Book Sale Begins! See Inventory.

The First Ever Book Rants 

"My Bookshelf Has Reached Maximum Capacity and I Must Get Rid of Some of My Precious Babies" 

Book Sale Begins NOW!

How It's Going to Work:

You choose any five books from my list below and pay just $25. Five for Twenty Five. Pretty catchy and simple, yes? After payment, I ship my babies to you for free and when you receive 'em they become your babies to cuddle and cherish forever and ever. And everyone is happy. =)

Details:

1. Choose your five books by creating a comment to this post. First come, first served. If a comment is made requesting books, those books are on hold for THREE (3) days until payment is made. Once payment is made, those titles will be striked from the list. TIP: Use CTRL +F to search for particular titles (though there aren't that many and you can just scroll).
2. PAYMENT will be accepted via PayPal only. Send payment to my PayPal account at africanpride1991@aol.com.
3. SHIPPING  will be used via USPS Media Mail. For faster service or international shipping, please comment requesting a shipping estimate that must be added to cost of the books.
4. All books are in Very Good to New condition unless otherwise noted. Feel free to request pictures of a particular title(s).
5. Click the title of each entry below to be taken to the respective Goodreads page for book details.
6. If you have any other questions, please post in the comments. I will respond within a few hours.

THE INVENTORY:

Fiction:

• I Gave You my Heart but You Sold It Online by Dixie Cash
  
• My Heart May Be Broken, but My Hair Still Looks Great by Dixie Cash
• When Darkness Falls by James Grippando (Large Print)  
• Don’t Know Much About Anything Else by Kenneth C. Davis 
• Anathem by Neal Stephenson (w/ bonus CD)
• A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb
• Anthem by Ayn Rand (SOLD)
• Being Written by William Conescu
• Goodnight Steve McQueen by Louise Wener
• The Ruling Class by Francine Pascal
• Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole
• Missing in Tokyo by Graham Marks
• Candy Everybody Wants by Josh Kilmer-Purcell
• Braless in Wonderland by Debbie Reed Fischer
• Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? By Raymond Carver
• If Today Be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar
• The Plague of the Doves by Louise Erdrich
• The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (cover little worn by creases, tear on back cover)
• All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones
• Neurotica by Sue Margolis
• Daughter of Darkness by VC Andrews
• Marley and Me by John Grogan
• Party Girl by Anna David
• Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh  SOLD
• Tell me Lies by Patrick Cooper
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• Run by Ann Patchett
• The Divine Comedy vol 3 (Paradisio) by Dante
• From Charlie’s Point of View by Richard Scrimger
• Slam! By Walter Dean Myers   
• Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs  SOLD
• Minion by LA Banks
•  The Other Side of the Game by Anita Doreen Diggs
• Smart Women by Judy Blume
• The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey
• Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

Romance: 

• A Little Magic by Nora Roberts (Spine torn, but intact) SOLD
• Bound by Shadow by Anna Windsor
• Bound by Flame by Anna Windsor
• Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
• Queen of Babble Gets Hitched by Meg Cabot 
• The Taste of Innocence by Stephanie Laurens
• In Bed with the Devil by Lorraine Heath
• Bad Boys on Board by Nancy Warren and Donna Kauffman
• Dates from Hell by Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong, & Lori Handeland SOLD
• The Fires of Paradise by Brenda Joyce
• Some Like It Wicked by Teresa Medeiros
• The Ties That Bind by Electa Rome Parks (Book Jacket Gone)

Mystery/Thriller:

• Scots on the Rocks by Mary Daheim
• Trouble in Bloom by Heather Webber
• Protect and Defend by Vince Flynn (sticker residue on cover)
• Hello, Stranger by Virginia Swift  
• The Sacred Cut by David Hewson
• Killer Charms by Marianne Stillings
• Jade Island by Elizabeth Lowell

Nonfiction:

• The Immortalists by David M. Friedman SOLD
• A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Young Adult:

• The Moves Make the Man by Bruce Brooks (bit rough around edges of cover)
• Lucky by Alice Sebold SOLD
• Second Star to the Right by Deborah Hautzig (upper right corner of cover torn) 
• Vamps by Nancy A. Collins (upper right corner of cover torn off) 
• Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 
• Jinx by Meg Cabot 
• The Healing Time of Hickeys by Karen Rivers
• The Torn Skirt by Rebecca Godfrey SOLD
• The Orpheus Obsession by Dakota Lane 
• Cruel Summer by Kylie Adams
• Dumb Love by Katheleen Jeffrie Johnson
• The Other Boy by Hailey Abbot

Children's:

• Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls by Meg Cabot
• Summerhouse Time by Eileen Spinelli

[Book Rant] Joyland by Stephen King

 

The Story:

In Joyland by Stephen King, we meet 21-year-old, college student Devin Jones, who's an aspiring writer. (No shocker there! King has a thing for writers as protagonists, I'm starting to see.) Young Devin spends his summer break working at a carnival-slash-amusement park called Joyland. There, he meets an assortment of interesting characters, including two soon-to-be-best-friends, Erin and Tom, and his eventual saviors, Annie and Mike, all while nursing first-love heartbreak and losing his virginity. Oh, and of course it wouldn't be much of a Stephen King novel without a ghost or two, would it? There's a ghost of a young woman who had been murdered on the only dark ride at Joyland. Who dun done it, is the question we're reading to answer. That, and experiencing young Devin's coming-of-age story with a twist.

Thoughts:

As far as King novels go, I haven't read nearly enough to really be familiar with his style, but I didn't enjoy Joyland nearly as much as I did Bag of Bones and The Shining. To be honest, I was a little bored. The story didn't grip me by the collar as tightly as I had expected it to. It lacked much of the suspense and tension I had come to expect from King. Could it be due to the fact that Joyland  is about 300 pages shorter than the previous two King novels I've read? Does King write better when he has more words to work with? Who knows. All I do know is that I found Dev a little dull, the other characters unimportant (didn't care about any of 'em much), the ghost story not very interesting, and the big reveal of the killer anti-climatic and rushed. 

Final Verdict:

Joyland is a run-of-the-mill crime/mystery novel. While not a bad read, it's not terribly exciting either. 

 
Princess Reads A Lot isn't too sure about this book. She didn't like it, but she didn't not like it either. She knows it's one she won't ever re-read and that makes her a little sad.

[Book Rant] Bag of Bones by Stephen King

For my first ever Stephen King read I think I chose pretty dang well (even though I simply closed my eyes and grabbed a random title off the shelf).

(See list of favorite quotes from Bag of Bones here.)

Bag of Bones begins with the lulling, soft, authentic voice of Michael Noonan as he tells his incredible story, starting from his wife's sudden death and including the hard to believe events that follow. With a gripping combination of quiet grief and a startling, sometimes blunt, sense of humor, readers quickly find themselves deeply caring for Mike as soon as the end of chapter one. King has a very clear understanding of readers and their needs and gives it to us perfectly wrapped in an astonishing tale of death, vengeance, cruelty, love, and life.

The story is told in the voice of Mike Noonan. It's honest, blunt, and flawed--just like him. The otherworldly aspect of the story are subtly sprinkled in, so that you find yourself believing undoubtedly in everything as Mike does without even realizing it.

The complexity of Bag of Bones is what really drew me in. It's not just anything. Not just a ghost story. Not just about a man who suddenly loses his wife. Not just about ruthless multimillionaires and custody cases. Not just about secrets. Not just about love and survival. It's all of these and more, intertwined and intermingled into one amazing, incredible story. As such, the 700+ pages didn't seem too long, though I think it could have been parred down slightly. There were a couple of long chunks of scenic description that I found myself skimming over because they were just a little too detailed (even as I was deathly afraid--pun intended--of missing some vital or genius line of fiction). Too detailed in that I was bogged down by all of the, well, details and couldn't form a vivid picture in my mind. Sometimes less really is more.

King's characters in Bag of Bones, both the main and supporting characters, were fully fleshed out, real and human--as far from being simple bags of bones as I can imagine. Mike, especially, is a character I fell in love with immediately, warts and all. There's nothing quite like a detail-rich portrayal of a flawed character to get a reader's engine going. Vroom Vroom! It's Mike's honest (or King's honest rendition of Mike's character that enticed me). Mike wasn't the nicest or most "proper" man. He was sometimes a sarcastic ass, lewd, offensive even, but he was real.So in real in fact that I couldn't help doing a little google searching to see if I could find any resemblance to a non-fictional being. And color me surprised when I discovered Irish politician, Michael Noonan, (below) and Australian writer, Michael John Noonan. Just saying. (Though they're both older than our protagonist.)

Despite its long length, I dreaded finishing Bag of Bones because I knew it would feel like losing a best friend. At the same time, Bag of Bones was such an aggressive read, emotionally; I wasn't sure whether or not I could survive all 700 pages without my heart beating clear out of my chest from the stress of incredible suspense, awe, shock, fear (for the characters! Of course, I wasn't frightened, not even one bit), disgust, utter believable-disbelief. Here's my facebook status after I finished reading the climatic chapter 25 (POTTY MOUTH DISCLAIMER):

Holy FUCKING shiiit, King. Chapter 25 was a motherfucking DOOZY! A disclaimer would've been mighty nice, so I wouldn't have found myself on the Metro North gasping audibly, muttering "Da Fuk," and blinking rapidly against sudden tears. My Gawd! I've been through the literary wringer and I LOVE it.

Found on Tumbler or FB somewhere.

Then we came to the end. The gentle calm, silence after the storm. It was satisfying. I was left with the assurance that Mikey Noonan and his little guy, Kyra would be just fine, despite everything. Most loose ends were tied and all questions mostly answered. The slight sense of remaining otherworldlyness was acceptable after a story like this; we didn't need every "T" or "I" crossed and dotted.

King, I think you'd be glad to know that while a first time reader, Bag of Bones gave me not one, but two sleepless nights as I couldn't put it down! (In response to his Letter to the Reader at the end of the novel.) This is a definite must-read for fans of mystery-thrillers and Stephen King.

Princess Reads A Lot RATING:  

She really LIKES this book a whole lot! It made her smile, shiver and shake. She's sure glad she read it and only wishes she had read it sooner.