how could you?) I am actually a huge fan of Jimmy Buffett. His was one of the first concerts that I've ever been to. So when I saw this at the yard sale where I got the previous two books, I figured I 


#13: In a Quarter of a Second by Anita Kirk

A young group of space-bowling friends get transported thirty years into the future. They go on a strange adventure/mission to recover items for the city people. They take life into their own hands, experiencing strange difficulties along the way on their journey.

This book was suggested to me by the author on Goodreads. I was like "The synopsis looks....interesting. What's space-bowling?" so I paid the $5 for it and started reading it...and immediately regretted my decision. This book makes no sense whatsoever. The characters are supposedly given whistles that are small, whistle sized, but covered in various buttons. That is physically impossible? I think she put zero effort into making this something readable. I don't know how some people get published. It was almost worth the $5 to have it as a "here's what not to do in publishing" book on my Kindle. I'm not buying her stuff ever again.


#14: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

When Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens, the war against Voldemort has begun. The Wizarding world has split down the middle, and as the casualties mount, the effects even spill over onto the Muggles. Dumbledore is away from Hogwarts for long periods, and the Order of the Phoenix has suffered grievous losses. And yet, as in all wars, life goes on. Harry, Ron, and Hermione, having passed their O.W.L. level exams, start on their specialist N.E.W.T. courses. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate, losing a few eyebrows in the process. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Harry becomes captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, while Draco Malfoy pursues his own dark ends. And classes are as fascinating and confounding as ever, as Harry receives some extraordinary help in Potions from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince. Most importantly, Dumbledore and Harry work together to uncover the full and complex story of a boy once named Tom Riddle—the boy who became Lord Voldemort. Like Harry, he was the son of one Muggle-born and one Wizarding parent, raised unloved, and a speaker of Parseltongue. But the similarities end there, as the teenaged Riddle became deeply interested in the Dark objects known as Horcruxes: objects in which a wizard can hide part of his soul, if he dares splinter that soul through murder. Harry must use all the tools at his disposal to draw a final secret out of one of Riddle’s teachers, the sly Potions professor Horace Slughorn. Finally Harry and Dumbledore hold the key to the Dark Lord’s weaknesses... until a shocking reversal exposes Dumbledore’s own vulnerabilities, and casts Harry’s—and Hogwarts’s—future in shadow.

I just want to complete my collection of the Harry Potter series in hardback. I am nearly complete with the purchase of this book. I have read this one in the past and now I am happy that I own it again and can re-read it in hardcover whenever I want to. So happy! If you don't know this book series by now, what rock have you been living under?

#15: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 

Harry Potter is leaving Privet Drive for the last time. But as he climbs into the sidecar of Hagrid’s motorbike and they take to the skies, he knows Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters will not be far behind. T

he protective charm that has kept him safe until now is broken. But the Dark Lord is breathing fear into everything he loves. And he knows he can’t keep hiding. 

To stop Voldemort, Harry knows he must find the remaining Horcruxes and destroy them. 

He will have to face his enemy in one final battle.

I've started this book, but never read the final two chapters. It's that conundrum of having seen the movies and knowing already how it will end and just not wanting it to. I intend to read it all the way through to the end in this latest reread. This also finally completes my purchasing of the original series in hardcover. I am so happy that I have them all again and with the dust jackets this time. I got rid of my original copies. Ugh, I can't wait to make it all the way to Deathly Hallows again. 

#16: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles of genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian lore of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. Now in his new novel, David Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite...

Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neo-capitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a post apocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. 

But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. 

As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

It looked interesting and I already had two other David Mitchell books that both had reviews and praise in/on them for Cloud Atlas, so when I found it for sale as a used book at Books-a-Million for $2 I couldn't pass it up. It will eventually be put on my 2020 reading list one month. It definitely looks good and I cannot wait to get to it.

#17: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Barcelona, 1945. Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, 'The Shadow of the Wind', by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.

Though I've since gotten rid of it, I once ended up with a copy of The Angel's Game, which is the second book in this series and it's one of those book series where you have to read them in order or you don't know what is going on. So I figured when I found this one for cheap in the store, I would grab it and read it. If I like it, I will reacquire the second book. Hopefully I do actually enjoy it.