Stacking the Shelves: hauling in two week's worth of awesome

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews to showcase all the books we got in the past week. Those can be bought, won, gifted, for review, borrowed, print or ebooks... no matter, just share what you got :)


My haul this time is fairly big because I didn't do one last week. I was generally MIA apart from a promo post I had already agreed to. Why? I had to finally kick my own ass and finish the Paper Of Doom. But here are my new lovelies from the past two weeks...

NetGalley:

Insomnia, by J.R. Johansson
Strange Fates, by Marlene Perez

I've highlighted Insomnia as my WoW this week because the premise is just so awesome. Strange Fates is something I stumbled upon on NetGalley. It involves the Fates of Greek legend but it's set in the present day, with a male protag, and kinda UF sounding. Loved the idea, and it was Read Now, so no need to request if you'd like to head over and snag it yourself ;) In fact I like the description so much that I'll probably squeeze it in really soon. I really feel like reading something like that at the moment.

Won:

How to Date an Alien, by Magan Vernon
How to Break up with an Alien, by Magan Vernon
How to Marry an Alien, by Magan Vernon

I won this in a giveaway on the blog tour a while back. Not my usual read, but I like to go out of my comfort zone every once in a while and the books sounded really fun in the reviews :) I used to say 'nope' to aliens but see how that turned out in the case of Obsidian... :P

Bought online:

Opal, by Jennifer L. Armentrout
The Indigo Spell, by Richelle Mead

I'm reading Opal right now and still loving the series :)
I read The Indigo Spell last weekend and it was AMAZING!! If you haven't ordered it yet or not started the series, go do it! I hope I'll get around to posting my review soon.


And I went and ordered a crap-ton on TBD that I'm now waiting for >.< Remember that book buying ban I wanted to do a couple weeks ago? Yeah...bargains are the death of me. I mean come on, a print book for 3 to 4 euros?! At the store I'd pay like 15 or 16.

Ebooks:

Kingdom Series Collection, by Marie Hall
Wings of Arian, by Devri Walls
The Torn Wing, by Kiki Hamilton

Wings of Arian and The Torn Wing were free on amazon when I got them.
The Kingdom Series was a totally spontaneous buy last week. I'd never heard of it before, but I fell for the cover and checked out the description. It's three stories centering on Alice and the Mad Hatter, Beauty and the Beast, and Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. The twists for the retellings sounded really cool so I bought it :)

Book store trip:

Just One Day, by Gayle Forman
Rapture, by Lauren Kate

I don't usually do book store buys anymore because I can save so much money by ordering online, but every once in a while I just can't resist... and there was a special 20% discount for students. It also ensures that I definitely get the right edition, so when Rapture was finally out in the one that matches my other books, I had to have it. Even though I have a strange relationship to the series. I'll probably make a 'book thoughts' post about the whole series once I've read Rapture.
And Just One Day, well... all those reviews! I needed it. I couldn't believe they actually stocked it. It'll be my first Gayle Forman book because I still haven't gotten around to that If I Stay copy I bought secondhand a while ago.

Oh, and guess what?!?! I GOT A KINDLE FIRE :D No more reading ebooks on my phone!
But there are a couple issues I don't really get and which annoy me. If anyone has one and would be okay with me sending them a couple questions via email or whatever that'd be awesome! It mainly concerns how to get ebooks not from amazon (but in mobi format) and ARCs to show up with the books instead of as coverless documents.

Oh, and one more cute thing I wanted to share. It was my birthday recently and a good friend I don't see all that often gave me this when we met a couple days ago:

It's Oliver the owl from Skelanimals!!! He's so cute ^_^ I had to set him there a bit awkwardly because he kept falling of the shelf, but doesn't he make a cute book owl together with Billy the Bat? Erm yeah... as you can guess, there's still a 17-year-old emo girl living somewhere in my heart :P Can't resist creepy things that are also a bit cute.



Okay, I think that's all... hopefully I didn't forget any books. What do you think of my haul (or my sanity, haha)? Any of those new to you? Got ideas about my Kindle issue? And please share the links to what you got in the past week :)

Top Ten Villains of 2012

Hello lovelies! Today was another day of too many delicious things and cookies and spending time with 6 of my cousins and their boyfriends - Christmas, family, the works. It was fun :)

But let's shift to the topic at hand. Today is the third day of the Top Ten of 2012 event co-hosted by Rachel from Fiktshun,  Lisa from A Life Bound By Books, Jessica from Confessions of a Bookaholic and Jaime from Two Chicks on Books and Mindy from Magical Urban Fantasy Reads.

