Parcel in the Post: Switched & The Iron King

It's the end of my first week back at school and I'm already feeling close to having a nervous breakdown! (picture a headless flapping chicken trying to teach maths to teenagers and organise a book blog tour at the same time) 2012 is going to be an awesome year, but an awesomely PACKED year too. Busybusybusybusybusybusy!!!

Anyway, today I got those things in the post box that make me happy: those little slips of paper that tell me there's a parcel waiting to be collected! So off I went to fetch the two newest additions to my library.

SWITCHED by Amanda Hocking ~ Yeah, okay, I've been meaning to read this for quite some time, but when I saw the beautiful new covers, I knew I had to wait until I could get a paperback version of it!

THE IRON KING by Julie Kagawa ~ Isn't it awesome when you start reading a series and all the books in it are already published?! I've been seeing good things about this series for a while, but now that I'm writing my own faerie stories, I thought it was definitely about time I read these ones!

P.S. Thank you so much to everyone for your awesome cover love for GUARDIAN! Vi can't stop blushing ;-)

Parcel in the Post: My Signed Copy of POSSESSION!

Several weeks back when Elana Johnson's POSSESSION was being released, Nichole Giles, Ali Cross and Windy Aphayrath hosted a blog hop where you could win a signed copy of POSSESSION just by writing about a time you broke the rules... My blog post, Good Girls Don't Skinny Dip, won me a copy! Yay!

I kept hoping it would arrive before I went overseas so that I could take it with me -- it certainly would have made the flight more entertaining! Instead it was something I got to look forward to on returning home (because -- I'll be honest -- having to stop holidaying and go back to work kind of sucks!)

Parcel in the Post & Blogfest Wrap-Up

Thank you SOOOOO much to everyone who entered the Tension Blogfest. Now that all the entries are in I'm off to read them :-) And I'd better do that NOW because once I dive into the two new books I just received I likely won't be seen for a while!

Everyone's been writing great reviews about DIVERGENT so I'm super-excited to read that.

And Lauren Beukes (a South African like me!) won the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award for her Urban Fantasy ZOO CITY, and around about the same time Joey HiFi received a Best Artwork award for the black and white illustration you can see there on the UK cover of ZOO CITY. So I had to get this book to support another South African author and I had to get the one with the UK cover (I mean look at it - it is so awesome! Click here to see it in more detail)

Parcel in the Post - Clockwork Angel. FINALLY!!

My most anticipated book this year has finally arrived! The first in Cassandra Clare's INFERNAL DEVICES series,

CLOCKWORK ANGEL

My online book store let me down by not being able to get hold of it after I ordered it, and since I'd already paid for it I had to just wait until they could get stock... But now it's here :-)
I love the little angel on the front!







Have you read CLOCKWORK ANGEL?
Did you like it?
(If you didn't, I don't want to hear about it!)

Have you read any of Cassandra Clare's other books, from the MORTAL INSTRUMENTS series? You must!

Parcel in the Post - 2 Awesome Books + 1 Gift

A few weeks ago I read a great review of the Parasol Protectorate series - of which SOULLESS is number one - by Faith. It sounded like something I'd enjoy so I clicked over to my online book shop and ordered it right away.

Two days ago the series was also reviewed by Paperback Dolls. So now I'm even more keen to read it!

I've seen quite a bit of online buzz recently about the Caster Chronicles because of the release of BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS, the second in the series. So, I figured it was time to find out what all the fuss is about! Enter: BEAUTIFUL CREATURES.
And even if it doesn't turn out to be so great, the cover is gorgeous! It's gonna look super on my book shelf ;-)

And, thirdly, Jenn recently held a little competition during her Dystopian Book-Talking Birthday Bash on her blog, and I won!! I got to choose between five different dystopian titles, and since I've heard a lot about THE GIVER recently (and never read it *shock*), I picked that one.

Jenn, in case you can't see the sticky note so well, it says:
Thank you, Jenn!

~ ~ ~

On a completely unrelated topic...
Sometime in the past day or two my blog's all-time number of page-views passed 1000! Yay!
(Okay, those of you who passed this number some time ago, please stop snickering. I am in my happy place, and I like it here)

Parcel in the Post - Firelight!!

One of the most exciting things that can happen, on a normal, mundane day, is getting a parcel in the post!

You see, living in a part of the world where people DON'T feel the need to appreciate YA Fantasy on the day it comes out, I generally have to wait a little longer than some to read the next highly anticipated book. So, while everyone else was getting their desperate fingers onto a copy of Firelight the day it was released, I was getting my desperate fingers onto a computer keyboard to order mine from my Favourite Online Provider of Books (which sometimes lies about when it will have certain items - resulting in intense frustration and disappointment on my part...)

So in the post today was FIRELIGHT!!!

Isn't it pretty?
Doesn't is just scream, "READ ME!!"?

It really sucks (like really, really sucks) that I have third quarter exams to mark right now...