Letterbox Love 3

From now on, I’ve decided to take part in Letterbox Love, a weekly meme to showcase your newest books set up by a group of UK bloggers and hosted by Narratively Speaking. I thought this seemed like a fantastic opportunity to get to know some of my fellow UK bloggers a bit better.

There’s also Showcase Sunday, hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea and also Stacking the Shelves over at Tynga’s Reviews which I’ll doubtless check out as well.

I’ve got some lovely goodies to share this week because it was my birthday on Thursday, so I naturally got mostly bookish things. A lot of things are actually on order and haven’t strictly speaking arrived yet, but I wanted to show them to you anyway 🙂

Earlier in the week I got invited to the House of Illustration and Folio Society Awards on the Tuesday and the God of illustration himself  was there: Quentin Blake!!!!! He’s such a cute old man and didn’t seem at all alarmed by my high-pitched, squeaky voice and overly enthusiastic declarations of love for his work (I was all nervous and shaky about going up to him!) Like a legend, he pulled out a hand-full of drawing pens when I asked for his autograph!! I also met one of my other favourite illustrators, Angela Barratt, who illustrates fantastic picture books like Joan of Arc, Anne Frank etc. She was lovely to chat to about the business and drawing and where she gets her drawing references from and she also signed something for me 😀 They were giving out very cool Blake tote bags and bone china mugs for free as well!

Finally to finish off a pretty darn fantastic week, I got a published copy of Pushing the Limits through for review AND I found out the day after my birthday that I’d won the giveaway on Refracted Light Reviews for a pre-order of Enshadowed by Kelly Creagh – the one book this year I have been almost giddy to get my hands on!

Bought/Swapped

For whatever reason, For Darkness Shows the Stars wasn’t a book I’d been especially interested in and I never really read any of the reviews on it that came up on my blog feed. Until I read April’s from Good Book and Good Wine, suddenly realised weeks after the rest of the world that it was a postapocalyptic Persuasion and ordered a copy that very afternoon!

Not having been a massive fan of Divergent but wanting to read the second book, I waited until someone was willing to swap Insurgent with me 🙂 I’ll hopefully get round to this one soon, as soon as I’ve read the catch up that’s on Veronica Roth’s site, because I don’t actually remember anything that happened in book one (a sure sign that it wasn’t a favourite!)

 

Sent for Review

I previously received this on NetGalley and really enjoyed it (I was considering buying it) but it was incredibly difficult to read because of the poor formatting, so I’m excited to get this so I can now read it properly.

Won

I think I actually screeched a bit when I opened my email and saw I had won this giveaway! I loved Nevermore and have been waiting for Enshadowed to be released forever now, as it kept getting pushed back and back, so a huge thanks and hugs to Dani over at Refracted Light Reviews. Also, if you’re a fan you should definitely check out her interview with Varen 😉

(I took the image from Dani’s blog post about the giveaway)

 

Birthday Treats

My main present this year was a Kindle Touch and I love it. I’ve been borrowing my mum’s old Kindle for a while now and figured it was time to get my own and once I’ve used it a bit more I will post a little review up about it properly. I’ve also ordered this cute little cover/sleeve for it (below)! I hated the boring amazon ones and cost almost half the Kindle itself which I think is ridunkulous, plus this way I get to support a fellow crafts person. And who doesn’t love spending hours on Etsy looking at all the pretty stuff 🙂

(image courtesy of Bertie’s Closet shop on Etsy)

I also got some book vouchers and amazon gift cards which I haven’t spent yet (which is odd for me) from various family, but I wanted to do a big thank you shout out to Jo who surprised me with a lovely, generous amazon e-card for some Kindle books, as she knew what my present was. She’s a very cool lady and writes far more exciting, far more funny reviews than I do – so go check them out!

I have spend the birthday money I was sent on these three books (below) – two of which won’t be arriving for quite some time as I felt it the perfect opportunity to put in a little order from Fishpondworld. All three are ones I’ve dying to get my hands on for a long while now.

Finally – if any of you are in the UK/London area I highly recommend going to see The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe at the 360 Theatre in Kensington Gardens. A group of us went to celebrate and it. was. freaking. amazing!!! We got moved into the most expensive seats for free (after buying the cheapest!) and the effects and costume designs are stunning. It was such a treat. (Mrs Badger was my favourite. She had a very cool Aslan bum-wiggle dance and walloped a lot of bad guys over the head with a frying pan.)

Afterwards we decided to sit in the park and catch up and unfortunately got locked in and were left wandering around in the dark trying to find an escape route at nearly midnight. Good times. (After the third locked gate I was started to freak out – I had visions of a very undignified climb over a very high and very sharp iron gate in my head). Anyway. Eventually we found an exit – so placed for stupid people like us. So – go see it, just don’t hang out in the park afterwards for too long.

Mr Tumnus doing his thing…