Day three means the participants can choose among several topics. Many of them fell flat for me because I read less than 10 books this year that would fit the description. I wavered between debuts and villains for a while, but eventually settled for villains because even though I'm very fond of a good villain, I never bothered to think about a top ten list before. Sometimes I find it even hard to identify any one villain. Maybe an antagonist or a group of them, but not a real villain. I also tend to side with the bad guys every once in a while...

Here are the top ten villains of books I read this year that I eventually came up with. It was much harder than I thought because sometimes the villain-ness is not quite clear. I think that is because I prefer books where the line between 'good' and 'evil' is not so clear cut...

1. Avari from the Soul Screamers series by Rachel Vincent
   Avari is just purely evil. Not shred of good in him. He is greed personified. He wants Kaylee. And he stops at nothing to get her, no matter whose body he has to hijack or which of her loved ones he has to kill. And still I found him disturbingly intriguing at times.


2. Jonathan / Sebastian from City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare
   Clary's brother, the half-demon. This guy is sick. But again, fascinating. It's hard not to have some sort of passionate reaction to him. Plus, he's extremely intelligent and cunning, and I'm always drawn to guys with brains.
   
   
3. Jake Tower from Rachel Vincent's Unbound series
   I'm especially thinking of Shadow Bound here. What he has done to Kori is just unspeakably cruel. I hate his guts. What I like about him is that he is not necessarily motivated with the wish to do evil. He's more of a businessman - cunning and ruthless, going for the utmost efficiency and best way to control his bound subjects.


4. Thiago from Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
   I first wanted to go for the emperor's brother but couldn't remember his name for the life of me. I don't have the book with me to check. But actually Thiago, the white wolf, is the better villain because of his perfidity and manipulative wiles. I hated his guts from the beginning, hated his possessiveness of Karou and how he guilt-tripped her into working for his goals, how he kept her out of the information-loop. Terrible guy. Deserved what he got.
   


5. Athena from Kelly Keaton's Gods and Monsters series
   I thought Athena was a bit too stereotypical for a female villain in the first book and was glad to find her more complex in book two. She's the goddess of both war and wisdom, and I liked learning more about her past and where she was coming from. I still dislike her, but she's also a strong woman in a pantheon of misogynist, very patriarchal guys.


6. Barron Sharpe and Zacharov from Holly Black's Curse Workers series
   Depending on what book you choose, the villain sort of differs in this series. There are never any clear lines, and that's something I really enjoy about Black's novels. I actually like both Barron and Lila Zacharov's father. Zacharov is ruthless, but he's looking out for his family and subjects. I had the impression that he actually likes Cassel - doesn't mean he wouldn't kill him if he felt it necessary.
   Barron is also a bad guy, especially for what he did to his own brother! But he's also somehow tragic because of all the blowback he has to deal with, the amnesia etc. I liked his wit and the wordfights between him and Cassel.


7. Anna, from Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
   This is again a strange case. Is or isn't Anna a villain? She's killed a lot of people, but she's not really evil. I thought she was pretty damn awesome in any case.


8. Cole, from Brodi Ashton's Everneath
   I liked Cole. He actually had some sort of personality. Then again, I tend to go for the bad boys. Was he a villain? Not sure. He abducted Nikki though and deceived her, but again I'm not sure whether his motives qualify him for a villain. I kept thinking that Nikki should just go with him. I mean her options were pretty bleak. I'd rather go back and be Cole's queen then die miserably and painfully in the Tunnels.
   
   
9. Cam, from Lauren Kate's Fallen series
   I read book 1 - 3 this year and depending on the installment, Cam comes across as more or less of a villain. I liked him. At the beginning, I actually much preferred him to Daniel both in looks and personality. Then there was a period when I thought he was a really mean and evil guy, but then I was fond of him again. He never hid things from Luce the way Daniel did, and he actually has a sense of humor.
   


10. Vivian from Kiersten White's Paranormalcy
    I've only read the first book in the series so I have no idea how this develops, but I liked Vivian's spunk. She and Evie are two sides of the same coin. I don't think Viv actually got that much 'screentime' but I remember her as strong, slightly psychotic, but also intriguing and potentially vulnerable. I read the book quite a while ago and under strange circumstances though, so my memory is a bit fuzzy.

So... these are my top ten. I thought to include Prince Prospero (? I think that was his name?) from Bethany Griffin's Masque of the Red Death, but he was somehow too oblique a figure...
What do you guys think of my pics? Did I forget anyone obvious? Or do you disagree vehemently with one of my picks? Suggestions of books with great villains are also very welcome ;)