Mogsy’s Bookshelf Roundup: Stacking the Shelves & Recent Reads
Bookshelf Roundup is a feature I do every other weekend which fills the role of several blog memes, like Stacking the Shelves where I talk about the new books I’ve added to my library or received for review, as well as It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? where I round up what I’ve read since the last update and what I’m planning to read soon. Mostly it also serves as a recap post, so sometimes I’ll throw in stuff like reading challenge progress reports, book lists, and other random bookish thoughts or announcements.
Received for Review
Happy December, everyone! It’s a relatively light week for activity due to the recent Thanksgiving holiday in the US, and I hope all those who celebrated had a wonderful time. My plans to catch up on some reading didn’t exactly pan out, but that’s okay because my brother was visiting from Canada and it was great spending that time with family! This month though, I’m making it a point to hunker down and put a dent in my TBR and I’ve been really good on reining back requests. Even so, there’s still lots of goodies to feature, and I’d like to thank all the publishers and authors for the following review copies received. For more details and full descriptions of the books, be sure to click the links to their Goodreads pages!
Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson – My thanks to Tor Books for this surprise arrival. I’m even more intrigued now that I’ve discovered it involves time travel!
Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey – My thanks to Orbit for the finished copy. The Expanse is probably my favorite science fiction series right now, and I cannot wait to dive into book six. They just get better and better.
Dreamweaver by C.S. Friedman – Book three of Dreamwalker, C.S. Friedman’s YA/crossover series that I’ve been really enjoying so far. I think this is the final installment, so I have to know how it ends! My thanks to DAW for the finished copy.
Hungry Ghosts by Stephen Blackmoore – Thanks also to DAW for this surprise arrival from the Eric Carter series which I’ve wanted to check out for a while. Unfortunately, this is book three and I haven’t read the first two! Looks like I have some catching up to do first!
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi – Another fantastic surprise from the wonderful folks at Subterranean Press. I was pretty excited to learn they’ll be publishing the print edition of this novella, which thus far has only been available in audio.
Charlie the Choo-Choo by Beryl Evans – My initial response was confusion when an unsolicited package from Simon & Schuster arrived last week and this came out. As far as I knew, I was not on any of their children’s reviewers lists so it was pretty bizarre to receive a picture book. But then I noticed the blurb from Stephen King. And then I laughed when I looked it up and realized that Beryl Evans IS Stephen King. Fans of The Dark Tower are probably reading this now and going, “durr, Mogsy” but hey, I never made it past The Gunslinger! I never knew about some book about some creepy sentient train. Anyway, I’ll probably end up giving this to my kids one day, but even my oldest will need to wait a few more years. She took one look at that cover and said, “Mommy, his eyes are scary.”
Up next, a trio of e-galleys from the awesome team at Tor.com! I’ll have to catch up with book one before I take on Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire, but I’m super excited about Brother’s Ruin by Emma Newman — she’s on fire these days! Proof of Concept by Gwyneth Jones also looks very interesting.
Won and Purchased
It’s been a while since I won anything from giveaways, probably because I haven’t been entering any. The Fall of Fair Isle by Rowena Cory Daniells was actually a book I won back in a Goodreads giveaway in April 2015! When it never arrived, I just let it go. Earlier this fall though, I came across a great review of this book on a blog and I commented, along with a brief lament about how it’s a shame I lost my chance to check it out. To my shock, a couple weeks later I received an email from the author to let me know about the publisher problems with that particular giveaway, and offered to send me the book! It was such an amazing and sweet thing to do, that I was completely floored. When the package came, I saw that the author also included another one of her books, Besieged. So thank you so much, Rowena, I can’t wait to read the books and I will never forget your generosity.
I also forgot to mention the arrival of Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place edited by Jaym Gates a few weeks ago, which was a pledge reward from the Ragnarok Publications Kickstarter campaign. It’s a beautiful anthology, was totally worth the wait!
