Book Talk: Mass Market Paperbacks

Hi, everyone! Today I’m introducing a new segment on my blog for bookish discussions. It’s been on my mind for a while now and have been thinking of topics to talk about for my pilot post. I recently got a job promotion, so what better way to reward myself than to buy new books, right? I bought five on-hand books and preordered three others, three of the on-hand books that I bought are in mass market paperback formats. So I thought of talking about mass market paperbacks on my blog as there have always been some discussion about it going around the community.

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To be perfectly honest, I’m not a big fan of mass market paperbacks myself. They aren’t my type of book format not only because their spines break so easily but also because the font is smaller compared to trade paperbacks and hardbacks. I wear glasses and have astigmatism, so I find it a little bit hard to read from this format especially when it comes to fantasy series chunkers!

Regardless, I still do have quite a number of mass market paperbacks on my book collection — mostly standalone thrillers, romance, and suspense books. What I like most about this format, though, is that it’s lightweight and handy so it’s easy to bring them during travels and overnights — basically, anywhere! It’s also much cheaper than other formats. Also, most of my Nicholas Sparks books are in this format because back in the day, I can only find mass market paperback versions of his works in my country. It was only just a couple of years ago when my local bookstores started selling out other formats of his novels — this is also similar to other authors like Dan Brown, Gillian Flynn, James Patterson, etc.

I also prefer mass market paperback format more than e-books as they tend to strain my eyes easily given that I am already required to sit in front of the computer 8 hours a day for work.

How about you? What are your thoughts on MMPBs?

Book Review: Wilder Girls by Rory Power

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Wilder Girls cover

Title: Wilder Girls

Author: Rory Power

Publication Date: July 9, 2019

Number of Pages: 357

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Mystery, YA, Queer

 

Synopsis:

It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her.

It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there’s more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.
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Autumn Book Recommendations

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Hi, everyone! Today I’m going to share with you some of the books that I think is perfect for Fall. We don’t really have Fall in my side of the world, but, well, I still get the vibes. ☺

I’ve been seeing a lot of people posting about their Fall TBRs (and since I am not really doing well with my attempt of a September TBR haha), I figured why not do a recommendations post instead? So I scoured around my room looking for the perfect Fall books to recommend to all of you only to realize that I haven’t really read a lot of spooky or creepy books. I did find a few titles that are atmospheric enough to recommend, so let’s go ahead and dive right in: Continue reading

Stuff I’ve Been Reading Lately #12

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BOOKS READ:

  • Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
  • Please Pick Me by Reina Regina
  • One-Punch Man Vol 8 by ONE
  • Cardcaptor Sakura Vol. 5 by CLAMP

BOOKS BOUGHT:

  • An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
  • Crown of Feathers by Nicki Pau Preto
  • Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen
  • Wilder Girls by Rory Power
  • Wink, Poppy, Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke
  • Dragon Republic (Poppy War, #2) by R.F. Kuang
  • See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng
  • The Keep of Lost Cities (Keeper of Lost Cities, #1) by Shannon Messenger
  • Exile (Keeper of Lost Cities, #2) by Shannon Messenger
  • The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1) by Brandon Sanders
  • The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2) by Brandon Sanderson
  • The Hero of Ages (Mistborn, #3) by Brandon Sanderson

ARC/s:

  • Please Pick Me by Reina Regina

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Book Review: [ARC] Please Pick Me by Reina Regina

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Title: Please Pick Me

Author: Reina Regina

Publication Date: November 11, 2020

Number of Pages: 124

Publisher: Moonchild Press Publishing

Genre: Poetry

Synopsis:

In a garden of a thousand other volumes, my little yellow book with its earnest plea and hopeful flowers on the cover sits waiting for you to pick it up. It’s got a heart it wants to give away.

These haikus, poems, and prose pieces are about

the miracle of being wanted back by someone we want,
the desperation of hoping they’ll fight harder when they waver,
the rawness of seeking reassurance that we are loved as we are, and
the tenderness we feel when we’re sending love out to others

—all those moments when we are making our need to be accepted plain and praying, please pick me.

This book was born after twenty-six years of learning that it’s okay to want to be wanted, that vulnerability is merely throwing open the gateway to honest connections, and that fighting to be loved the way you deserve is bravery and not weakness.

I hope you open it. I hope it invites you to be open too.

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10 Books On My Priority List

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Hey, everyone! I’m back with another book list and today I’ll be talking about the top ten books in my physical TBR that are on my priority list. I may have mentioned in one of my previous posts that I am a mood reader which is why I don’t post monthly TBRs here or on Instagram (except for my readathon books). My being a mood reader is also the reason why I do not have a specific date set for reading each of the books that I will mention in this post, but hopefully, I can get to them before the year ends. Continue reading

Book Review: [ARC] Ever After by Olivia Vieweg

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Title: Ever After

Author: Olivia Vieweg

Publication Date: September 1, 2020

Number of Pages: 288

Publisher: Graphic Universe

Genre: Horror, Dystopia

Synopsis:

Vivi and Eva are two travelers in a countryside filled with the undead. After a train breaks down, stranding them between safe zones, the young women partner up to stay alive. Vivi is struggling with grief–and guilt–over the loss of her sister. Eva is hiding the start of a horrifying transformation. Together they’ll face heat, zombie hordes, and their own inner demons, searching for signs of life in a land of the dead.

This graphic novel addition to an enduring genre is thoughtful and emotion-driven, but also full of zombie scares and action.

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Stuff I’ve Been Reading Lately #11

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BOOKS READ:

  • Flyte (Septimus Heap, #2) by Angie Sage
  • Dekada ’70 by Lualhati Bautista
  • Ever After by Olivia Vieweg
  • One-Punch Man Vol. 7 by ONE
  • One-Punch Man Vol. 8 by ONE
  • Cardcaptor Sakura Vol. 6 by CLAMP
  • Kaguya-sama: Love is War Vol. 3 by Aka Akasaka

BOOKS BOUGHT:

  • Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins
  • Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna, #1) by Kendare Blake
  • Girl of Nightmares (Anna, #2) by Kendare Blake
  • Demon Slayer Vol. 1 by Koyoharu Gotouge
  • Your Lie in April Vol. 1 by Naoshi Arakawa
  • Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
  • The Shadow of What Was Lost (The Licanius Trilogy, #1) by James Islington
  • An Echo of Things to Come (The Licanius Trilogy, #2) by James Islington
  • The Modern Faerie Tales Trilogy (Omnibus Edition) by Holly Black

BOOKS RECEIVED:

  • Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella
  • Storms by Chris Vick
  • The Museum of Heartbreaks by Meg Leder
  • Geekerella by Ashley Poston

ARCs:

  • Ever After by Olivia Vieweg 
  • One of Those Days by Adres G. Leiva

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Favorite Debut Books

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Hey, guys! Today I’m going to talk about my all-time favorite debuts! I’ve been wanting to write posts of my favorite so and so and I have already started in February and sort of stopped because I ran out of ideas of books to list. Recently, I came up with a lot of ideas for my blog content and have been scheduling posts since last week. With that, I also came up with new topics for my book lists!

If you do not know, a debut book means it is an author’s first novel that has been published. I honestly love reading debut novels and discovering amazing authors, I mean, if the first novel they ever wrote is amazing, what more the next books that they will write, right?

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The Tome Project

Tome, /tōm/ n.
A book, especially a large, heavy, scholarly one.

I started reading more since the quarantine started in March and managed to put a quarter of a dent on my physical TBR. Some time around the middle of this chaos, when it was announced that couriers are back in operations and that deliveries can pass through from wherever city to another, I started buying books again. I started hauling books that have been on my Goodreads TBR for years! So the quarter of a dent that I made on my physical TBR isn’t quite considered a dent anymore since I’ve added quite a number of books on it. Haha

As you know, I’ve announced in a previous post that I am participating in Sam’s (of thoughtsontomes) Tome Topple readathon and it quite gave me an idea to launch this little project. With that being said, I came up with a plan to read at least one tome (or a 500+ page book) from my physical TBR per month.

I have a lot of books that are over 500 pages and I think I’ve added some more during the quarantine, and most of these books are part of a series so I hope that this personal project will help me read most of the books that I have hauled over the years (and recently) and finally finish all of them.

For August, I included Flyte (Septimus Heap, #2) by Angie Sage which has a total of 531 pages and Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl which has a total of 563 pages. This is a good start for me because the Caster Chronicles series has been on my Goodreads TBR for a very long time and it has been suggested and recommended to me by a lot of people and I bought the whole series three years ago, so I really really need to get to it.

Reading update:

I have managed to finish reading Flyte (Septimus Heap, #2) by Angie Sage on Saturday and I gave it a 3.75 rating. It was absolutely an awesome journey with Septimus and Jenna. so I am looking forward to continuing the series next month. After reading Flyte, I started reading Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl yesterday and I’m just a couple of pages in so I can’t really say anything about it yet.

On the side of Beautiful Creatures, I am also reading Dekada ’70 by Lualhati Baustista on the side so that I could also make progress with my Wikathon TBR. So far, I am enjoying the book. For me, it is really educational given the current state of our country recently.