Top Ten Tuesday: Rewind, aka Books I Loved But Never Wrote A Review For

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. Every week the participants have to post a top ten list to a certain topic. Anyone can participate and link up!

This week's topic is a rewind, that means we can pick a past topic that we missed or want to do again. I chose my Top Ten Books I Loved But Never Wrote A Review For. I don't know why I didn't. Some are because I read them before I really had the blog, some out of laziness, some because I feared that I could never do them justice or would just ramble and gush. Some I meant to but something happened and then it was too long ago that I'd read them. Oh well, here goes.

No particular order. Slideshow because I couldn't layout the pics the way I wanted and it's something different for once - in short, I felt like it.

1. Sweet Evil, by Wendy Higgins
   I LOVED this one! It kept me up into the night because I just couldn't stop. But somehow the review just never happened, I don't remember why but I have a bad conscience.
2. Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake
   Also a total favorite! I was determined to review, already writing parts in my head. But someting came up and I never got around to it :(
3. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor
   One of my favorites I read this year, but this was before I had the blog.
4. Hunger, by Jackie Morse Kessler
   I wanted to, but it just hit too close to home and I would have had to go into personal stuff in the review, which I didn't want because well... this is the internet, and my name and face are on this blog.
5. Blood Bound, by Rachel Vincent
   Inconvenient timing and laziness combined with fear of not being able to do it justice because it was just that good.
6. The Wood Queen, by Karen Mahoney
   Victim of procrastination and lack of blog.
7. Bridger, by Megan Curd
   I was on the road and had loads of stuff to do when I got back from that ten-day interrail trip to three different cities. Read it on the drive to Prague and later to Hamburg and Amsterdam.
8. Croak, by Gina Damico
   Big love, but lots of life going on. I really want to review Scorch though!
9. The Devil's Graveyard, by Anonymous
   Third in the series. To be honest I didn't know how to approach a review of this book, plus it doesn't really fit into what I usually review here.
10. Bloodlines, by Richelle Mead
    I don't remember why this didn't happen, but I'm sure it was one of my ususal lame excuses :P

Comments on my list? Also, what topic did you choose for today?

GIVEAWAY (Int)! Blogoversary and 200 follower-celebration

I know I know, I've been talking about this forever. By now, you've probably been thinking I'd never actually follow it up... but here it is, my joint 200 follwers and 3 month blogoversary celebration giveaway! To be precise, the blogoversary of my first post was on August 24, but since I only started blogging somewhat seriously in mid-June, I guess I can be forgiven for being a bit late. Right? This giveaway is going to last for all of September!

I can't believe it's been three months already! For that amount of time, I don't think I've posted enough reviews *squirms* I'm not used to reading on a schedule or having to immediately write about what I've read yet, and while I probably won't review every book I read, I still hope to get the reviewing frequency up a bit. It's just that writing them up actually takes me ridiculously long because I want to do justice to the book without spoiling too much or being super vague.

Also, I never thought I'd have so many awesome followers by now! Seriously, I'm happy about every page-view and comment on one of my posts! Especially the reviews, since I love to exchange impressions and discuss :)

I'm also curious to hear you guys' opinion about this blog. What do you like? Dislike? What kind of post would you like to see more of? One of my regrets three months into blogging is that I don't really feel part of a community. Where do bloggers 'hang out'? I'm a bit shy when it comes to striking up a conversation first and I'm afraid that I'd just bother people... but I love it when people talk to me :)

But now, without further ado,


The Prizes

Paperback Bundle

Ebook Bundle

Each bundle will go to ONE winner, who will receive ALL the books in it! The paperbacks will be ordered from the Book Depository, the eBooks from amazon, so you'll need a kindle or kindle app to receive them. (I even switched from amazon.de to amazon.com for this, since the German store doesn't have a give-as-gift function). Anyone the Book Depository ships to and anyone able to receive kindle books can enter, no matter where you live! Note on ebooks: if you already have one of the books, you can also choose another installment of the same series.
Also, I won some Origin swag from author Jessica Khoury and have some (though sadly not much) swag (some of it signed) lying around and if I receive that Origin swag by the end of September, I will put together a swag bundle for one runner up and add it to the rafflecopter!