Reviews
Review roundup time! Top feature spot goes to Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection, a must-have for every Brandon Sanderson fan’s bookshelf.
Arcanum Unbounded by Brandon Sanderson (4.5 of 5 stars)
The Secret Life of Souls by Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee (4 of 5 stars)
Blood for Blood by Ryan Graudin (4 of 5 stars)
The Facefaker’s Game by Chandler J. Birch (4 of 5 stars)
Level Grind by Annie Bellet (3.5 of 5 stars)
Star Wars: Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel by James Luceno (3.5 of 5 stars)
The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood (3 of 5 stars)
Roundup Highlights:
What I’ve Read Since the Last Update
Between making Thanksgiving preparations and caving in to my friends’ insistence on joining their Overwatch team, my reading time has taken a severe hit these past two weeks! I still managed to knock a few books off Mount TBR though (and there’s actually one more book I read that I couldn’t include here because I can’t talk about it yet) so I probably ended up doing more reading than I expected. Stay tuned for reviews.
Have you heard of or read any of the books featured this week? What caught your eye? Any new discoveries? I hope you found something interesting for a future read! Let me know what you plan on checking out. Until next time, see you next Roundup!
The BiblioSanctum 
Great stack of books you got! That Charlie the Choo-Choo book looks interesting! I’m adding it to my TBR shelf right now!
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It’s a children’s book so it’s a fast read. I imagine it would be awesome for folks who actually understand the context from the Dark Tower – unlike me, lol 🙂
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Ooh! Interesting!
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Last Year sounds awesome, I’ve been intrigued abiut this title since I first heard of it. I can’t wait to read Down Amaong a Stick of Bones which is one of my most anticipated releases for next year!
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I still have to catch up with Every Heart A Doorway, but I do hope to read DAtSaN at some point too 🙂
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The Dispatcher sounds different and intriguing. I might need to keep my eyes open for this one. I’ll be interested to see your review of The Rains as I like the look of that one.
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Ah, The Rains didn’t turn out as good as I thought it would, but then again I had certain…issues…with the science that others might not care about. So YMMV 🙂
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Charlie the ChooChoo is giving me nightmares!!! Wonder if anyone will mistakenly think it is a childrens book this Christmas… From Santa? More like with love from Krampus 😝
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It is a children’s book – I gave it a read and it’s pretty tame stuff, but I definitely would recommend it for the older spectrum (i.e. not for my own kids yet, since my oldest is only 4, almost 5). Then again, I have seen even from parents of 10-12-year-olds saying that the images creeped out their kids a little, so I guess it all depends!
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Hahaha it’s a super creepy cover for kids though! I thought it would be like Rothfuss’s Princess and Mr. Whiffle books, where it looks like a kids book but it’s totally not.
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I’ve seen that Charlie the Choo-Choo cover a few times, and it freaks me out every single time. That face…
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I know, it’s very unsettling…
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How long does it take you to put a post like this together? Besides the actual typing, you’ve got a lot of links to deal with and the pictures. I like roundup type posts as it helps me to remember what other people have reviewed, since I tend to “read and forget” the majority of what is in my feed.
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Roundup posts don’t take me long at all (much faster than actually typing up a review, that’s for sure!) because I have the template all prepared and ready to go. It’s just a matter of plugging in comments, copy/pasting links, and inserting images. I make my life easier too by taking one photo of my physical books rather than uploading 6-12 new covers every week because prepping the pics is a big part of what makes formatting a PITA.
And I like roundup posts on other sites for that reason too, it’s a good reminder of what the blogger enjoyed and what they are reading soon, and I always find new reads. That’s why I adopted the feature for myself too 🙂
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Ooh nice! Those are all totally new to me reads! Look like exciting ones too! Hope you enjoy each and every one of them!
My STS will be up tomorrow, so stop by then if you can!
Have a GREAT day!
Old Follower 🙂
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Thank you! Happy reading 🙂
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Babylon’s Ashes is one of the books I’m most excited about – and it comes out on Monday!!!!!! (I even placed myself an alert on the computer, not that I was likely to forget it…). And I enjoyed The Dispatcher very much, despite the audio format: for once, I was able to keep my attention focused, so I count it as a double victory 🙂
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Holy crap yes, I’m soooo excited to dive into Babylon’s Ashes! I’m currently reading a huge anthology by Le Guin though, which is also amazing, and gah too many good books to be reading how can I choose?! I am also excited that The Expanse series is coming to Amazon Prime later this month, I need to catch up with the episodes 🙂
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Still haven’t gone back to The Dark Tower series?! With the movies coming out next year seems like it might be a good time 😉 I’m sure your husband would love that book though!
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Yeah, I still haven’t! I didn’t really enjoy the first book all that much, which sort of killed the motivation. But it was a while ago, I would like to reread sometime 🙂
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Honestly, you could skip Gunslinger and start with the second book. Apparently quite a few people do that.
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Thanks for the tip, I’ll probably do that!
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The novellas from tor!! I loved Down the sticks and bones, I hope you will too! Cannot wait to read more on Brother’s Ruin, that cover is GORGEOUS!
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I agree about Brother’s Ruin. Emma Newman is fast becoming a new favorite author 🙂
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I love the look of all three of the Tor books. I will definitely read the Cherie Priest – really looking forward to that one.
I see you read Certain Dark things. I look forward to your review of that one.
Lynn 😀
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The Emma Newman, you mean? 🙂
And Certain Dark Things was a lot of fun! I enjoy it!
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I’m so jealous regarding Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Brother’s Price! Emma Newman really has been on fire lately, and I loved Every Heart a Doorway.
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I still need to catch up with Every Heart a Doorway. I’ve only heard good things from everyone who has read it, I can’t wait.
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Rowena is nice 🙂
And dang, one scary train
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She is, I am so thankful to her! I can’t wait to read her books 🙂
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I’m not a huge fan of the Dark Tower. I’ve been stuck somewhere in Wolves of the Calla for a long time now. I want a copy of Charlie the Choo-Choo, though! That’s definitely a reference I remember.
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Yeah, I had to read up on the reference to “get it”. Now, that’s very meta! 🙂
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I’m needing a copy of that Stephen King book and how funny is it that he blurbed his own book! I hope to get to Certain Dark Things in a week or so. I’m so excited for it. I also can’t wait to read Down Among the Sticks and Bones because I loved the first one so much. Great haul!
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I thought that blurb was SO FUNNY. Perfect for the clueless folks like me who needed an extra hint 😀
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Seeing that you’ve read and are ready to review Fireborn reminds me that I still need to read Skyborn. It’s sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to pick it up…
No new books for me. I go on an annual book-buying ban around the holidays, but I put several books on my Christmas list this year. But I also decided recently to rent books from the library once a month. So I might start doing that during my end “stay-cation” from my day job.
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Book buying ban around holidays is definitely smart! Too many sales and deals to tempt me. I was actually pretty proud of myself that I avoided the Book Outlet Black Friday sale 😉
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*grabby hands* Oh, oh, the new Seanan McGuire novella, I want it, I want it!
Um. Yes. Good haul! >_>
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I’ve heard great things about the first book, I really need to get to it 😀
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Your newest book acquisitions are all new-to-me titles :O I need to catch up on some new releases, it’s shameful! Anyway, I love the covers for Charlie the Choo-Choo (how COOL is that?!) and Brother’s Ruin! I hope you enjoy all of these Mogsy!!
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I’m very excited about Brother’s Ruin, Emma Newman is fast becoming one of my favorite authors and yes, how gorgeous is that cover! 😀
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I never got past Gunslinger, either, so your comments about Charlie the Choo-Choo made me laugh! What a bizarre picture book XD Everything on your list sounds exciting, although I’m REALLY excited to hear what you think about Emma Newman’s steampunk.
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