Hello!

So at the end of last month I went a little mad with buying books…. I had a sad day and decided to treat myself to a trip to The Works and when the 3 for £6 book is there and I find a physical book that I know for sure is on my ‘want to read’ list, I wasn’t going to resist 4 books for £8.50! Then I went to the Oxfam Superstore in Oxford which is taking charity shopping to the next level – I managed to find 7 books and a money box shaped like the TARDIS from Doctor Who for approximately £20. One of the books I had just started reading on my Kindle so getting a physical edition was a win, I found two books in a series that I owned book 4 and 6 of, so now I have 1, 2, 4 and 6 and then there were four others that sounded good and I can’t resist the charity shop.

Then I went to visit my mum for the weekend and she said I could go into the indie bookshop and pick one book so I did…

But what all this book shopping made sure of is that I’m more determined than ever to make a dent in my physical tbr – at current count, I have 334 unread books in my house and I don’t like feeling like my books aren’t fulfilling their life purpose! I’ve even told my husband that I don’t want to go book shopping for my birthday next month (though I’m kind of hoping I may receive an Amazon voucher so I can buy some Kindle books, which don’t add to my physical tbr so they don’t count…).

So with this in mind, I’m going to boldly state (and probably retract at some point) that this is my last book haul of 2023 – I get more joy from ticking books off my tbr than I do from buying them so I need to be resilient and continue reading what I already have.

And I can scratch the ‘new book’ itch with Kindle Unlimited.

From The Works, I picked up:

• The Soulmate Equation – Christina Lauren
• Get a Life, Chloe Brown – Talia Hibbert
• The Singles Table – Sara Desai
• Killers of a Certain Age – Deanna Raybourn

I have a note of ‘books I’m allowed to buy’ on my phone, which includes the Brown sisters book by Talia Hibbert (I listened to Chloe Brown last year on audible and hated the narrator so I want to read them with my eyeballs), but then I’ve heard amazing things about Sara Desai so I picked up The Singles Tables and I haven’t read any Christina Lauren yet so when The Soulmate Equation is right there… I was sad and in a weak frame of mind okay?

Then Killers of a Certain Age I saw someone talking about on booktube at some point and I added it to my list on Storygraph, but I was surprised to see it physically because it was an American booktuber who spoke about it. It was also in the 3 for £6 but I figured it would be smarter to pay the £2.50 it was when not bought in the deal than spend an extra £3.50 on two more books I was buying for the sake of it. So very restrained really!

Then from the Oxfam Superstore, I found:

• Armada – Ernest Cline
• Seven Letters – Sinead Moriarty
• The Family Upstairs – Lisa Jewell
• Bright Ruin – Vic James
• The Medusa Project: The Set Up / Hostage – Sophie McKenzie
• Dark Earth – Rebecca Stott

Armada is on my ‘want to read’ list from when I was looking into Ernest Cline’s other work after reading Ready Player One earlier this year, Bright Ruin is the book I had just bought on Kindle but was half the price in physical so I returned the Kindle edition and immediately dove into the physical edition, The Medusa Project is the series I already had books in so I was very surprised to see practically brand new editions of and when they’re that cheap I couldn’t resist! Seven Letters, The Family Upstairs and Dark Earth just sounded good from the blurbs, I have no other justification for those.

And then finally, from the indie bookstore in the town I grew up in, I picked up:

• Beach Rivals – Georgie Tilney

There were other books that I have been yearning for more, but the summary dragged me in and I’ve been reading quite a bit of heavy fantasy lately, so I fancied a trashy romance palette cleanser. My aunt – who’s into reading crime and horror – seemed mildly appalled by my choice but I’m very excited about reading it.

If anyone wants to send me on a sunny beach holiday by the end of the year I promise I’ll read it!

Actually, if anyone just wants to pay for me to piggyback on my husband’s work trip to Greece next week that would be amazing, I’m insanely jealous that he’s staying 20 minutes from the Acropolis and is going to nerd out over Greek history without me.

If you see me posting another haul or talking about more new books I’ve bought before the end of the year, please remind me of what I said in this post and make me feel guilty!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx