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October 4th, 2009, @ 12:03 am  In My Mailbox In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren … and I end up adding a ton of books to my wishlist every week.
All my IMM posts can be found here!
Monday I came home to TWO large bubble envelopes shoved in my mailbox – soaking wet. Tuesday I came home late (after seeing Fame!) to find the most entertaining package ever waiting for me on the kitchen counter – soaking wet. Wednesday day I came home drugged (after having had 2 45-minute long MRIs in a row (wheee! fun!)) to find ONE bubble envelope shoved in my mailbox – soaking wet.
See a theme here? My mailbox is tiny, but has these little hooks under it and rather than leave me a pick-up notice and leave the parcels at the post office (which is far away) my mailman leaves the parcels shoved in the little hooks – it doesn’t matter if it’s raining or not. And my mail is ALWAYS soggy on rainy days. Sometimes he doesn’t even close the top of the mailbox and regular mail gets soaked. ARGH! Anyhow… This will be photo-heavy because I was SO excited about Tuesday’s parcel that I took photos of the opening process.
Monday:
 Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit (A Novel of King Arthur)
by Mercedes Lackey
For Review – Penguin Canada
The bestselling author of the “Valdemar” novels pens a classic tale about King Arthur’s legendary queen.
Gwenhwyfar moves in a world where gods walk among their pagan worshipers, where nebulous visions warn of future perils, and where there are two paths for a woman: the path of the Blessing or the rarer path of the Warrior. Gwenhwyfar chooses the latter, giving up the power that she is born into. Yet the daughter of a King is never truly free to follow her own calling. Acting as the “son” her father never had, when called upon to serve another purpose by the Ladies of the Well, she bows to circumstances to become Arthur’s queen-only to find herself facing temptation and treachery, intrigue and betrayal, but also love and redemption..
I was so excited when I was asked to review this book! And it’s such a beautiful hard cover, too! Thanks, Penguin Canada!!
 Marvel Runaways – Vols 4 – 7
Marvel Comics
Mooched from Bookmooch. A friend at work got me hooked on this series and I am determined to get my own copies. I now need Vols 1 – 3 and er.. anything after Vol. 7! It’s rare that I find something this awesome on Bookmooch – especially that ships to Canada. (Looks like Volume 9 is set to publish in November. I can’t wait! I’ll be ordering the rest through my comic book store!)
Tuesday:
The. Best. Book. Package Ever!
 Random Magic
by Sasha Soren
For Review & Blog Tour
When absent-minded Professor Random misplaces the main character from “Alice in Wonderland,” young Henry Witherspoon must book-jump to fetch Alice before chaos theory kicks in and the world vanishes.
Along the way he meets Winnie Flapjack, a wit-cracking doodle witch with nothing to her name but a magic feather and a plan. Such as it is.
Henry and Winnie brave the Dark Queen, whatwolves, pirates, Strüths, and fluttersmoths, Priscilla and Charybdis, obnoxiously cheerful vampires, Baron Samedi, a nine-dimensional cat, and one perpetually inebriated Muse to rescue Alice and save the world by tea time.
And this is how it arrived:
A present? For ME? Woohooo!!
So much fun when I opened it up (after taking 5 minutes to cut through ALL the tape. I think the tape is the only thing that kept the book & other fun things safe from the rain!)
Such a pretty package and bow!
And more fun! Posty cards and bookmarks!
Proof that the book is for me! 
Surprise on the inside!
Shiny copy of the book! Does she look like Nicole Kidman to anyone else?
I do so hope the book is as exciting as the packaging.  I had requested this book on LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program, so when I was asked to take part in the blog tour I was so thrilled. I un-requested it from LT, just to be fair.
Wednesday:
 Fire
by Kristin Cashore
Sometimes beauty is the most deadly danger of all …
Wait.. isn’t the description longer than that? How come that’s all I can find? Seems rather useless to blockquote just that one sentence. Hmm. Anyhow, my Book Depository UK version arrived! WOOOO!!!
I was sort of hoping I would get a package a day, but I think I am out of pending book mailings. There is one ARC I was supposed to get in the summer that got lost in mail so it was supposed to be resent to me, though I am not sure if it was. Which is sad because I was so looking forward to that particular book! Oh, well the world’s not going to end because of that one missing book. (Gee, I hope not!) But I am beyond thrilled with my week in books – even if they did come all soggy (luckily the books themselves were undamaged.)
September 20th, 2009, @ 12:03 am In My Mailbox The Story Siren hosts this feature and I end up adding a ton of books to my wishlist every week.
All my IMM posts can be found here!
I have neither bought, nor received in the mail any books for the last (almost) month. And then I went a little crazy and ordered 4 books from The Book Depository online and I bought a new iPod Nano. Almost everything came this week – PLUS a review book! On Friday my husband exclaimed “You have got to be kidding me!” as we pulled into the drive way and saw a large bubble envelope sticking out of the mailbox. It was like that almost all week. Haha! So, technically, I should have had 3 of these books in an Out of My Pocket post last weekend, but as I didn’t actually HAVE the books in my hands, I didn’t think it counted.
Without further ado:
 Graceling – UK edition
Kristin Cashore
In a world where people born with an exceptional skill, known as a Grace, are feared and exploited, Katsa carries the burden of a skill even she despises: the Grace of killing. She lives under the command of her Uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, and is expected to carry out his dirty work, punnishing and torturing anyone who displeases him. Breaking arms and cutting off fingers are her stock-in-trade. Finding life under his rule increasingly unbearable Katsa forms an underground Council, whose purpose is to combat the destructive behavior of the seven kings – after all, the Middluns is only one of the seven kingdoms, and each of them is ruled its own king with his own personal agenda for power. When the Council hears that the King of Liend’s father has been kidnapped Katsa investigates …and stumbles across a mystery. Who would want to kidnap him, and why? And who was the extraordinary Graced fighter who challenged her fighting skills, for the first time, as she and the Council rushed the old man to safety? Something dark and deadly is rising in the north and creeping across the continent, and behind it all lurks the shadowy figure of a one eyed king …
Now I read this one already, and I am now giving my copy away as I desperately wanted the UK version of Fire (due out next week) and I couldn’t have two books in the same series NOT MATCH! Heavens no! So I bought this UK version of Graceling as well. I’m not just OCD about matching my bookmarks to my books, I need my BOOKS to match as well.
 The Gypsy Crown
by Kate Forsyth
Living under the tyrannical rule of Oliver Cromwell, the Finch family, a tribe of gypsies, are flung in jail with only three weeks to live. Two young cousins, Emilia and Luka, manage to escape. They find themselves entrusted with the task of recovering the five lucky charms that, once united, will restore the Finch family’s good luck.
I adore Kate Forsyth and this book (and the one below) do not seem to be available in Canada and if you do order them you get an ugly cover for this book. So since I was over at The Book Depository already buying the Cashore books, I thought, “Eh, why not?”
 The Puzzle Ring
by Kate Forsyth
Hannah Rose Brown is twelve years old when she finds out that her family is cursed. Desperate to find the truth about her father’s disappearance, she travels to her ancestral home in Scotland, and discovers a chain of dark secrets that plunge her into different worlds, timeframes and dangers.
I have wanted to read this book since I first read about it in Kate Forsyth’s newsletter a year or so ago!
 Primitive
by Mark Nykanen
Bell Bridge Books – for review
Sonya Adams steps into a limo at a Montana airport expecting to be driven to her next modeling assignment. Minutes later she realizes the horrifying truth: she’s been tricked and kidnapped. Plunged into the world of a neo-primitive survivalist cult in the snow-locked mountains of the Pacific Northwest, Sonya becomes a pawn in their mission to reveal a doomsday environmental secret — a secret the government and the energy corporations will kill to keep.
I’m excited about this one because it’s a thriller/mystery and it’s set in Canada and the author lives in British Columbia, too! I like Canadian stuffs!
 iPod Nano – 5th Generation
Apple
IT’S PURPLE AND SHINY!!! And has a video camera in it. Yay! I love my 1st generation black nano, but this is so much cooler and I was debating getting an iPhone this October, but as my cell contract isn’t up for another 2 years it was looking to be difficult, and I would use this one so much more. My iPod lives with me, like you know, internal organs that are all important and stuff.
Hey, speaking of health… I don’t have a lot of it right now and I am going through tests and a tough time as they try to solve the medical mystery that is me. I have not been reading (can’t focus and can’t hold a book due to pain) and I am not as online as I normally am. I don’t plan on letting this blog go, but I will not be as frequent with the posting as I would like to be. I am saying this even if some people do think it’s a Pet Peeve *cough* because I don’t want the readers who might just have discovered my blog through BBAW to think I don’t actually maintain it!
September 14th, 2009, @ 12:03 am Contest As I was trying to fit all my YA on to the new shelf I got from a coworker who is moving to Mexico (!!), I started pulling out individual books that I really didn’t want anymore (for various reasons). Then I had to decide whether or not to give them away on my blog, or put them up on Bookmooch. Either way, I have to pay shipping and most of it goes to the US so it’s not like I save money one way over the other. The Bookmooch angle is helpful in that I get more points, BUT, nearly none of my wishlist is in stock and what little is on Bookmooch doesn’t get shipped to Canada. (Boo! Hiss!).
So… *drum roll* Contest on my Blog!
(click for larger image)
The books up for grabs are:
I was going to paste the summaries in for the books, but that would take too long and make this post way too long. So if I have reviewed the book, I have linked to that review.
To Enter:
~ Leave a comment listing the books you want in order of preference
~ Announce this somewhere, somehow (& send me a link in separate comment) and you’ll get an extra entry!
There Will Be Three Winners (maybe*):
- First prize – 3 books
- Second prize - 2 books
- Third prize – 2 books
Open Internationally! (though I might take some time mailing out the books due to financial reasons, so if you don’t mind being patient…please enter!)
Contest Closes: September 21, 2009 @ 5:00 p.m. EDT. I will announce the winners on September 22 – the official Autumn Equinox (though I might not get it posted quite at 5:18 p.m. EDT, but I’ll try!)
 It’s that simple! (though I might have made this complicated for myself…) Those other contests out there with all the points and whatnot, they confuse me and scare me. So I’m making this simple. I wasn’t going to ask for the advertising of the contest, because I feel awkward doing that, but heck, I’m going to stick it in. I know you have other things to write about on your blogs and twitter accounts than contest announcements.
What a lovely way to celebrate the official start of the Autumn season! I have a special love for the Solstices and Equinoxes so I thought this might be fun!
* Oh, and if there aren’t 3 books you want, or even two, and there’s just one, I might edit the way the winners are split. I’m gong to play this by ear since I don’t know what the demands might be for these books.
MondayMorning EDIT #1: if you do tweet you at @ reply me, too! @beyondelsewhere
MondayMorning EDIT #2: I automatically get your email address when you leave a comment, you do not need to post it in the comment section. I only say this because I worry about spambots finding you or scary people invading your privacy.
November 22nd, 2008, @ 5:06 pm Fantasy | Highly Recommended | Young Adult  Graceling
by Kristin Cashore
I missed my chance to snag a review copy of this book back in the summer over on Mini Book Expo and I wanted it. The cover made me think “Ooo. Shiny! @_@” and once I started seeing it in the stores I would caress the book ever so longingly, though I wasn’t going to buy it in hardcover. I didn’t want to pay the price. But then I got discount coupons in the mail as part of my book discount card program and once I added up what I was going to buy and the savings, I thought, “Well, $18 isn’t really bad for a hardcover, and the book doesn’t seem too short.” So I picked it up (I think it ended up coming to about $10 in the end). I was not disappointed.
Katsa is a Graceling. You know a person is Graced because they have two different coloured eyes. People are generally nervous around those who are Graced, but especially around Katsa whose Grace is killing. She can’t be beaten in a fight and her Uncle-King uses her to punish those who don’t do as he wishes. King Randa is a big bully and people fear him, but that fear is mostly because he will send Katsa out to seriously injure or kill them if they cross him. Katsa is tired of being used as a killing machine, she no longer wants to cause pain to those who do not entirely deserve it and she no longer wants to be used by her uncle. She creates a Council of allies who help those in need of help and saving. The Council does good in secret yet this doesn’t entirely negate all the bad Katsa does for her Uncle. Once she meets Prince Po her views on who she is and her life start to change. Perhaps Katsa isn’t just a killing machine after all.
Katsa is a strong heroine with a good head on her shoulders. She was very likable and fun to read. Her struggles seemed real and not superficial and one of the things I really liked was that she was concerned about the other girls she would meet. Throughout the story she continuously commented on how the young girls should know how to protect themselves. I have never read a fantasy novel where the heroine was intent on giving self-defence lessons to others. She wasn’t all that self-centered either, like I find with other fantasy novels. She was independent, didn’t want to marry and have babies (a woman after my own heart, though I did actually get married in the end, but there will never be babies! ) and be owned by some man. Katsa learns a lot about life, love and herself on her journey and much of it due to her new friendship with Po and then a young ten-year old Princess called Bitterblue. (And as an aside, I really liked the name Bitterblue, I think it would make a good dog name…).
I am so very happy I broke down and bought the book. It looks so nice in hard cover, too. I need new bookshelves though (well, I only have 2 to begin with and enough books for about 8 shelves, but that is besides the point). I need shelves that fit hard covers on them properly. Wonder if Santa feels like taking a trip to IKEA with me?
October 21st, 2008, @ 2:43 pm The Reader  So I went out for lunch with a friend and knew I wanted to stop off at the small bookstore at the same time to renew my discount card which expires this month. I should have know that was a dangerous thing to do. I ended up getting books in hard cover no less. Didn’t even renew my card, since my coupon is apparently valid until November 15th and I was told to renew it in November because that gives me an extra month out of my card. Woo.
I picked up from the bargain table:
The Foretelling - by Alice Hoffman (I have never read her before and I don’t know what to expect, but it was only $4.99 so you know, why not?)
And then I was bullied into buying the new Gregory Maguire novel, A Lion Among Men by the manager of the store (who is also a friend of mine.) I didn’t want to buy it in hardcover, but it was on the Bestseller list for %30 off and then I had an additional %10 off and THEN I also had a coupon for an additional %20 off. And even if I had waited for it to come out in Trade format next year, it would still be in the low $20s when I bought it. So ultimately I got it for %50 off. Woot!
And I broke down and bought Graceling by Kristin Cashore EVEN though it is in hardcover. But then I saw it was only $18 and for a hardcover that isn’t bad. And it’s such a nice looking book I wanted it in hardcover for my collection. Some books just LOOK better in hard cover, I think.
I am trying to find Madapple by Christina Meldrum in the stores I go in, but so far no one has had a copy. Argh! And I see it’s on the finalist list for the Cybils as well. I want to read this one very much. I’ll keep looking, because this is another book I think looks nice in hardcover. So maybe I can convince Santa to get me a copy – if he can find one!!
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