The Nine Books of Christmas

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[First off, congratulate me. I found the perfectly matching Christmas image for my blog. Next year I plan on not being lazy and actually making a custom one myself with PhotoFiltre. I promise  :P].

Well, yes, I know...it should have been twelve for the pun to work...but I wasn't able to squeeze more than nine books into my birthday-Christmas shopping list. Because I'm also gifting myself with the massive Roger Taylor's (drummer from Queen) box set "The Lot", which comprises all his solo records and videos. Heck Rog, I've been waiting so long for you to make the move, and now you come and stole money from my book-devoted budget at the very worst moment LOL.

The Lot box set

So, since I turned [BEEP] a few days ago, I'm giving myself a birthday+Christmas treat under the form of said box set and the following books (titles point to Goodreads entries)...

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Thirst No. 5: The Sacred Veil by Christopher Pike - Fox Forever by Mary E. Pearson

Those were out in March, and I've been dying to read them since then...but I wanted to place a more conspicuous order with my webseller in order to rule shipping charges out - something I wasn't able to do all year. 2013 was a though beast for me, money-wise.

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Soul Beach-Soul Fire-Soul Storm by Kate Harrison

The final installment in this trilogy was out in August, and I was sold on the idea since I first read blurbs for the other two. Ah, afterlife stories, they always make me die (please note the pun). And this one...an online paradise coupled with a murder mystery? The Agatha Christie aficionado in me was immediately trying to outrun the sucker for dead-but-not-quite-dead-characters in claiming the books.

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All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill - More Than This by Patrick Ness

So that's where I go mainstream. Not a single days passes without at least a review for both of them peeking through the "Recent Reviews of My Books" section on my Goodreads page. Well, I may have set up this blog with the specific purpose of uncovering hidden gems, but this doesn't mean I won't read popular books on the occasion - when they seem capable to suit me ;).

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Absent by Katie Williams - Backwards by Todd Mitchell 

Both out this year. An afterlife book again, who only got a few but overall positive reviews on Goodreads. And a weird story about experiencing life backwards, only it's not your life, but someone else's. How couldn't they tickle my fancy?

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On a side note. Last year around these days, I was excited for my coming-from-webstore Christmas bunch of books as well, and one of them should have been The Lost Girl by Sangu Mandanna. It turned out the store couldn't get hold of the version I wanted - the less expensive one LOL - and I didn't receive the book. All this year it stayed near the top of my to-read list, till it was time to place my Christmas order again and...all of a sudden, the stuff pointed out by some reviewers managed to get to me. Someone commented about how far-fetched the premise was - as opposed to having the main character being a "simple" clone - and about the lack of real world-building...and I thought to myself, WTF, do I really want to read this book? and like I said, all of a sudden, I found out I didn't. No disrespect meant to the author of course - The Lost Girl may be a perfectly fine novel under many aspects, but since my TR list is quite huge for my pockets, I ultimately decided not to buy it. Which says something about my ever-refining book discrimination. Thank goodness for the abundance of reviews!

So, has anyone of you read the above books? or is anyone going to?

And since I don't plan on being back on track before Dec. 25, blog-wise...

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