Mid-Week Bookish Update

I have mentioned before that I consider book-buying a disease, and I've got the fever. But I've been better about going out and buying books on impulse. Instead I'm making my library card useful and renting a lot of my books recently. Not only that, but I went to my favorite used bookstore, sold a few books from last year's English classes and some others I didn't want anymore, and bought a few books at a great discount.

If you're low on funds but really want to go out and buy a book or just read something new, I highly recommend using your local library or used bookstore to satiate your reading thirst. Or even going to websites like Bookdepository.com (which has free worldwide shipping) or Amazon.com (where I like to get my books used a lot of the time) to get some great deals on books, especially if you're a broke college student like me and you end up spending most of your money on forms of nourishment and textbooks and what not.

Without further ado, here are the books currently in my possession and that I hope to read within the next month. Look for reviews on these in the coming month, too! (Clicking on the title will take you to the goodreads page and the summary for the book).

The Program - by Suzanne Young
I rented this young adult book from the library hoping to read it on my memorial day break (yay for four day weekends woo!) but didn't get a chance to start reading it until yesterday.  It's only just come out, and has a unique premise that I've never come across before. I just hope I can read it all and balance my oncoming onslaught of summer school homework before I have to return it to the library. I've heard very little about this book, what with it being so new, but so far it's really good and I'm quite enjoying it! Oh, and another thing: I've noticed that you get a lot of weird looks when reading a book with a bunch of black, orange, and yellow pills pictured on the back cover while waiting for class to start... Just sayin'.

Impulse - by Ellen Hopkins
I bought this one from the used bookstore, and after reading and being completely pulled in by Hopkins' infamous New York Times Bestseller, Crank, I wanted to see what other books she had to offer. I wasn't really mentally ready to read the sequel to Crank, which is Glass, with it being such a heavy topic (guess what! it involves more meth! A very light read, I'm sure). Don't get me wrong, I though Crank was an amazing, beautifully written book, but I thought I'd take a break and venture into a different subject matter such as mental health (much more cheery, I know. I'm a regular ol' ball of sunshine). And yeah, there is kind of a darker theme among my more recent reads, but I've just really been in the mood to read darker genre/themed books. You know how you'll get into a funk and want to eat Mexican food everyday or read a fluffy chick-lit book everyday, well I'm in a "darker book" themed funk right now. But hopefully that will change into a "classics" themed funk when I read the other book I got from the used bookstore, which is....


Tender is the Night - by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This is another book I found stashed away and on a dusty shelf of the used bookstore I went to this week. I, like so many others, went to see The Great Gatsby in theaters the other week, and I've been bitten by the 20's era bug. This novel is a semi-autobiographical account of Fitzgerald's life, which from what I've heard is very intriguing as well as sort of on the sad side. I also would love to read more classics this summer, and that brings me to my next used bookstore find:

Sleeping Murder - by Agatha Christie
For the longest time, I've been addicted to PBS's Masterpiece Mystery series. It features mostly BBC productions such as Sherlock, as well as my favorites, Agatha Christie's Poirot and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Agatha Christie is known as the queen of mystery, and has sold more mystery books than anyone else.  She's had loads of amazing crime thrillers published, this one being the last before her death, featuring Marple and Poirot, and sadly I have yet to read a single one. I know, it's blasphemous, especially since I claim to be a huge fan of hers when if fact I'm just a fan of the Masterpiece adaptations. Which is exactly why I bought one of her books, to see if I'll enjoy the books as much as I've loved the adaptations.

Northanger Abbey - by Jane Austen
One of my favorite movies is the 2005 adaptation of Austen's Pride and Prejudice (you know, the one with Keira Knightly), and sadly that is the only book by Austen that I've read. And thanks to my recent viewing of the movie The Jane Austen Book Club, I have Austen fever. The movie was amazing and heartfelt and now I just really want to dive into one of her books again. I loved P&P (as I so lovingly call it), and I'm probably the only one of my female bibliophilic friends who hasn't read all of Austen's works. It's weird, but I'm slightly ashamed by that fact. And I own the giant leatherbound Barnes & Noble book with all of Austen's novels in it, so it's not about whether I or not I have the books to start with. I just haven't been in the mood to read them, which is everything when it comes to choosing which book to read next.

I probably won't even end up sticking to this list verbatim for the next month, because as I just said, I've found that whatever mood you're in when you're in between books is usually the deciding factor as to which book you'll pick up next. So we'll see where the wind blows me this coming month.

I bid you all adieu and bon voyage on all of y'all's reading adventures! Hopefully you'll stick to your "To-Be-Read" pile a little better than I do. If you have any suggestions for what I should add to my TBR pile, let me know in the comments section below, and happy reading!