I also want to try something new and creative for you guys to get more entries. Jessica Khoury's contests for swag and ARCs brought the Pinfiction phenomenon to my attention, and I'd like to try this here as well! How does it work? Easy. Just go to my Pinboards (you don't need a Pinterest account), pick a pin that you like, and write a 500 character (including spaces) story/scene to it! When you've done that, email the story and a direct link to the pin you picked to shelfspaceneeded(at)hotmail(dot)com. Attention: 500 characters are the limit, not 500 words! Enter your email address into the provided space of the rafflecopter form so that I know which entry is yours. Sounds fun, right? Something other than just sharing on twitter/facebook/whatever :)

The Rules

• One entry per person / household
• International as long as Book Depository ships to you and you can receive kindle gifts from amazon
• You must be at least 13 years old
• This is a follower-appreciation giveaway, so you must follow me by GFC or email
• Cheaters will be disqualified and all their entries deleted. Believe me, I will check ALL entries before picking a winner, because cheaters falsify the odds for everyone and it's not fair.
• Contest ends midnight September 30th, but I reserve the right to end it early
• I also reserve the right to add/subtract/substitute prizes before the end of the giveaway
• As soon as the Book Depository ships your books, I'm no longer accountable for them
• Winners will be emailed and must respond within 48 hours, or I'll pick someone else.

If there are any questions, put them in the comments or tweet me (@Butterfly_Ghost) :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Stacking the Shelves, general update & giveaway news

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly post hosted by Tynga's Reviews to showcase new adds to the reading pile, no matter how they were acquired. This time, I'm also using it for a general update and recap.

First off, I have to apologize for not replying to comments or checking out other people's WoW's etc. The reason is that I was on a 10-day Interrail journey which led me from Zurich to Prague to Hamburg to Amsterdam and eventually back to Zurich. Loads of train-driving, amazing memories and sights I will forever treasure. However, also not so much time on the computer/blogs/twitter/tumblr and all that. Which was nice in a way, but not something I'd want to do all the time. I'm glad to be back!

Of course, I can't go on a trip without buying books... but since my suitcase was small, I limited myself to two. I bought Paranormalcy by Kristen White when I was in Prague and read it on the journey to Hamburg. You can read my review here. When I was in Amsterdam, I discovered that they actually have a Waterstones there!! I know the store from UK trips and love it - no Swiss book store stacks that many English books! I bought:

I love haunted house stories, but I've read waaaay too few of them! This nearly 700 page monster contains stories on diverse aspects of the genre by a variety of writers - among them, to my surprise, also Virginia Woolf. Once I finish it (could take a while) I'll review some of the stories.

The day after I got home from my trip I went to the fleamarket, where I bought a book for a buck (among other things). It's a German edition and I don't usually read thsoe anymore because the (often not so good) translations upset me, but I thought what the heck, I've been looking at this at the store way too often to pass up this opportunity.

 

I own it with the cover on the left, but I thought it was also really interesting to compare it with the English cover. Very different effect.

When I got home today, too more pretties were waiting for me in my mailbox!

goodreads

goodreads

I've been wanting to read Anna Dressed in Blood for forever and was only waiting for the paperback. However, since Something Strange and Deadly only just came out, I will read that one first and probably get started on it tonight or tomorrow.

What I've recently finished:



I enjoyed both books a lot and hope to get some reviews up soon!

More news: I'm participating in the 2nd Annual Summer Giveaway Hop hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer and Mary from BookHounds & Forever Young (adult). Almost 200 blogs are participating! This is my first time doing something like this and I hope my post goes on at the right time (yeah... time difference doesn't help trying to coordinate blog posts and rafflecopter forms >.<) and everything works as it should. The hop starts on August 1 and ends on August 7. I hope some of you guys will check out my post and enter! I hope this will be fun :)


What's new on your shelves? Have you read any of the books mentioned above, and what did you think about them? What are you reading at the moment? Tell me in the comments :)