Release Day Spotlight: Magical Picture Books, Magical Inspirations and Norse Mythology

Today is a big day in book releases for YA and Middle Grade fans! Normally, just one big book release is enough to get us all excited but today we get three highly anticipated releases! It's kind of overwhelming actually.

First, we have Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone: Illustrated Edition (or Philosopher's Stone depending on where you are in the world). I've been meaning to re-read the Harry Potter books all year long and almost bought the new UK paperbacks. This illustrated edition was on the very edge of my radar because, for reasons unknown to me, I was thinking that this was basically a Harry Potter graphic novel which I wasn't too interested in. But then I discovered that it was not a graphic novel but Harry Potter with pictures!! Lots and lots of beautiful pictures! (Check out some of examples here.) Basically, we're getting Harry Potter picture book edition but with all the original words and I'm so excited about it.



Coincidentally or intentionally, today is also the release day for Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. If you haven't read Fangirl and don't know what Carry On is about, you might be a little confused as what is so coincidental about this book also being released today. To sum it up, Carry On is essentially the original story (or an installment in the series) that Cath, from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, writes fanfiction for. And this series heavily resembles/is modeled after/ is inspired by Harry Potter. Of course, this book is not going to be a retelling of Harry Potter but an original story in and of itself that borrows certain elements from HP.



Finally, our third big release of the day is The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan. This is the first book in his brand new series, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, which will be centered around Norse mythology. I may be really behind when it comes to Riordan's other series but I have no plans to fall behind with this one. I already read the first chapter excerpt which got me even more excited about this book and I'm sure we all want to see Rick Riordan's version of Thor, right?

Tumblr, Reading Slumps and Epic Feels

I've been a bit absent on this blog over the last few months. There are a couple of reasons for this.

One, I've been more active on Tumblr (which I'm a big fan of and you can follow me here) and thought that maybe I could start posting my reviews there instead so I can have all of bookish things in one place. This didn't work out for multiple reasons:

a) The Tumblr blogging format (at least the kind that I prefer) doesn't really lend itself to longer text posts.
b) The Tumblr blogging platform itself favors images more than it does text
c) Tumblr also doesn't lend itself to commenting as well as something like blogger does
d) I was lazy being lazy about the reviewing and maybe only managed to post one review on my booklr (bookish corner of Tumblr)

So now I'm back to blogger and ready to share my thoughts on all these books that I'm reading.

The second cause of my inactiveness was my reading slump. This has been the year of reading slumps for me and I don't even know why. I suffered through my biggest reading slump of all time last year but at least then I could say it was because I got really busy with school and studying that I didn't have much time to read. This year, I have no such excuse. I have much more free time than I did last year. Maybe, I just haven't been reading as many good books this year? I don't really know. What I do know, though, is that I'm back in reading mode (knocking on virtual wood right now because I don't want to jinx this) so I actually have books I can review now! Woohoo!

Some of you might be wondering where my review for Queen of Shadows is, especially after I gushed over Heir of Fire and A Court of Thorns and Roses. Haha, who am I kidding. No one is wondering that. I don't have avid followers, just sometime readers. But for the sake of my own ego I'm going to pretend there are people out there in the world actually wondering this and for those people I will address this concern. I have read Queen of Shadows (would you expect any less from me?). I have a lot of thoughts on Queen of Shadows. But I haven't written any post (except this one) compiling these thoughts because those thoughts are still brewing in my head and I need my feels to calm down a little more before I can put it all into words. Trust me, I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of different things regarding this book. The review/discussion (more probably discussion and potentially one that comes in multiple parts) is coming. It just needs a little more time because the feels were EPIC and I'm still trying to process them, even a month after reading the book.

Well, that's all for this update and I'll catch you guys on the next page.

(How is that sign off? Too cheesy? I'm trying it out for the first time.)

Most Anticipated Releases : Summer 2015 (July-September)

I can't believe summer's already here. This is crazy! How does time go by so fast? Anyway, here are my most anticipated summer releases for the year. It's a very short list because apparently summer isn't a very popular release season? At least, not for the kinds of books I tend to read. But, some of my absolutely-can't-wait-for-it books come out in these next three months, including my most anticipated book of 2015.

The Obvious

The Not-So-Obvious

There might not be that many books but at least they all have great covers! And maybe all the publishing companies are giving us a breather over the summer so we can at least try to dwindle down our TBR pile. No excuses. We'll see how that goes.