Out of My Pocket #18 - or, Even my books are blue

Due to my book buying addiction I started this  feature on my blog where I post about the book(s) I bought that week. Not something I plan on having every week – though it seems to be turning out that way.  So here’s what I bought this week!

Previous OoMP posts can be found here!

I went a little crazy this week, but you see, I had a coupon. A COUPON! If I spent $40 before taxes and after discount, I would get $10 off my book purchases. And I am feeling like I  need to read seasonal-type books. So I bought some. Two of which I blame on Stephanie from Stephanie's Written Word because she reviewed both on her blog and ever since then they have been sitting in my amazon wishlist and well, I needed to make sure I had that $40, right? Actually one of the books was already 30% off, plus my 10% discount, so even though it was a $30-something hard cover, it came to $17 in the end!

So this week I got the following:

Dreamdark: Silksingerby Laini Taylor

While journeying by dragonfly caravan over the Sayash Mountains, warrior-faerie Whisper Silksinger, hunted by devils, meets a young mercenary with an ancient scimitar and secrets of his own.

I have been waiting for this book for what feels like forever! I really enjoyed Faeries of Dreamdark and I can't wait to read this one!

Dreaming Anastasiaby Joy Preble

What really happened to Anastasia Romanov?Anastasia Romanov thought she would never feel more alone than when the gunfire started and her family began to fall around her. Surely the bullets would come for her next. But they didn't. Instead, two gnarled old hands reached for her. When she wakes up she discovers that she is in the ancient hut of the witch Baba Yaga, and that some things are worse than being dead.In modern-day Chicago, Anne doesn't know much about Russian history. She is more concerned about getting into a good college—until the dreams start. She is somewhere else. She is someone else. And she is sharing a small room with a very old woman. The vivid dreams startle her, but not until a handsome stranger offers to explain them does she realize her life is going to change forever. She is the only one who can save Anastasia. But, Anastasia is having her own dreams…

Was very happy to see this book was paperback. I miss paperbacks and I am tired of hard covers, though that didn't stop me from buying the next two books.Her Fearful Symmetryby Audrey Niffenegger

Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers — normal, at least, for identical “mirror” twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn’t know existed has died and left them her amazing flat in a building by Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin … but they have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the OCD-suffering crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt’s mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the mother of the girls — her own twin — and who can’t even seem to quite leave her flat….

After discounts this one was $17 so it was worth buying the book. I think it's going to be a perfect autumny book!The Magiciansby Lev Grossman

Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin's fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart. At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren't black and white, love and sex aren't simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.

There was something about the summary and Stephanie's review of this book that just made me lust after it. Also, I really like the lone tree on the cover.Since my insurance only pays $750 of my $1300 MRI(s) bill, I'm going to be veeeery careful with what I buy now. I am hoping to not spend this much again until Christmas and I have gift cards. Heh. (hint hint)EDIT: I forgot to mention I have been really down in the dumps lately, hence the sub-title about being blue and all. I can't even get through a book. Reviews are down on this blog, as I am sure you have all noticed. Hope to try and force myself to read - especially since I have a couple of review books to actually read and review! Bad, Cat! I just can't shake these blahs.. and the reading rut that started LAST Fall, seems to be plaguing me, still!